Sky TV retention deals ( post your haggling successes )

AlmereIan

Afternoon all.

My contract is running out in 5 days and I have been on the phone to Sky 3 times already, but without achieving a satisfactory result.
18 months ago I agreed a deal at £60 a month. Over the period of my contract, it increased to £73.50. A 22% increase.
They sent me an email offering a new deal at £85.50 a month. A 42% increase from my previously agreed contract 18 months ago.
Having spoken to 3 different agents on cancellations, the best they can offer me is £79.50 a month, or £69.50 a month if I ditch Sky Movies.
I am now considering calling their bluff and saying I want to cancel. Are people still getting calls back within the 31 day cancellation period, with better offers? Also, if I don't hear back and decide to stay with Sky, I assume I can stop the cancellation process anytime before the 31 days are up and take their last offer?

MeteredOut

AlmereIan said:

Afternoon all.

My contract is running out in 5 days and I have been on the phone to Sky 3 times already, but without achieving a satisfactory result.
18 months ago I agreed a deal at £60 a month. Over the period of my contract, it increased to £73.50. A 22% increase.
They sent me an email offering a new deal at £85.50 a month. A 42% increase from my previously agreed contract 18 months ago.
Having spoken to 3 different agents on cancellations, the best they can offer me is £79.50 a month, or £69.50 a month if I ditch Sky Movies.
I am now considering calling their bluff and saying I want to cancel. Are people still getting calls back within the 31 day cancellation period, with better offers? Also, if I don't hear back and decide to stay with Sky, I assume I can stop the cancellation process anytime before the 31 days are up and take their last offer?

You're unlikely to get a better offer until you are in your cancellation period. Ideally, you would have done that a couple of weeks ago, as it does mean you'll be paying out-of-contract prices whilst waiting to see if they contact you. But, don't assume they will - I was never contacted (I had all marketing options on on my account) but I did re-contract 2 days before my cancellation was due to kick , via by online chat. At that point, I got a much better deal than I was offered before giving notice to cancel, but you have to make it clear you are willing to cancel.

mits999

AlmereIan said:

Afternoon all.

My contract is running out in 5 days and I have been on the phone to Sky 3 times already, but without achieving a satisfactory result.
18 months ago I agreed a deal at £60 a month. Over the period of my contract, it increased to £73.50. A 22% increase.
They sent me an email offering a new deal at £85.50 a month. A 42% increase from my previously agreed contract 18 months ago.
Having spoken to 3 different agents on cancellations, the best they can offer me is £79.50 a month, or £69.50 a month if I ditch Sky Movies.
I am now considering calling their bluff and saying I want to cancel. Are people still getting calls back within the 31 day cancellation period, with better offers? Also, if I don't hear back and decide to stay with Sky, I assume I can stop the cancellation process anytime before the 31 days are up and take their last offer?

In my experience the tv needs to be fully cut off for at least 2 weeks to get half decent deal, gone are the days when you threaten to cancel to get a half decent deal 

hemnsy

Just been offered the following deal - still think it's quite high

	No Contract	Discount
tv	36	25.5
Netflix	16	11.5
Multi	19	9
hd	9	4
uhd	4	2
cinema	15	10
internet	43	29
Total	142	91

Are people getting better?
Just said go ahead & cancel 
priced it up moving to FreeSat , Now TV & Netflix £60
Happy to pay a bit more for convenience but this is a joke.

JSmithy45AD

hemnsy said:

Just been offered the following deal - still think it's quite high

	No Contract	Discount
tv	36	25.5
Netflix	16	11.5
Multi	19	9
hd	9	4
uhd	4	2
cinema	15	10
internet	43	29
Total	142	91

Are people getting better?
Just said go ahead & cancel 
priced it up moving to FreeSat , Now TV & Netflix £60
Happy to pay a bit more for convenience but this is a joke.

