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

Indiana_joe

visidigi wrote: »

Id wait to see what the contract says...

For further clarification, I secured this deal through lengthy negotiations with retentions. This deal was agreed three weeks ago whereby I would pay for Bb 30mb with a superhub, M TV (HD activated. You must ask for this as they will leave it switched off), and phone line rental for £19.49 (ALL IN). This was to be acheived with rolling "Telco goodwill" adjustment payments made on my account every month. Since this agreement, the first payment has been made by direct debit for the princely sum of £19.49!!!!. Confirmed with retentions this was my monthly payment for the length of the new 12 month contract, ALL IN, and the answer was, I am happy to say,,,,YES!!!! :T

visidigi

Indiana_joe wrote: »

For further clarification, I secured this deal through lengthy negotiations with retentions. This deal was agreed three weeks ago whereby I would pay for Bb 30mb with a superhub, M TV (HD activated. You must ask for this as they will leave it switched off), and phone line rental for £19.49 (ALL IN). This was to be acheived with rolling "Telco goodwill" adjustment payments made on my account every month. Since this agreement, the first payment has been made by direct debit for the princely sum of £19.49!!!!. Confirmed with retentions this was my monthly payment for the length of the new 12 month contract, ALL IN, and the answer was, I am happy to say,,,,YES!!!! :T

Dont trust a THING retentions say. Have they sent you a contract and have you checked it?

They frequently say its a 12 month contract and the detail phone contract is 18 months.

The last three renewals I've had have all had multiple wrong contracts.

DragonQ

Interestingly my online account details don't even specify that I have the HD Pack...I wonder if they'll charge me for it?

caz1978_2

Gratis wrote: »

Not true. The reality of the matter is that none of us – you, I, your brother-in-law (?) or anyone else – is entitled to any discount whatsoever from Sky (unless, perhaps, it is by way of compensation for Sky having screwed something up in the past).

To be given a discount by Sky is a favour, not a right.

To be “insulted” (sic) at not being offered one of more than 25% is totally unreasonable. You aren’t entitled to any discount at all. And neither am I.

(Do you even know for certain that your brother-in-law actually gets the discounts he tells you he has? But let’s not pursue that one.)

Certainly, you are totally incorrect to claim that I “obviously feel some sense of entitlement to a discount or (I) wouldn't keep threatening to leave and refuse to pay full price.”

When a discount period I have been enjoying ends (and sometimes before it actually does) I give 31 days’ notice to cancel.

When asked why I am leaving I explain, truthfully and very politely, that we don’t watch Sky much. At a price discounted by 50% it is a justifiable household expense but at full price it is totally uneconomic for our own particular usage (and that's the key point). Would you pay £381 a year to watch live 10 motor races that will be showing four hours later on the BBC in HD anyway? Especially when five of them will be broadcast live by Sky in the middle of the night?

We let the cancellations go through. Sooner or later, Sky then invites us to “Return to Sky” at a discounted price and if the figure offered is reasonable for the small amount of Sky we’ll actually want to watch, we accept.

The difference between you and us is that we are grateful for the discounts we receive (and say so, to Sky) whereas you seem to regard getting a hefty discount on the rates that Sky charges others as some sort of personal right to which you are entitled.

Given your attitude, I’m not surprised that Sky “didn’t seem bothered that (you were) leaving.”

Anyway, if “ML” means maternity leave (?) I congratulate you on your new arrival and hope you will enjoy the time off. In all probability you will, during its currency, receive from Sky the offer of a discount that you regard to be commensurate to your totally unjustified perception of personal entitlement.

And yes, I’d be fascinated to read how you worded your email of complaint to Sky. Why not post it on here instead of PMing it to me? I’m sure it would be most illuminating to everybody and I would not wish to deprive others the joy of reading your gem.


PS. You might like to ponder on the ambiguity of your chosen phrase “I am most certainly entitled to be insulted”.

