Sky, Virgin & BT TV Haggle down prices and get serious discounts Article Discussion

smcym

smcym wrote: »

Hi everyone

After reading about people getting big discounts on their TV packages, I decided to give it a go. In early November, I rang Sky (I just had my TV with them - Sky World, HD, multiroom + ESPN for £85/month). I told them I was looking for a discount on my bill, and I was looking for a half price offer for 6 months. The adviser I spoke to mentioned about 3 differents things they could offer me, which totalled about £10/month off my bill. I said that wasn't good enough. I then asked to cancel if that was the best they could do. They simply put that through their system. A couple of weeks later (after not hearing from Sky) I rang back, saying I was not happy with the 1st discussion and could they not offer a longstanding customer a more enticing offer to stay. After much discussion, I was was offered a deal for £58/month for 6 months. I again stated that this was not good enough, so the cancellation would still apply.
The day before my service was due to finish I contacted them a 3rd time. I had received an e-mail with a survey, but the link did not work. I wanted to complete the survey to make make my feelings known. I was sent a link via online chat and completed my details. Immediately I received an e-mail thanking me for showing an interest in coming back to Sky, and someone would be in touch soon. I explained that this was incorrect to the adviser, who denied this and abruptly finished the chat. A few days later, no contect from Sky so I e-mailed them, explaining that in 3 conversations with them, I was not happy after each one. I also explained that I had been a customer on the full package for a number of years (at least 8), and also I had not received any offers in that time, plus I was one of the early adopters of the HD box, so I paid for that, and did not receive it free. They responded saying they had offered me half price TV, which is a lie - half of £85 is £42.50.
Since cancelling I have had no contact from Sky - I was expecting them to contact me to try and get me back as a customer. How soon should it be before these offers arrive? I understand I was a high paying customer and they want to keep me as a high paying customer, but in all my contact with Sky I was clear that I would cancel if I did not receive a half price offer - was I too ambitious?
Finally, a number of people have stated they have received 50% or 75% off 'come back to Sky' offers - can these people state if that is a true 50% or 75% offer. What I mean by that is have they been offered x% off, not including multiroom, HD, ESPN etc?
Did I say finally? I mean it this time! Finally, were my tactics wrong - should I have just kept ringing Sky without cancelling until I struck lucky with a particular Sky adviser / time of day / day of week until I got the offer I wanted?

To update:
Yesterday I got a phonecall from Sky - I was offered 75% off for 9 months to comeback. I asked about HD, multiroom & ESPN. None of those are included in this 75% off. I have taken up this offer for Entertainment Extra, Sports & Movies for £13.87/month. I can give a months notice at any time, but they will not remind me when the price is about to go up - I need to make a note of this myself if I intend to cancel at that point.

KTF

jacksonbird03 wrote: »

I also want to cut the connection....
because the services are not so good....

What do you mean? Have you still tied in to the min term?

entrywound

Am after a bit of advice here, and am hoping you lovely lot can give me it!

We get Sky TV (movies but no sports), broadband and phone, and pay a total of just under £90 a month. We received an offer in the post regarding 75% off of Multiroom if we took it back (we cancelled this in May or so of last year). I then called Sky to discuss this and maybe to negotiate any other discounts or offers I could try, and then found out we'd been paying £10 a month more than what we should have been since cancelling the Multiroom way back when (a total of £90, Sky had basically cancelled the Multiroom but we were still paying for a Sky+ subscription in error). I thought this was pretty disgusting, as I wouldn't have had a clue unless I called them about this something else, so then thought I could try and use this to get a larger box from them. However, the cancellations department was not playing ball at all, and wouldn't even consider a decent deal of any sort, despite my poor treatment. I was offerd a paltry £5 off of my telephone line rental, but that was it.

Is it worth me firing off an email or something to them to put in an official complaint about my over charging, to see if they offer me any sweeteners or anything (ie a free or severely discounted larger HD box), or am I going to have to just put up with it and maybe threaten to leave to go to Virgin to get anything done? Cheers!

von

Have just e-mailed Sky to tell them I want to cancel, lets see what happens.

Lifes_Grand_Plan

@von - should have rung them... you might get a response emailing them but much more likey if you ring them and cancel.

KTF

entrywound wrote: »

I thought this was pretty disgusting, as I wouldn't have had a clue unless I called them about this something else,

Do you not check your bill every month?

'Maybe threatening' to leave wont cut it. Either ask who you can speak to about the billing error or give your 30 days notice.

[Deleted User]

entrywound wrote: »

I thought this was pretty disgusting, as I wouldn't have had a clue unless I called them about this something else,

Why were you letting Sky take £10 extra for NINE months and not spotting it? If you run all your direct debits like this, you're likely to get into financial trouble, I'm afraid.

You should check every variable direct debit you have regularly.

As for your complaint, I think you need to be making this to customer service not cancellations. I assume you've already had the £90 refunded?

entrywound

I know it sounds stupid that I didn't spot it, and I do check my account fairly regularly, but the way the bill is presented online isnt the clearest, and I assumed (wrongly now obviously!) the extra £10 payment shown was for HD services, as that's how the bill used to be shown online, so in my mind I had no real reason to query it.

Anyway, I have now fired off a complaint email to Sky via their website, and will see what happens next (if anything).

jakeblade

I applied for TalkTalk's MSE deal for £50 L2S voucher + £9.50/mnth line rental + £3.25/mnth unlimited broadband. I rang up before activation date to say that the MSE deal had changed to a £70 L2S voucher, and that I was thinking of upgrading to the Plus package (the one with the Freeview TV PVR box), and so they just applied a £70 credit to my account and said they would call me back on activation day to upgrade the account to the TV Plus package (@£15.50/mnth). But they never called back on activation day...

So I called them back a few days later, and I was greeted by a salesman who kindly offered me (as an existing customer of 2 days) the TV package for £10/mnth for 6 months then £15.50 thereafter. No installation costs for the box, and no delivery costs. This is in addition to the £70 credit they have applied to the account.

So, to summarise my costs over my 18-month contract: £347, or average of £19.28/month. They also confirmed that on the 1st anniversary I can pre-pay for another 12-months and if I leave after 6 months they will refund pro-rata at £9.50/mnth.

For that I get:
- unlimited broadband
- unlimited anytime calls to landlines
- Youview 500Gb PVR box
- faster download speed than I had with BT (10-12, rather than 8-9)

The best that BT could offer me to stay was line rental at £10.75/mnth (prepaid) + £14ish for anytime calls and unlimited broadband. I say "£14ish" because every time I called BT to say I was going to leave, they offered me completely different prices each time for BB and calls each time saying that was the best they could do, and a different price for early termination under my contract. I called 3 times, and each time was a different price. The termination payment in the letter they sent me is also different to the values given on each of the 3 calls. TV would have been £5/month +£49 connection charge (how does that work when I install it myself???).

So far I am delighted with TT in terms of performance and price.

kerrypops1979

Well, after being a customer with sky for 5 years and putting almost £900 a year in their pocket, I ring to see if they can do me a deal for or I'll cancel and they offer me....wait for it.....£4 off for 6 months! What a joke!! What makes me even more cross is the fact that if you take it out as a new customer through one of the cashback site, you get £200 cashback and half price TV!

I can't even threaten them with taking out Virgin or any of the others as we are not in a cable area!

Sky really know how to treat their customers!!