Contacting Sky to renew or cancel contract

karic

Hi, My TV/BB contract ends this month, and the renewal offer is a lot more than I pay now but I cannot get through to Sky to haggle a better deal (or perhaps cancel). They say all their lines are closed for essential staff training. I'll keep trying over the next few days but if I cannot get through what is the legal position, can they just apply the new contact without my being able to refuse it? I've tried their chat line but that said it couldn't help and I've been advised I cannot use email to discuss my contract with them. The only other option is to write to them but I don't have much faith in getting help that way.

carly

I'm not at home now so I can't send you a link, but last week I renewed my contract via their text message service after going through their" I want to cancel" page on the website.

iniltous

If you or another ISP acting on your behalf don’t contact Sky , it’s deemed consent so the new terms apply (but that shouldn’t be with any new minimum term , you continue on a rolling contract, 30 day notice basis at the standard non discounted price ) , but clearly the thing to do is contact them to see what’s on offer (if your preference is to remain with Sky just with a better price ) , if you have already decide to switch , you being unable to contact them is irrelevant as it’s the new ISP , via the common ‘OTS’ switching platform that will serve notice on your behalf , but you need to check if your TV service is separate, switching your broadband may well leave your TV service with Sky which they will obviously charge for at the prevailing rate (no discounts etc ) , so if staying with Sky is a possibility, you should keep trying to contact them , many providers have various ways to interact, not just calling them, social media, webchat etc 

karic

carly said:

I'm not at home now so I can't send you a link, but last week I renewed my contract via their text message service after going through their" I want to cancel" page on the website.

When I sign in to my account the message against the text messaging service changes from being available to being currently unavailable. I'll keep trying though. 

karic

iniltous said:

If you or another ISP acting on your behalf don’t contact Sky , it’s deemed consent so the new terms apply (but that shouldn’t be with any new minimum term , you continue on a rolling contract, 30 day notice basis at the standard non discounted price ) , but clearly the thing to do is contact them to see what’s on offer (if your preference is to remain with Sky just with a better price ) , if you have already decide to switch , you being unable to contact them is irrelevant as it’s the new ISP , via the common ‘OTS’ switching platform that will serve notice on your behalf , but you need to check if your TV service is separate, switching your broadband may well leave your TV service with Sky which they will obviously charge for at the prevailing rate (no discounts etc ) , so if staying with Sky is a possibility, you should keep trying to contact them , many providers have various ways to interact, not just calling them, social media, webchat etc 

Thanks iniltous, that's given me something to consider. Presumably I could go for a package with Virgin Media and when Sky are notified of that I imagine Sky would contact me to try to persuade me to stay? I could then choose to go ahead with VM or haggle a better deal with Sky?

iniltous

Starting a migration usually gets the losing provider to contact you with an offer to stay  , and as you say if it’s still not good enough you simply allow the migration to take place …there are other TV providers than Sky and Virgin , so I’d look at the entire market rather than a self imposed limit of two companies, 

karic

iniltous said:

Starting a migration usually gets the losing provider to contact you with an offer to stay  

I suppose that will get around the issue of me trying to contact them. I'll keep trying though for a few more days then perhaps see what VM can offer.

JSmithy45AD

karic said:

iniltous said:

Starting a migration usually gets the losing provider to contact you with an offer to stay  

I suppose that will get around the issue of me trying to contact them. I'll keep trying though for a few more days then perhaps see what VM can offer.

That would only end the Sky BB, not the TV, that would continue at full price. Their training days are just for the odd day, try again tomorrow, I find the mornings best.

karic

A quick update. I've just got off the phone having cancelled the TV (my BB contract has another year to run). The best offer I got was £25 more than the existing renewal offer on my account! Said he couldn't do any better so I've cancelled. I'm hoping I'll get a call from their retentions dept with a better offer.

iniltous

So the renewal, which was presumably too much hence the call made to Sky , and the ‘best’ they  could do was £25 more than just renewing makes no sense, must have been an interesting conversation, something like £50 is too much , what can you do , the answer £75 is the best we can do just beggars belief that they would offer that , saying sorry £50 is the best we can do at least gives them some credibility ….out of curiosity what type of Sky TV did you have  ( Sport.  Film , Netflix, Entertainment etc ) and what was the renewal price and the price when you called ( presumably the £25 figure ….the Black Friday deals are on the website and are a reasonable guide to getting a good price or a bad price , even if they don’t match the BF price they should get pretty close 

karic

Our current package is Sky signature, Sky Sports complete, Ultimate TV pack (Netflix, Discovery+) TNT Sports, Sky Cinema, Sky HD, Ultra HD, Multiscreen (£75), in addition we have Wifi Max and Ultrafast BB (£38). The total bill is currently £113 a month. I had an email recently stating the TV package would increase from £75 a month to £153, but that would discount it to £143. However the offer on my account was £134.50 discounted from £144.50. The agent started off at over £200 a month, then came back with £160 and finally £140. The BB position is even more complicated with price rises and ending discounts at different times, but that contract runs until November 2026. The agent wanted to cancel the TV package but put me on a new 24 month BB contract. I refused the new contract saying I would stick with the current one, but he said the price would go up by £23  in that case (about 80% increase!). I couldn't get any sense out of him why that should be.
The biggest joke of all - he made it quite clear to me (repeating himself very slowly a few times) that he needed a score of 9 or 10 on the survey that would shortly be sent to me!

I'll check out the Black Friday deals (thanks) and wait to see if they get back to me with a better offer. I'll also get prices from other providers in the meantime.