Haggling for the Disabled

Iconoclast

Hello,

I am generally new to Moneysaving and am working my way around this site and this forum. I’d like to know how I can haggle successfully if I am deaf? Although I can speak and hear fine face-to-face, I am not so good at making/taking phone calls or video calls.

I am due to reach the end of my contract with Sky by the end of December. Ideally I would like to stick with them (TV package) although I have never been satisfied with the speeds I get in my area (several speed tests over the years consistently show a 2Mbps download, 0.5Mbps upload speed, which is atrocious).

My father used to argue/haggle with Sky on the phone in a bid to sort these things out. Although he negotiated nice package deals with Netflix etc successfully, we were never happy with our low broadband speeds and simply tolerated it. My father recently died, and so I no longer have anyone to make telephone calls on my behalf.

So I guess my post discusses several things: I’m not sure whether switching can bring me better speeds because I may have a line infrastructure issue (we were told by a friendly Sky engineer that our telephone line system through which the broadband comes is very old), and also paramedic staff who had attended to calls at our premises were also enquiring as to why we had poor signal in our area. This tells me it can’t just be my problem if others are also experiencing it?

But as my contract is coming to an end, how can I successfully haggle just for the sake of paying less money when it is difficult as a deaf-disabled person to use the phone? 

Would I experience success with chatbots? Is it possible to be put through to a human bus cat bit/Live Support?

If any other disabled Forumites or anyone with a useful experience can share their stories and tips, it would be greatly appreciated. Perhaps there can be a project if some sort to enable Moneysaving for disabled moneysavers who experience difficulties over the phone.

kind regards.

Neil_Jones

If you're with Sky options are here, including sign language and text relay:

https://www.sky.com/help/articles/contacting-sky-accessibility

macman

Use Live Chat, or authorise someone else to negotiate on your behalf with them.

M25

Not sure how you can live with such a poor Internet connection. Do you have a good 4G or 5G signal? You could think about going down that route with a modem and buying a data SIM. 

What do other providers offer at your address? https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/compare-broadband-deals/

No reason why you can't split the service and just have TV with Sky. I'm sure I've read that Sky are moving away from satellite dish service (ie to Interent TV) also so you really need to get the Internet provision sorted if staying with them.