Sky Advice

FiFithepoodle

Hi. Just looking for some advice.

Im trying to sort out my spending before my new baby comes along.

I have Sky Tv at the moment. I pay £44 currently.

This includes, Sky talk & Broadband.

I don't have the movie channels or sports but i do have the Kids tv & Music channels for my daughter.

Is anyone else receiving the same but paying less? I find £44 expensive but i guess i do get the line & broadband.

I've been with them for over 2 years for the Tv so out of contract but only 3 months for the line and broadband.

x

Moneymaker

Obviously you can't drop the line or broadband but you could drop to the minimum subscription without breaking your contract. (Stuff what your daughter wants. It's a matter of what you can afford. When I was a kid we had NO television.) Dump the Music channels is my advice.

almillar

Plenty of music videos available online, and you get to choose them, and with the money you save cancelling, you can afford to buy a few DVDs to make up for the loss of kids channels.

penrhyn

You are paying for the entertainment plus package in addition to your basic TV sub. You can save £5/ month by removing this. However the paid for kids channels will go. Mind you you'll still have CBBC and CBeebies.
If you cancel the TV all together your broadband will lose the £2.50/ month discount.

loracan1

There are at least 5 music channels and 3 to 4 dedicated children's channels that are free-to-air on satellite.

PhoenixDF

It's worth giving sky a call and just ask what offers they could apply to your account. I've got 25% off my sky tv for 12 months, free unlimited broadband for 12 months and free sky talk line rental for 12 months.

The broadband and sky talk were a result of a massive complaint, but the tv offer took a 3 minute phone call. Oh and I'm out of contract on all of it so could cancel it tomorrow if I wanted, which I am considering doing and using the spare £20 per month to buy a cheap subscription to lovefilm and buy a hd freeview box.

ekoforshow

I have had a saga with Sky trying to reduce my payments to an affordable level. The long and short of it is I called them up in November to cancel the TV package, I was offered a deal which took my tv package to £2 a month in order to keep me as a customer. I called back to accept and was told the offer was no longer available. I then cancelled the TV (again) and was called back 3 days before the TV expired offering another deal that was supposed to reduce my payments to £30 a month (down from £54). I accepted this, however, the next bill came in at £47 to take into account the notice period, but I discovered they took £51 by direct debit.

I called them again to query this, but they could not give me a reason why there was a discrepancy in the bill and moneys taken without trying to bamboozle me with figures. This remained the case until I emailed [EMAIL="stephenvanrooyen@skycustomersupport.com"]stephenvanrooyen@skycustomersupport.com[/EMAIL] whom emailed me a breakdown of the bamboozling information.

I have since cancelled my Sky Tv and remain with my phone and broadband.

I guess the moral of the story is Sky will not usually help you to reduce your bill, they may offer you "deals" which may end up costing you more as they did in my case. The best bet is to cancel the TV alltogether and get yourself a freeview or freesat TV as I have. This will then cost in the region of £30 a month for phone and broadband saving you £14 a month

4 channels for children is enough for them (Cebebies, CBBC, CiTV and the channel 4 kids programs on the weekend). You can add to this with DVDs or the internet. Incidentally lovefilm and netflix are doing upto 10 discs for £4.99 a month no late fees, or you can borrow kids DVDs and videos from the libarary for £1 a time

neil201

As ekoforshow clearly points out in their experience above, Sky CS are good at bamboozling you with figures to make you think what sounds a good deal may not actually be that good at all!

As for childrens channels on Satellite, and as others mention, there's a whole host of them all free to air. Obviously stuff like Disney etc is all behind a paywall but as times are hard and every penny counts, is it really worth £20/£25 per Month just for these few pay channels when there's loads free to air.

Sky have a great way of presenting channels on their Guide of which they all look part of a 'package' when in fact some are free to air. My four yr old Nephew loves Cbeebies, Kix, TinyPop and CITV too, all free to air and available on Freesat. Your existing Sky STB will work for the FTA channels but if you still want to maintain the '+' pause/play/record features you'll need a Freesat PVR (www.freesat.co.uk).

Line rental and broadband-wise it may be worth looking at Plusnet who may save you a few quid per Month but seeing your three Months in you'll have another 9mths to go. For example:

Line rental (paid annually via their line rental saver option): £9.99
Broadband (assuming your in a tier 1 area): £3.49/mth (£6.49 after 12mths).
www.plus.net

There's a potential saving there of a good few quid a month, all depends on your thoughts about the kids TV package. For me, Sky isn't value for money for what you get when you look at the wider picture.