Sky offered us 4 months free but still charged us.

Dear_Mr_Echo

Hi

A few months ago we decided to drop Sky completely. We were only on one of the cheaper packages but £21 a month is £21 a month and we were barely using it to make it worthwhile. So we rang them to give our 30 days notice and they didn't put up a struggle - just gave us our date when it would finish and told us our last payment was going to be £6ish.

Then, a few days before it was going to turn off, surprise surprise, we had a call from them offering us our current package half price for 6 months or a year (I forget which) and initially we said no thanks. In pressing us about why we told the guy that we were using Netflix a lot at which point he offered us the full package with Movies and Sport free for 4 months... no contract or tie-in and he even gave us the date to cancel if we didn't want to pay anything. So we caved and said OK.

Anyway we checked or bank account yesterday and in October they took £56 then just yesterday they took another £39! I checked on line and it said we shouldn't be paying anything then I called them and the guy I spoke to said he could see the offer on our account but it hadn't kicked in and money had continued to come out.

Now tonight the same chap calls us back and tells us he's sorted it out and he's credited the money taken to our sky account. He seemed to have a hard time understanding that I didn't think he'd sorted it out at all because although our account has credit on it and yes we would be getting 4 months free from now, Sky had taken nearly £100 that we had not agreed to.

Of course while it's easy for Sky to take the money without agreement, refunding it is a different matter. Eventually the guy cottoned on to what our beef was and told us that if we cancel on the same date we were going to that the credit in our account would be paid back to us. But it's not right that they took the money in the first place - why should we have to wait to get it back?

Has anyone else had a similar situation and how did you resolve it?
The Sky forums seem to have quite a few people complaining of similar things... if I was inclined towards conspiracy theories I'd say it was a deliberate deception. Very lame state of affairs.