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

footlady

Called Sky tonight as current contract expires end May. We have: tv - Entertainment Extra with HD, phone - line rental inc weekend landline calls, and unlimited broadband. Current total £54.50/month, and have been hacked off at the way the costs have crept up over the last year in particular. That being said, have been with Sky nearly 7 years and never had a single issue with service provision, home moves, customer service, after years of horrendous experiences at the hands of BT (mostly) & Virgin.

Told cancellations team guy that decision to quit was based purely on cost (truth), and that I couldn't justify nearly 60 quid a month, when the same services could be had for £28.50. This would be by my partner using MSE 50% off code for same tv package, £15.75 (thank you yet again Martin & co!) then taking TalkTalk essentials line rental (paid upfront), £9.50 & half price broadband, £3.25.

After a bit of faffing about, he offered me free line rental for 12mths & free HD element to tv pack, bringing monthly cost down to £34.50. Although this is still £6/mth, £72/yr more than it could have been had for, I've very happily accepted because:
- the saving is still a very respectable £240 over the 12 months, ie. over one-third less for a product I'm happy with and which serves my needs;
- I'm dealing with a known quantity who haven't let me down yet, whereas not sure how reliable TalkTalk are; also understand TT have BB restrictions at peak times;
- my partner makes international calls home regularly thru 3rd party call providers, & this wld be more expensive with TT than Sky (we use MSE to compare regularly!);
- avoid total hassle factor of setting up with someone new, inc time & hassle of organising access for BT etc, which would be required;
- have an agreement that all quoted costs will be held static for the 12mths of contract;
- and finally, after I hummed & hawed for a bit, I said if he'd send me a new, up to date wireless router to replace my old one, which is functional but not cutting the mustard with tablets in the house, I'd accept there & then.

Deal done! And what's more, it's valid from today, which means I got a month off the end of my current, more expensive contract!

So very happy all round, & my advice is be pleasant & reasonable, be absolutely specific about other deals you quote to them, and be sure about what you are prepared to accept as your bottom line. Good luck!

Ps. We didn't actually have an MSE discount code, so don't worry, not hogging one which someone else could've used.....

DragonQ

By the way, if you have Entertainment Extra and the HD Pack, but no Sports or Movies, then you can change to Entertainment Extra+ and save £5pm with no difference to which channels you get.

Geordie_Ahmed

DragonQ wrote: »

By the way, if you have Entertainment Extra and the HD Pack, but no Sports or Movies, then you can change to Entertainment Extra+ and save £5pm with no difference to which channels you get.

but you will lose the F1 channel if you do this, if you don't care for F1 then it makes sense otherwise it's a definite no, no

DragonQ

Oh yeah I forgot about F1. That's only for existing customers though - all new customers only get F1 with Sky Sports anyway.

Geordie_Ahmed

DragonQ wrote: »

Oh yeah I forgot about F1. That's only for existing customers though - all new customers only get F1 with Sky Sports anyway.

That's right, just thought I would highlight that in case an existing HD subscriber thought let's save a £5.25 but as an F1 fan it won't be worth doing

yogeshsp

Left sky a month ago and waited until the notice period was over. Called sky very next day and asked for a deal. Surprisingly they offered me full sky package (movies and sports) free for 6 months with no contract. Hope they give me the same 6 months from now again. :j

SpendlessKaren

I cancelled mine a few days ago. Paying £52 a month, had sky for 5 years. I was offered £4 a month discount so said no thanks.
Now in a slight panic as to what to use as I looked into talk talk and freeview but this would mean buying an outside aerial ...

SpendlessKaren

mrsgfactor wrote: »

Apologies if this question is already on here but we are looking to leave BT and join Sky with the 50% deal but we would like to keep our @btinternet.com email addresses.
The lady at Sky thought there might be a charge for doing this. Has anyone else encountered this.
Any comments would be much appreciated.

I changed my bt broadband to talk talk and have kept my @btinternet.com email

hatton33

I've been with Virgin Media for 10+ years now and 'haggled' various deals with them over that time. I've been told on a number of occasions by their staff i was on the best deal they've ever seen, although it really isn't any help when I had poor broadband speeds at times due to, "high utilisation" - i.e. oversubscribed in the area and I've had an issue last week where I was totally without TV and Broadband for 5 days because an engineer had accidently snapped my cable in the cab - 5 hours of phone calls to them it took before they sent an engineer.

The deal I had with them was;

1x Tivo 500gb
1x VHD
1x V+HD

30mb BB
TV XL
M Phone

Sky Sports
Sky Premium HD Pack

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£81pm
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Funnily enough, when I came to cancel to take the below offer, Virgin couldn't offer me anything - infact he told me that if he put what I had through his system, the best he could offer would be £99pm. Some retention's department eh!


Anyway...

Using the MSE 50% for Sky Code, I looked online and wasn't overly impressed but then ended up talking with a company a friend recommended 'DAS Technology', who managed to beat the deal Sky would offer with this code. They offered me;

1x Sky+HD box
1x SKYHD Multiroom box
1x Additional multi-oom subscription - I could have bought an additional box through them for £199 or source my own from amazon / ebay for £30, so opted to get my own

Sky Entertainment Extra+
Sky Unlimited Broadband
Sky Talk Weekends

Sky Sports
Sky HD Pack

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£66pm
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Additionally with my recent complaints to Virgin and a 'refer a friend credit' of £50 which took 6 months and a lot of chasing to come through, my final bill with Virgin leaves me £10 in credit. I've had to give 31 days notice to Virgin, so the guy at DAS said to call back when I've received my Sky Cards and re-arrange installation to coincide with my Virgin subscription ending.

All in all, I'm very happy with the savings I'll make over the 12 months. Thank you very much MSE,

DragonQ

SpendlessKaren wrote: »

I cancelled mine a few days ago. Paying £52 a month, had sky for 5 years. I was offered £4 a month discount so said no thanks.
Now in a slight panic as to what to use as I looked into talk talk and freeview but this would mean buying an outside aerial ...

Why not use Freesat? You already have a dish.