Sky TV retention deals ( post your haggling successes )

CheekyMikey

Cancellation period ran out yesterday so after 20 years I’m now without Sky TV. My £80pm was getting me BB, Sky Sig, Sports, Ultimate, HD,Ultra HD and multiroom which had gone up to £115. Initial cancellation chat got that down to £104. They weren’t interested in negotiating sensibly, got one call from them to see if we could agree on a deal but the best they’d do was £90. I told them I knew they could go much lower but no dice, even when I said I’d cancel BB too. So dug out my old Humax freesat box and already had a Firestick which we can access Apple and Prime. Netflix we’ll live without for a while. BT have some new packages out which look reasonable if Sky decide they don’t want me. I always thought I’d want Sky but I couldn’t care now, kids have left so sport and movies not a big requirement anymore. I’ll dip into Now to watch the Ashes if necessary.

jlemaitre

Cheeky Mike, same here.

I was paying £71(just ended my 15.3 year service with them).

April it went up to £81, then without warning it went up to £114 in May. So as you could tell I was fuming I budgeted foe the month to be almost £30 over drawn.
We checked the account and it said out of contract May 22. Which is now. We looked at June 22 payment which would have gone up agai to £120. I took this upon me to call sky up. They didn't seem interested in offering me a good deal. Then said sign a £90 contract with us and a £20 admin fee that's all we can offer.

I said no ideally I want to pay less than £71 and no admin fee(he said sky no longer waive admin fees. Too many people have asked over the years so sky don't do it anymore) I said OK well get my bill down I know you can. He said he can't.

Long story short I told him I'm cancelling sky they didn't even fight to keep me.

That was on Tuesday. They've not even attempted to retain me. We are now going for BT same package as sky, but more stuff offered. Even better £50 a month less than sky.

CheekyMikey

Jlemaitre, I’ve seen those new BT packages, they look good, although ideally I’d like Sky sports as BT sport has less I’m interested in. For me though I don’t really want to go to internet as main tv source, I’m semi rural and only get 28mb speed. Suppose I do have freesat box as fallback though should internet crash. Had BT bb before Sky and have to say Sky with Boost has been better in terms of less dropouts and Wi-Fi round the house, so not sure I want to mess with that. Decisions, decisions. Maybe Sky will come back with a serious offer, I’m in no hurry as away for much of the next month anyway.

JSmithy45AD

JSmithy45AD said:

Well that's me set to cancel and Sky don't seem to care in the least.

Signature, Netflix, HD and Disney+ at the moment for £31 a month going up to £41 in May with some discount still running on Netflix and HD for another couple of months I think so another £8 or so to add later on.

They wouldn't even give me an option except full price so I'm obviously one of the customers they want rid off.

They offered to add broadband which would open up other discounts but changing from £22+anytime calls(NowTV) to an 18 month deal averaging £33 with no calls for the same BB service didn't make much sense (to me at least).

I've just got to convince the wife that Virgin or even Freeview with the streaming Apps makes more sense.

15+ years BTW.

I now know why their system didn't have any offers for me...

I made the mistake of ordering Glass TV on it's launch but cancelled before I received it. This caused huge issues with my account at the time and 18 months later I still have a Glass TV pending order visible on my account. Because I'd already set the Q account to cancel their system saw the Glass TV order and couldn't generate anything for me. This wasn't visible to the agents.

I'm waiting for a call back after speaking to them today as they've passed it on to the team that can remove all trace of Glass TV off my account as they can't even stop the Q cancellation now

In-between me cancelling Q and todays call, FTTP has had a quite launch here and they're offering their Ultrafast (145Mbs avg.)  for £28 a month for 18 months which I can use to get better TV offers hopefully.

admiral9

Just got off the retention team with SKY after trying to cancel my SKY sub. 
Just thought it would be useful for others to know what I was offered and what I did - not that I think I pushed it too much as I was pretty much intent on cancelling so could have probably got a couple of quid more off.

Sky Signature - £19
HD - £7 + Netflix £7 (these seem to be tied together somewhat)
Multiscreen - £11
Total £44.

that was his initial offer, I'm sure a few quid more could have been had if I was close to staying but I carried on to cancel. It's at that point that mentioned SKY essentials for £15 (they only discuss it after you proceed to confirm cancellation) . I agreed to this for a few reasons:

-no contract.
-if you want to go back up to sky packages then as long as you get through to the retentions team (now called 'loyalty stay' team) then I will still get access to the better deals (bear in mind you have the SKY box already so they can give you the best deals). these deals are as good as new customer ones.
- carry on using SKY Q box which my wife likes and is used to . All Freeview channels still in HD
- my plan was to switch to Freesat anyway, this is essentially what it turns the SKY Q Box into - and a better version of it - 2TB, voice control etc etc. 
- instant change to Essentials - this is important because you don't have to wait 31 days paying your old rate. 
- Freesat box is about £220 (which I was going to do, which is about 14 months worth of essentials..which means..