You've picked away at my comments and twisted them to put words in my mouth. I quite clearly said I feel insulted because they LIED to me about the offers that others were getting. I do not feel 'entitled'- this is a word that YOU keep using NOT me. How the hell so you know that I wouldn't have been grateful for 50% off? I would have been really grateful. Now I've had to cancel as we can't afford so yes I would have thanked them a thousand times over if they had offered. So, am I ungrateful because I have cancelled and not accepted the lower discount? You've just said that you cancel all the time? Also, unlike yourself, I have actually paid full price on many occasions and also very recently, so no, I do NOT feel a sense of entitlement to the discounts. I'm just very angry that I know my BIL can afford to pay the full whack 3 times over yet always seems to get a discount, I'm sick of subsidising him. I'm really angry that you are making all these sweeping statements about me, about my personality and my attitude when you have never even met me.

You talk about what is reasonable for you to pay and what is not reasonable. What is the difference between your justification for a discount and mine?

I would love to know what you mean by "you and us", as if you assume that everyone is in total agreement with you, this actually made me feel like I was being bullied. If you think I'm going to put my email on here now for you to take the pxss out of and pick to pieces, think again. I'm sure that I've made lots of errors in this comment that you just can't wait to point out to everyone. Congratulations, you're clever, I'm thick. If this makes you feel better then good for you.

By the way, I'm writing a comment on a forum, there's no need to pick my comments apart and criticise my English. Troll.

Gratis

caz1978 wrote: »

I would love to know what you mean by "you and us", as if you assume that everyone is in total agreement with you, this actually made me feel like I was being bullied.

Please forgive me if my use of the word “us” was open to misinterpretation. That was my fault. Indeed, I remember pausing at that precise point and musing upon which word to use. Personally, I live in France. My family lives in England. I visit them. Actually, I’m house-sitting the family home at the moment while my sister and her own brood are holidaying and generally running riot in my home.

My sister is not techie and when I am in England I sort out her tech for her, including the family’s Sky contract. This gives rise to me using the words “we”, “us” and “our” in regard to those things, here. I concede that this can cause confusion when I also use the words “I”, “me” and “my” but drawing the distinction between the two every time is laborious, tedious and interruptive of whatever points I am trying to make. This looseness in precise phraseology is at times a form of shorthand. It has never caused any problem on MSE before.

There was most certainly no element nor intention of bullying. By “us” in what I wrote I meant purely my own family; no group wider than that. I certainly didn’t regard whatever I wrote as being on behalf of, or identifying with, anyone else on this forum. Not least because I have no idea what most of them think and I am thus unqualified to assert anything on their behalf. I do sometimes write on behalf of my family but mostly I just express my own views. I let others write for themselves.

So I hope I’ve cleared that up.


The rest of what you have written is perpetually self-contradictory:

caz1978 wrote: »

I ring up and get insulted with 25% off so cancelled.

caz1978 wrote: »

I felt insulted, not because I had been turned down, but because my BIL gets great deal after great deal. So more based on what he got than what I didn't get.

caz1978 wrote: »

You've picked away at my comments and twisted them to put words in my mouth. I quite clearly said I feel insulted because they LIED to me about the offers that others were getting.

and

caz1978 wrote: »

I am as entitled to a discount as you or my BIL.

caz1978 wrote: »

I do not feel 'entitled'- this is a word that YOU keep using NOT me.

caz1978 wrote: »

so no, I do NOT feel a sense of entitlement to the discounts.

I respectfully suggest that out of all you have written the real truth of the matter actually lies here:

caz1978 wrote: »

I'm in a position where I've had to cancel as on unpaid ML till January next year, so I really won't be caving in at day 31!

caz1978 wrote: »

I'm just very angry that I know my BIL can afford to pay the full whack 3 times over yet always seems to get a discount, I'm sick of subsidising him.

I see no point in pursuing this matter any further; there’s no consistency in what you write. We have both now expressed our points of view – that’s what a forum is for – so let’s just leave it at that.

I do hope (genuinely) that you enjoy your maternity leave (?) and that during it you’ll get offered a discount that will enable you to re-subscribe to Sky. A few weeks without Sky in the meantime may not be such a bad thing anyway: you might find that you can live without Sky quite happily (we did) – and that would save you a lot of money.

Good luck.

caz1978_2

Gratis wrote: »

Please forgive me if my use of the word “us” was open to misinterpretation. That was my fault. Indeed, I remember pausing at that precise point and musing upon which word to use. Personally, I live in France. My family lives in England. I visit them. Actually, I’m house-sitting the family home at the moment while my sister and her own brood are holidaying and generally running riot in my home.

