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

sparky200

I am with Virgin Media at the moment paying £37 pm for basic tv, 10mb broadband and phone line. I have sky and am on the 50% deal for 6 months with them. I have phoned VL but other than taking tv off which reduces by £5 pm and putting me on a 12 month contract nothing else offered. Has anyone managed to get a better deal.

26/3 Update had a phone call from virgin asking if I was happy with deal for £31. I informed them I wasn't and would be cancelling which I would have gone ahead if they hadn't of offered the phone, tv and broadband for £18 a month for 18 month contract.

The_Chicken

Crikey.

I've been on the phone to Sky today using the 0844 2414141 number advised on here.

I've been a Sky customer since 2005 with the full TV package, and upgraded to Sky HD when it launched back in 2006. Never had any discounts or upgrades, nothing at all.

Currently paying £62.25 per month, done some budgeting and it's just too much. Catch is, we do watch a selection from every Sky "bundle", so cutting out packages seems fairly half-hearted for the small savings you make.

Spoke to sky, about 30 mins on the phone. The best they offered was 25% off my TV package (excluding the £10.25 for HD) for six months and a one off £50 credit.

Did some quick maths in my head and even I could see that's short of the 50% many on here report, reducing my total bill for six months from £62.25 to £40.92 (spreading the £50 over six months). I averaged that out at about 34% off the total monthly cost for six months. Not bad, but not what I had hoped for.

Stuck to my guns and cancelled, now in 31 day notice period. Might even do me good to go cold turkey!

Just thought I'd add my voice as after reading so many "called, got 50%, it was easy" messages on here I wasn't really expecting to haggle so much (long delays while conversations with managers were going ahead etc) for less discount than some people seem to be offered so readily.

Flyboy152

sparky200 wrote: »

I am with Virgin Media at the moment paying £37 pm for basic tv, 10mb broadband and phone line. I have sky and am on the 50% deal for 6 months with them. I have phoned VL but other than taking tv off which reduces by £5 pm and putting me on a 12 month contract nothing else offered. Has anyone managed to get a better deal.

Why have you got both?

sparky200

The reason I am with Virgin and Sky is historical. BT/Sky exchange is quite a distance away therefore the speed isnt brilliant compared to Virgin at 10mb. Also when you have had a virgin media email address for so long it can be time consuming to update all your contacts albeit I register all new as gmail.

YorkDude

Just spent 25 mins on hold before a nice man reduced my sky package by 50% for 6 months. I should have done this months ago....still better late than never..Thank you

The_Chicken

It seems crazy they don't appear to have a straight policy for this. IF they had offered me 50% on Saturday I would have stayed as I could afford that (plus six months full price) quite nicely. Instead they offer 25% and a cash back deal and say that's the best they can do.

Andyboy

Virgin - I have a laptop and just wanted a wireless router and possibly upgrade from 10MB to 30 MB if the price was right.

Warning - to make any changes they wanted to take away loyalty bonus and charge extra £13.50 mth for upgrade plus £30 one off activation fee. I said i would just keep the 10mb but they then wanted £60 for the router and would lose loyalty. I said I will look elsewhere for a better deal and was put through to customer services.

Result was that they offered me a router free of charge with no increase in monthly bill or loss of loyalty but I do have to pay the £4.99 p&p.

I am happy with that and await my router as I don't want the hassle of changing and just want to be able to try and get on both the computers that my 4 and half year old is now hogging....he could soon be on Ebay soon (For Sale!......) if only i could get onto the computer....

ponkar

I'm with sky, and gave them a call within the last 14 days. They cut the price of my package by 50% for 6 months, gave me a free HD+ box also at half price line rental of £5 per month for 12 months, and arranged for an engineer to visit my house and install the box free of charge. Now that's what I call a result. Thanks MSE!

Alrac

Hi

I rang Sky today to say I could get my Broadband and Line Rental cheaper with Talk Talk and they straight away offered me 50% discount on my TV package, a saving of £24.00 per month for 6 months, WOW what a result!:j

pigeonpie

Not sure whether I should ring and cancel and try to get the 50% off an upgrade to HD - I'm like The Chicken in that I never get offered the Deal In Town that others do. Maybe don't sound menacing enough, or get unlucky with who's on the end of the line!

However 2 questions please: on the MSE ad offer of HD with the £100 M&S voucher. This is interesting for us as we do shop at M&S food which is the nearest shop to us, but we generally spend about £10-15 a time as don't do our main shopping there. Do M&S give vouchers in change; would they do this each time until you'd used up the £100, or do you have to spend the £100 or the bulk of it in one go?
(not sure if this is the right thread to ask about M&S voucher policy!)

Other q: what size hdd does the standard HD box have, that presumably comes with this offer? thanks