You didn't cancel the internet I hope?

davecullen86

Today, I called customer retentions twice and got a slightly better offer from the second agent for the "Sky Signature" package shown with two discounted prices below:

Sky signature - Full: £36.50 - Discounted: £26.50 then £23.50
Kids - Full: £7 - Discounted: £3
HD - Full: £9 - Discounted: £5
UHD - Full: 4 - Discounted: £2
Multiscreen - Full: 15 - Discounted: £14
TOTAL: £50.50

My previous 24m contract price was £40. They explained that the additional £10.50/m was due to the recent price increase.

Not great!  I love the Q platform with 2 x Multiroom boxes, but the Sky content and channels are not worth paying for, in my opinion.  I am using the Q setup to provide glorified Freesat access while paying the premium cost.

This is when I found "TV Essentials" being discussed online and hardly covered on the Sky website.
It is £15/m and £5/m for Multiroom.  The initial guy I spoke to said you could only use 1 x minibox, and I will need to send one back, but the second guy said "boxes" and didn't mention sending anything back, so neither do I :-). Right now, both Miniboxes work, so let's hope it remains the same.

In essence, I am paying £20/m for Freesat, yes.... But, I am keeping 3 x Sky Q boxes, which allow the functionality of record, pause, etc.  This would cost me £250 per room (x3) and the cost of changing my LNB to a standard one since Freesat boxes don't work with the Q LNB, plus the cost for a local aerial engineer to run 2 x sat cables to my currently wirelessly connected Q Mini box locations.

The package was changed instantly, I was due a pro-rata refund for this month, which comes off my next bill.
TV Essentials has no contract, so I can cancel or choose to upgrade to signature again any time,
The agent told me I would also be eligible for their best offer of Signature at £18 if I did. Sky is sneaky! But this won't be happening.

@hemnsy - You said "Happy to pay a bit more for convenience but this is a joke."
I totally agree!  I think this could be a good convenience option for you instead of the expense and effort of moving to Freesat.

I hope this helps someone.
Dave

AlmereIan

AlmereIan said:

Afternoon all.

My contract is running out in 5 days and I have been on the phone to Sky 3 times already, but without achieving a satisfactory result.
18 months ago I agreed a deal at £60 a month. Over the period of my contract, it increased to £73.50. A 22% increase.
They sent me an email offering a new deal at £85.50 a month. A 42% increase from my previously agreed contract 18 months ago.
Having spoken to 3 different agents on cancellations, the best they can offer me is £79.50 a month, or £69.50 a month if I ditch Sky Movies.
I am now considering calling their bluff and saying I want to cancel. Are people still getting calls back within the 31 day cancellation period, with better offers? Also, if I don't hear back and decide to stay with Sky, I assume I can stop the cancellation process anytime before the 31 days are up and take their last offer?

Just an update on this.
I called Sky today requesting to cancel and they dropped the price to £73 a month, which is 50p less than I pay at the moment. I also decided to ditch Sky Movies and so I am now paying £63 a month on a 24 month contract. So a lot better, finally!

GeoffWhi

My contract is due in August and was offered Sig £22,  Sports £22, Netflix £9, HD £4  £57 in total.

This was from retentions and they said that the best they could do.  I was paying £49 rising to £51 now,  so nearly a 14% increase.  I've cancelled,  I'm not hopeful they can do a better offer but I don't see that paying £22 for the basic channels is worth it anymore as the content has moved to other paying services.  Worse content, an above inflation increase, and a 2yr contract with further increases baked in was a step too far.

My only regret is losing SkyQ which I probably wouldn't be able to get back as it's all moving from Satellite to the Internet.

davecullen86

@GeoffWhi Out of interest, what will you get to replace Sky Q once it's gone?

Easylinkselecta

I really encourage people to try ditching Sky completely. It's just far too over-priced these days.

Yes, Sky Q is convenient but so much of what you pay for is available for free or for much less money elsewhere, particularly with many TV services switching to streaming.