My sister is not techie and when I am in England I sort out her tech for her, including the family’s Sky contract. This gives rise to me using the words “we”, “us” and “our” in regard to those things, here. I concede that this can cause confusion when I also use the words “I”, “me” and “my” but drawing the distinction between the two every time is laborious, tedious and interruptive of whatever points I am trying to make. This looseness in precise phraseology is at times a form of shorthand. It has never caused any problem on MSE before.

There was most certainly no element nor intention of bullying. By “us” in what I wrote I meant purely my own family; no group wider than that. I certainly didn’t regard whatever I wrote as being on behalf of, or identifying with, anyone else on this forum. Not least because I have no idea what most of them think and I am thus unqualified to assert anything on their behalf. I do sometimes write on behalf of my family but mostly I just express my own views. I let others write for themselves.

So I hope I’ve cleared that up.


The rest of what you have written is perpetually self-contradictory:







and








I respectfully suggest that out of all you have written the real truth of the matter actually lies here:




I see no point in pursuing this matter any further; there’s no consistency in what you write. We have both now expressed our points of view – that’s what a forum is for – so let’s just leave it at that.

I do hope (genuinely) that you enjoy your maternity leave (?) and that during it you’ll get offered a discount that will enable you to re-subscribe to Sky. A few weeks without Sky in the meantime may not be such a bad thing anyway: you might find that you can live without Sky quite happily (we did) – and that would save you a lot of money.

Good luck.

its going to seem inconsistent if you pick and chose from different comments. I meant 'entitled' was not a word that originally sprang to mind until your first reply. I think that because I took their lack of an offer so personally, and my first post was vague, I came across as ungrateful. I know that they give the discounts as a favour, but it didn't seem fair that we can't afford it at the moment and here is a rich relative who is paying less. When they rub your nose in it as well makes it worse lol! When they called my bluff and cut me off it made me feel a bit undervalued as a customer, but in hindsight its probably as they say on here- they were playing hardball. Being in a position where I can't cave in might possibly be to my advantage.

Thank you for trying to smooth things over, I didn't disagree with what you were saying about the discounts. I was annoyed that you'd misinterpreted my posts and made comments about my English, hence my venting/ranting at you which is probably also why the posts seemed inconsistent.

I am on maternity leave, I've taken a full year this time, hence no pay, it's a hard decision but I'm not ready to go back yet, better to look after my kids than have sky. Thanks for the good will, if I get a good offer I will be sure to thank them.

Indiana_joe

visidigi wrote: »

Dont trust a THING retentions say. Have they sent you a contract and have you checked it?

They frequently say its a 12 month contract and the detail phone contract is 18 months.

The last three renewals I've had have all had multiple wrong contracts.

I have it in writing in the form of a 12 MONTH contract, with an email confirmation of the deal. I have been through this process with VM several times over the last three years, they have alway kept to the agreements made. The big thing is to be nice to them on the phone, call them by their first name and tell them that "you need their help". and Hey Presto! you come out with a pretty awesome deal!!!!!:D
Sorry if you feel you have been ripped off with your deal.....

Gratis

caz1978 wrote: »

its going to seem inconsistent if you pick and chose from different comments. I meant 'entitled' was not a word that originally sprang to mind until your first reply. I think that because I took their lack of an offer so personally, and my first post was vague, I came across as ungrateful. I know that they give the discounts as a favour, but it didn't seem fair that we can't afford it at the moment and here is a rich relative who is paying less. When they rub your nose in it as well makes it worse lol! When they called my bluff and cut me off it made me feel a bit undervalued as a customer, but in hindsight its probably as they say on here- they were playing hardball. Being in a position where I can't cave in might possibly be to my advantage.

Thank you for trying to smooth things over, I didn't disagree with what you were saying about the discounts. I was annoyed that you'd misinterpreted my posts and made comments about my English, hence my venting/ranting at you which is probably also why the posts seemed inconsistent.

I am on maternity leave, I've taken a full year this time, hence no pay, it's a hard decision but I'm not ready to go back yet, better to look after my kids than have sky. Thanks for the good will, if I get a good offer I will be sure to thank them.

That is one of the most noble and gracious postings I have ever read on any forum. I congratulate you unreservedly for it. :A

I think we both recognise that neither a shortage of funds nor scant usage of Sky justify, in their different ways, any entitlement to a discount from a hard-nosed company selling a commercial product at fixed tariffs (however extortionate).