...Basically I can see how it goes for a few months and decide later whether I miss the SKY channels or even swap to Freesat/Free view. Losing multiroom was the only downside but then my other TV has freeview built in and all the apps anyway.


Oh, and of course I have IPTV which makes all this so much easier to decide to ditch SKY  




 

ididgetwhereiamtoday

If you have virgin broadband then virgin stream box is free after a one off payment of 25 quid. You don’t get all the free view channels but you get the main ones. It is very good and you can connect it via Ethernet if you like for a more stable connection. 

kaputchnik

admiral9 said:

Just got off the retention team with SKY after trying to cancel my SKY sub. 
Just thought it would be useful for others to know what I was offered and what I did - not that I think I pushed it too much as I was pretty much intent on cancelling so could have probably got a couple of quid more off.

Sky Signature - £19
HD - £7 + Netflix £7 (these seem to be tied together somewhat)
Multiscreen - £11
Total £44.

that was his initial offer, I'm sure a few quid more could have been had if I was close to staying but I carried on to cancel. It's at that point that mentioned SKY essentials for £15 (they only discuss it after you proceed to confirm cancellation) . I agreed to this for a few reasons:

-no contract.
-if you want to go back up to sky packages then as long as you get through to the retentions team (now called 'loyalty stay' team) then I will still get access to the better deals (bear in mind you have the SKY box already so they can give you the best deals). these deals are as good as new customer ones.
- carry on using SKY Q box which my wife likes and is used to . All Freeview channels still in HD
- my plan was to switch to Freesat anyway, this is essentially what it turns the SKY Q Box into - and a better version of it - 2TB, voice control etc etc. 
- instant change to Essentials - this is important because you don't have to wait 31 days paying your old rate. 
- Freesat box is about £220 (which I was going to do, which is about 14 months worth of essentials..which means..

...Basically I can see how it goes for a few months and decide later whether I miss the SKY channels or even swap to Freesat/Free view. Losing multiroom was the only downside but then my other TV has freeview built in and all the apps anyway.


Oh, and of course I have IPTV which makes all this so much easier to decide to ditch SKY  




 

admiral9 said:

that was his initial offer, I'm sure a few quid more could have been had if I was close to staying but I carried on to cancel. It's at that point that mentioned SKY essentials for £15 (they only discuss it after you proceed to confirm cancellation) . I agreed to this for a few reasons:   

Get back on to Sky now, you have just been ripped off...We got the Sky essentials for only £5 a month. I phoned and asked for this price - no arguments.............

Peppa537

As I've previously mentioned on here I dropped Sky Sports and Cinema from my package last November and only pay £21 a month for Signature, Netflix, HD and UHD. I'm not tied in on a contract either and it's discounted until next April. I keep getting emailed offers for their other packages but have no intention of adding them again. Today they've phoned out of the blue, said they can't beat what I'm paying but did I want to add any or all of Sports, Cinema or Multiscreen for half price. I declined and said I was happy with what I have but this shows what is out there if you're happy to wait for them to come to you. My full price a month if I'd taken all these would be £55. I still think this is too much but is a lot less than the deals some people are accepting. 

MarzipanCrumble

The Admin fee of £20 for an existing customer is a disgrace!  Why?  What costs does it cover?

Got a deal for me that was acceptable (yes, prob cld have got a better deal).

Netflix
HD
Movies
Signature

=£43/month with £10 admin reduced from £20.  18 month contract.  Obtained via phoning them.  (Hate the Voice Interpretation when it first answers - limited understanding so opted for bill problem.  Call Centre - couldn't hear most of the time as clarity was not optimal - got put through to WFH guy - clear as a bell! - then fwded to retentions who reduced my admin fee and took £5 off the contract - hence £43.)   All good - happy with that!  Not good with negotiating - huge stress.

JSmithy45AD

MarzipanCrumble said:

The Admin fee of £20 for an existing customer is a disgrace!  Why?  What costs does it cover?

Got a deal for me that was acceptable (yes, prob cld have got a better deal).

Netflix
HD
Movies
Signature

=£43/month with £10 admin reduced from £20.  18 month contract.  Obtained via phoning them.  (Hate the Voice Interpretation when it first answers - limited understanding so opted for bill problem.  Call Centre - couldn't hear most of the time as clarity was not optimal - got put through to WFH guy - clear as a bell! - then fwded to retentions who reduced my admin fee and took £5 off the contract - hence £43.)   All good - happy with that!  Not good with negotiating - huge stress.

I've been with Sky for 15 years plus continuously and have never paid the "Admin Fee" and I would recommend anyone to flat out refuse it. Strangely, when they phoned back this week past (I had a technical issue on my account that had to be resolved first) one of the very first things she said was I've waived any admin fees and the setup fee for Ultra1 BB before making me an offer.