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

smipx013

Hi,

I have been with Sky for years and phone them up at every discount "end" period to haggle a new deal.
I purchased my own HD box off ebay some time ago to get the FTA HD channels (BBC, ITV, C4, C5). The box cost £120 and I have had so far 3 years use out of it. Don't want all of the other channels so this works well for me and assuming the box lasts another couple of years I will have had all the recordable HD I want for £25 per year.......but this is off topic so back to the jist.....

As for the actual package cost, up until today I had:

BB Unlimited (£7.50)
3 pack TV (£21.50)
FTA HD Channels
Talk + Line rental (£11.25)
Talk Unlimited (£5.00)
Total:£45.25
I was offered:£36.50 for 12 months which just runs out in 30 days.

Today I switched to a new 6 months deal with no contractual tie in. Same as above package wise which (with the line rental increase) would cost £46.25 all for £28.90 per month.

I will simply phone back in exactly 6 months and renegotiate a new deal. Works every time. Best to be in a Virgin cable area though as it gives you full leverage. If I were not I would not get the deal I am sure.

The deal does vary from period to period and you do need to be a good talker but it is worth it. Over 18 months I will have saved £210 over list price - this equates to and average annual saving of £140 or approximately 25% off list so long as you take BB + Phone + Sky TV. I chose to have unlimited calls (which I can cancel at any time with no implications) and if you take this out of the equation (to be properly representative) then the annual saving is even better at approximately 28% off list.

The one piece of advice I should give though is that the Sky folks are (generally quite friendly and nice) human beings just like you and I. If you are polite and chatty to them you will get the best from them - just like any other person. If you don't like the deal you are offered then just call them the next day and try again.

Flyboy152

stitchmad wrote: »

We stopped having sky a year ago when a neighbours tree stopped our signal and we didn't have any help from Sky.

As much as I would love to be able say that Sky should be to blame for something like this, it is nothing to do with them. It is between you and your neighbour.

This all changed today when hubby rang up to see what they could do, or arrange removal of the dish.

We have been rehashing our finances so were ready to change broadband and home phone too.

He has managed to get, half price TV for a year,free HD+ box and free installation/to move dish, to fix our foliage issues.Free HD service and broadband for first 3 months,plus £100 cashback into sky account which effectively pays for the service for the first 3 months.
We were paying orange £33 month just for bad broadband,line rental and evening and weekend calls. Now we will pay sky £30 for first 3 months(free when you count in £100 credit)then £47.75 for 9 months, but for this we have all we had from Orange,proper unlimited broadband, plus the TV we want and Sky Movies 1+2.
Well worth an hour on the free phone line.:j
Jane

Why would they remove your property from your house?

warmy

called sky yesterday and managed 2 get half price on the tv sub 4 6months .well worth the phone call.

second_chance

Hi sorry if this is a repeated question or in the wrong place!
Im planning on phoning sky and threatning to leave in the hope that they will reduce my package cost (currently £21.50 pm which i know is not a lot but in the past they have reduced it to £7 pm for 6 months when I have threatened to quit).
I was just wondering how many times you can do this before they call your bluff? I think Ive done this 3-4 times over the last few years and have been paying the full price since Jan.
Thanks in advance!

afc80

phoned last night to cancel sky sports. Got a crap offer so went ahead and cancelled.

phoned back today to cancel everything as i said i only watch the sports. Girl said to me, "you have just come off 6 months discount". I said, yes i know, but im really skint :D

Got a £100 credit to my account and a £20 per month reduction till December 2011. Only had to haggle for 20 seconds.

Methinks you have to threaten to cancel the whole package to get the best deal

carpy

afc80 wrote: »

phoned last night to cancel sky sports. Got a crap offer so went ahead and cancelled.

phoned back today to cancel everything as i said i only watch the sports. Girl said to me, "you have just come off 6 months discount". I said, yes i know, but im really skint :D

Got a £100 credit to my account and a £20 per month reduction till December 2011. Only had to haggle for 20 seconds.

Methinks you have to threaten to cancel the whole package to get the best deal

awesome deal!!!:j

hope i get something similar to lure me back before my notice period is up in about 10 days...

r2d2c3p0

It was actually fun to ring up to cancel Sky.. took 10 minutes and saved £138. Not a bad effort.

What's more, it's for a 6 month period and I need to negotiate a renewal of the deal or switch in the lead up to Christmas (when there will be deals) so it's perfect....

Don't hestitate, do it. The best 10 minutes I've spent this week.

bullfrog_2

I have recently had VM offer to provide me with L Broadband, M TV, XL Phone for £13 per month. There is another thread in this forum regarding haggling down costs with Virgin Media, in which I have posted details. Just search the forum for "Virgin Media: Haggle down your costs." and go to the last few pages. The forum won't let me post a direct link to it.

Regards,

Bullfrog.

Widgerwill

Hi, sorry I'm sure that this has been answered previously but some help would be appreciated.
I currently pay £51.24 for:
XL TV (V+)
Med BB
Talk Unlimited
I have a friend who has pretty much the same as this, though has an extra V+ box in another room - he pays slightly less! I have just spoken with Virgin asking for a better deal and mentioned my friend, they told me that he must be lying!! (Apparently I'm on their best deal). This does make me want to leave but to be honest all I want is to get the best deal available. Having read through some of what has been said on here I realise what an utter load of tosh that is so I am wondering what to do next. I am looking at other providers but am finding it really hard to compare prices/services. Basically I want phone, BB and tv with a recording box. I have XL tv at the moment but rarely watch any of the extra channels so could easily go without. We can't get freeview in our area which is frustrating as would simplify options. So as far as I can tell I only have a choice of Sky or Virgin.
Thanks in advance
Widgerwill

tifo

stitchmad wrote: »

He has managed to get, half price TV for a year,free HD+ box and free installation/to move dish, Free HD service and broadband for first 3 months,plus £100 cashback into sky account which effectively pays for the service for the first 3 months.

That's a very good deal!

I left Sky last year and got Sky+HD in the partner's name until a few months ago. We got the free iPod Touch 8gb and £25 M&S vouchers at that time.

We got some mail from Sky offering 12 months half price and recently also a £100 credit if we took Sports OR Movies.

I signed up again so got 12 months at half price and £100 credit (4 packages plus sports).

During the call to me, they also offered a free Sky+HD box (as I was showing as having an SD box from many years ago, which is true, and I said it's old and not working) but since I already had twin inputs from last year's Sky+HD box, the guy went away to cancel the engineer visit. I waited for around 45 mins then the call got cut.

I rang back and was pleased to see the 12 months half price + £100 credit was on the account BUT no free Sky+HD box. I argued that this had been offered but this time they would not offer this and wanted £199 for it or £249 for a 1TB box. They wanted £10 for the HD which i didn't take.

In the end I agreed to 'source' my own Sky+HD (the one I had from last year) and ended up with just the 12 months half price + £100 credit but no HD. Not bad, but I ended up losing a Sky+HD box and I could have used the one we had in another room. I may write in to them regarding this.