What we all have to do is decide whether or not our own individual usage of Sky’s product will justify us (personally) paying what Sky charges for it. A discount alters that equation. If we are offered one, what was uneconomic without it may become economic with it. And when it ends we have to reassess the equation.

I think we all need to be careful about viewing discounts from Sky as a favour (even though I wrote loosely that it was). Sky does nothing out of charity: everything Sky does is in pursuit of profit, be it short-term profit or long term profit.

In regard to giving discounts, Sky has an obligation to its shareholders to maximise its profits and not give away discounts unless these are necessary to Sky’s long-term interest. What Sky has to do is assess, over the telephone, whether a customer will, unless they receive a discount, actually leave Sky (resulting in Sky then no longer deriving any income at all from them) or whether, instead, that person is simply a bluffer who would continue with Sky at the full tariff without a discount but is simply trying to blag one.

If Sky is uncertain which is the case with any (and every) subscriber it will put them to the test and (ultimately) cut them off to see what happens.

This then alters the equation for Sky. It is better for Sky to receive some money from a household than no money at all. So, Sky then waits to see if the shock of being cut off induces the former subscriber to re-subscribe at the full tariff (which would be a result for Sky) or whether Sky will continue to receive no money at all from the former subscriber unless the former subscriber can be tempted back with a discount.

Bear in mind that Sky needs to keep its subscriber base at a certain level and, with 10 million of them, thousands will be lost every week as a result (to put it bluntly) of subscribers dying, subscribers having to be put in care-homes, subscribers becoming blind, subscribers losing their incomes, subscribers being bankrupted and subscribers simply emigrating to where the sun shines. They all need to be replaced.

In this situation, it is cheaper for Sky to attract back a former subscriber with existing kit (which Sky paid for in the first place) than to seek out new subscribers and incur the expense of kitting them out.

Remember, too, that Sky’s business model is different to those of companies in other industries. It bears the large upfront cost of providing the encrypted signal but – as with people tuning into a radio programme - its costs do not then rise or fall with any significance whether a hundred people or 10 million people receive it. It does not have to boost the signal to accommodate them. So, effectively, it costs Sky nothing to let you watch its programmes. That’s an over-simplification but I’m sure you grasp the principle.

For all these reasons it is likely that, having turned down a discount of 25% and left and stuck it out, you will now be offered, sooner or later, a discount of 50% to return and resume paying money to Sky.

The secret of negotiating with Sky (or anyone else) is to look at the situation from Sky’s point of view and work out what Sky wants and what Sky is actually trying to do to achieve it – then apply that to your advantage.

As you have conceded, you lost track of this because you were fired up by your brother-in-law’s (supposed) huge discounts and you negotiated with your emotions rather than by applying cold-hearted logic to your strategy. We all do that, occasionally; we are human.

There is much wisdom, as well as dignity, in what you have now posted.

One remaining thought does nag at me, though. Can you be sure that your rich brother-in-law really is getting the discount that he claims to be receiving and is not just being vain, mischievous or malicious with a porkie to wind you up, make himself look clever or deliberately humiliate you...? Only you know what sort of a person he is.

From what you’ve written now, you sound like a very nice person when you’re not fired up with emotion and I apologise again if anything I wrote was open to misinterpretation by you and upset you unintentionally. My user name is Gratis, not Gratuitous! I truly wish you and you child(ren) all the best. (And a big discount soon. )

DragonQ

DragonQ wrote: »

Interestingly my online account details don't even specify that I have the HD Pack...I wonder if they'll charge me for it?

Just checked my package details when trying to add 3D and they've definitely not included the HD Pack (although the channels work). They initially offered me £29.63pm, then refused to honour that and offered £32.25pm, but due to their mistake it looks like I'll be paying £27pm. I can but laugh.

i_like_shoes

Right guys i need your help here ..............

i know nothing about sky and the packages or discounts they offer, but i do know when a deal can be had or 'negotiated'. My bf has never had any discount from sky, nor would he know where to start, so i thought i could help out here a little.

Current package :-
sky entertainment
sky sports
sky+ box
broadband unlimited
sky talk and line rental

70 p/mth

Is he paying over the odds ?
He would like HD so a new box would be needed... what would you suggest????