Our new Sky Haggling guide - please share your feedback

pen1

Viridia wrote: »

.... The £10 admin fee is a standard feature with any offer, and there's no sign of it going away.

I've been getting "Come back to Sky" letters that state
"£10 one-off fee may apply"; and in the smallprint
"one-off £10 fee payable if taking this offer via phone
or Live Chat service. Ordering online will not incur this fee".

When following the provided link- the latest being sky.com/watch10 - there's no online ordering facility; and this has been the case for many months.

Granted, that I could pursue, if I were convinced that I wanted to rejoin; but the unavailability of the cost-free online ordering offered in the mailshots, is another
reason not to bother.

50000tears

Reading the last few posts has left me surprised at the offers many seem able to get but dismayed at my lack of offers. I phoned up and went through the cancellation process last month and my 31 day cancellation period expires in 3 days.

Whilst on the phone I didn’t indicate that I was shutting the door on any deal but the best Sky could offer was £43 with a much reduced package. That price wouldn’t include Cinema, HD or Boxsets, I went through with the cancellation. I fully expected to get hit with more offers in the 31 days and completed an online questionnaire sent about half way through where I made it clear that I would have stayed with the right offer. The only thing I had in the way of a better offer is a generic postal pamphlet offering Sports and Entertainment package for £40. Very poor compared to what others on here are getting.

I know that Sky don’t owe me anything as such, but did expect that they would make more effort to retain me after 19 years on the full package with most of it paying full whack. At the moment it looks I will be running with just freeview on Tuesday.

pawlala

Viridia wrote: »

These are the prices we are limited to when upgrading to SkyQ, there's not really any room for manoeuvre there. The £10 admin fee is a standard feature with any offer, and there's no sign of it going away.

I've requested a credit to be applied to my account to cover the admin fee (bit daft to have to go this far) which has been agreed by Sky, but I've made the point to them on several occasions now that surely its not worth pursuing the £10 fee if it means losing a long term customer. Maybe they will learn that lesson in time.

Toki

Hang in there 50000tears . The best offers only appear once you've cancelled nowadays.

Sky will possibly factor in the number of years you've been a customer and don't believe you will really cancel. They might be calling your bluff.

If you are willing to cancel, you will get a better offer I'm sure. Only today, after being cut off for over a month have I finally got an offer I'm willing to accept.

50000tears

Thanks Toki. Read further back in the thread and understand that Sky are unlikely to offer me a good deal until a bit after I have cancelled too given my “willingness” to pay over the odds for so long. Quite OK with being freeview for a while if need be.

pjapk

Looks like I might be in the same boat having been with them for almost 18yrs & never really haggled much before.

I have the following original Sky Q package:

Sky q bundle £44
Cinema £18
Silver £12
Sky F1 Free
£74 total

Called this morning to get it reduced or cancel & the "offers" were a joke, just standard prices from what I could see but one thing I hadn't realised is that they've changed the F1 pricing so it's £18 standalone (would never pay that in a million years!) or bundled with sports (I have no interest in any other sports).

I barely paid attention to the offers but he was talking about £20 for entertainment, £20 for Cinema, £12 for multiroom then adding sports (to get F1) & it was heading back to where I started!

So, I said to proceed with cancellation & see what offers start to come in. I pointed out that I'm with Virgin for BB/Phone as it is (just haggled them down too) "so would probably be easier to just do everything with them".

Will see what happens next...

Toki

pen1 wrote: »

I've been getting "Come back to Sky" letters that state
"£10 one-off fee may apply"; and in the smallprint
"one-off £10 fee payable if taking this offer via phone
or Live Chat service. Ordering online will not incur this fee".

When following the provided link- the latest being sky.com/watch10 - there's no online ordering facility; and this has been the case for many months.

Granted, that I could pursue, if I were convinced that I wanted to rejoin; but the unavailability of the cost-free online ordering offered in the mailshots, is another
reason not to bother.

Do you know what the offer is for sky.com/watch10? I've got one through the post for sky.com/offer10 which is the following.

£11 for entertainment
£2.50 for box sets
£2.50 for kids
£2.50 for HD
£15 for Sports
£9 for cinema

pen1

Toki wrote: »

Do you know what the offer is for sky.com/watch10? I've got one through the post for sky.com/offer10 which is the following.

£11 for entertainment
£2.50 for box sets
£2.50 for kids
£2.50 for HD
£15 for Sports
£9 for cinema

The package costs are identical to yours. 12 month minimum term
on Entertainment (Sky+ customer). The smallprint states
"Offers shown available to customers who left Sky within
the last 18 months". I will have left more than 12 months ago,
later this month (during the course of the current offer period).

superbigal36

What I found this year as an all or nothing SKY Q customer (I say this every year to stop the nonsense of dropping parts of the package to lower costs) is a change of policy.
I also let them clearly know that 50% of a big package is better than 100% of a low package (And a lot better than 100% of NO package).
Do not try and negotiate with the offered " I might stay if you can persuade me" team. Just go straight to cancel then open dialogue with that team. Often saves you 20 minutes going from 1 queue to another.
My negotiated new 18 month deal (I actually like the new 18 instead of 12) with all discounts lasting 18 months is below. When you scrutinise it the main discounts are now on the "optional/upgrade extras". It used to usually just be an overall percentage discount. The sports discount is a particular weird one !!
What it means is I have a "decent deal (In my opinion) " for £53 per month. It would £96 full price.
Still works out if you drop multiscreen (Never discounted) as more than 50% of discounts.

I think them doing it this way guarantees them more income over the contract period if I was to drop the "non contracted" extras.

Ps My price this year is actually £3.50 less than last year.

TV Total £53.00
Sky Entertainment £20.00 Sky Entertainment £25.00 In-Contract discount -£5.00
Sky Box Sets £1.00 Sky Box Sets £5.00 Sky Box Sets Subscription Discounted -£4.00
Sky Kids £1.00 Sky Kids £5.00 Sky Kids Subscription Discounted -£4.00
Sky Sports - Complete Pack £10.00 Sky Sports - Complete Pack £28.00
In-Contract discount -£8.00
Sky Sports Subscription Discounted -£10.00
Sky Cinema £6.00 Sky Cinema £10.00 Sky Cinema Subscription Discounted -£4.00
Sky Sports HD £2.00 Sky Sports HD £6.00 In-Contract discount -£4.00
Sky HD £1.00 Sky HD £5.00 Sky HD Subscription Discounted -£4.00
Sky Q Multiscreen Pack £12.00

Space_Captain

Currently on a 75% discount from 2 years ago. £9.87 a month for Box Sets + HD. This expires in November so I rang up to cancel. They offered the same package for £20 a month which is 50% reduction. I said no and will see what happens when it finishes.