On the back of the cost of living thread. We have a full Sky package, which is now about £150 a month. Family do watch a lot of Sports and Netflix etc series, though we do have TNT on our BT broadband package.
Thinking about cancelling the Sky subscription and getting whatever else we can through the Smart TV apps and BT.
Any thoughts please ?
I dumped them years ago, just went freesat. Then after a few years I got Prime, Netflix and then Disney. Dumped Disney when I retired to recover some cash.
You don’t miss it after awhile but I’m not a huge sports fan. If there is match I want to watch then I either go to the pub, but rumour has it there are ways to watch Sky. However, that would be wrong to discuss on here.
Same here. Freeview TV, Roku stick, Netflix, Prime and Disney (free with bank account). HBO Max launch has some annual offers, including HBO Max + TNT sports cheaper than just monthly TNT if you do an annual plan.
Freesat box if you want to record TV.
Then I stream everything else rotating between the services.
I use NowTV for my F1 fix - but thats really the only sport I 'have' to watch!
On the back of the cost of living thread. We have a full Sky package, which is now about £150 a month. Family do watch a lot of Sports and Netflix etc series, though we do have TNT on our BT broadband package.
Thinking about cancelling the Sky subscription and getting whatever else we can through the Smart TV apps and BT.
Any thoughts please ?
As per my post on the Cost Of Living thread, I called Sky last week and without too much effort got the cost of my package from £120+ to £80 p/m. Thats given me 300mbps broadband, full "normal" TV package incl Disney etc now and Sky Sports (the sport is ~£30 p/m on its own but it gets absolutely hammered so well worth it). During the football season we bolt on TNT to our Prime subscription but can it over the summer...
The sports is the big killer there. But basic steps:
Call them to cancel. Go as far as you can, until they offer you one last desperate deal, and you should be able to get a chunk off it. You should be getting Netflix and Disney+ included in your Sky package for free; if you're not, I think their retention deals include both as standard.
If there's part of the package you can shave off (the TNT sports add-on, or the movies) that's a start. Movies in particular, between Netflix and Disney+ there's a ton to watch on there.
And check out Now; their TV package (includes all Sky normal TV channels, plus all the series on demand) is £3/month for 12 months, IIRC. You may be able to get a deal on the Sports too - but you'd have to pay your own Netflix and Disney+
To be honest we canned Sky last year - we now have no broadcast TV - & I don't miss it.
We rarely watch live TV & if we do there is an app for that.
As someone that has been through the cancellation process even after I cancelled while my contract was running down they still phoned me to see if they could retain me. So don't be scared to cancel to see what they'll offer you.
Just be aware they are offering sky basic package and sports for £35pm to new customers at the moment.
not sure how you have got to £150?? Does that include telephone and broadband ?
As to the threatening to leave thing. Didn’t work for us, they never came back with another offer so don’t necessarily think that approach will work
As above - decide how you want to receive terrestrial channels; satellite dish, aerial or streamed. For the first two, purchase appropriate PVR hardware if you want to retain ability to record. Get Sky Sport via NowTV.
Sounds as though you are covered for TNT Sport (by the way, today seems to be the day you have to switch from using the Discovery+ app to HBO Max).
If you wanted to retain Sky, you could see if they will offer you a decent deal to switch to Sky Stream. They have a slightly different model - you just get ~inflation price hike every year, rather then it going up massively at the end of a contract and having to do the threaten to cancel dance. You need reliable broadband and be aware you can't 'record' as such.
If you are going to rely on apps, then I see a lot of people who drop Sky investing in an Apple TV as it a much better and more integrated experience than TV apps in general.
Illicit means
I know loads of people who do this (mainly my wealthy boomer retired friends who could easily afford to pay!) but you're not just sticking it to 'the man', you're kicking everyone who works in media. Runners, make-up artists, production crew etc., they all rely on people paying to keep them in work.
Call them to cancel. Go as far as you can, until they offer you one last desperate deal, and you should be able to get a chunk off it.
I did this for 4 years running, but with the caveat, I was prepared to cancel and not have the service at all. They offered everything they could and still too expensive, so I cancelled. No more Sky TV.
2 weeks later I got a call from Sky asking what it would take to get me back as customer. I replied that the only way it would happen was if they could give me what I had (inc. Sports/movies) for free. They did it for a new 12-month contract. I paid nothing for 12 months, then cancelled again. Thought I'd had my luck, but, 1 month later this time, a call from Sky asking the same thing. Result? Same offer and deal as the previous time. Full package, completely free for 12 months.
3rd time around we were without Sky for 3 months, but rinse and repeat. Technically the contact wasn't free, as there was a charge for the service each month, but they pre-loaded my account with enough credit to cover the 12 months' worth of charges. Net result - free for me, I just had to keep the direct debit active.
I'd have kept this going but we'd had broadband from BT, PlusNet etc and all were horrifically rubbish as no fibre whatsoever in our area. Then Virgin came along and are now the only proper fibre provider in our area, so we went with them.
Edit: just to say that Virgin are awful to deal with, but we're kind of stuck as they are the only true fibre provider in our area, and mobile reception is also awful round here.
Dumped sky over twenty years ago, we currently subscribe to Amazon Prime but now they've decided to included ads on top of that then they're for the chop come renewal time. We occasionally subscribe to Netflix for a month if there's something specific we'd like to watch, but that's rare.
don't have freeview or freesat set up but catch the odd program in iplayer, itv streaming services.
I know loads of people who do this (mainly my wealthy boomer retired friends who could easily afford to pay!) but you're not just sticking it to 'the man', you're kicking everyone who works in media. Runners, make-up artists, production crew etc., they all rely on people paying to keep them in work.
Alternatively the companies that offer these services could do it much cheaper & more affordably, and still pay all those people more, but it would cut into their lovely lovely profits.
Did this some years back, though we never had sport. Now get all services via an Apple TV box. If you do subscriptions via Apple you can subscribe and cancel in device - no more calling up Sky and sitting on hold for ages and fighting to actually turn something off.
if you want to be really strict, subscribe, and immediately cancel - there NO notice period and it will keep working until the end of the month you've paid for. Then you only subscribe again when you want to watch something - stop paying for services your'e not using for a few months.
I dumped sky TV about 3 or 4 years ago. Tried BT TV instead. Their box was dreadful. It just wouldn't work with my home setup, no matter what I did. I ended up just using the streaming apps on my TV instead of the box. Went back to sky (stream) at the end of the BT TV contract. Much better. The bit that annoys me is that you still can't use Sky Go to cast to a TV when away from home. Now TV does allow that and I just don't get why Sky Go doesn't do the same as they are the same company. You don't get to use the Now TV app if you sign up to Sky Stream. Weird.
When I was with Sky I felt sketchy as all hell phoning them up and telling them I was totally going to cancel and not pretending to do so because I'd heard they'd give me a better deal if I did, but it's pretty much their business model. Their deal rates and newcustomersonly rates are effectively their actual rates, whereas those happy enough to pay double for no reason other than apathy are welcome to do so. Everyone who is with Sky should be calling and asking to speak with Retentions when their contract runs out.
I know loads of people who do this (mainly my wealthy boomer retired friends who could easily afford to pay!)
My attitude here is, I pay for multiple services such as Amazon Prime, Xbox Game Pass etc. I used to buy a lot of media, though rarely these days as on-demand etc has killed that. (There are those who would argue "you never really own it" but I realise, I don't really care; of my precious physical media that I spent years collecting, today most of my old games and DVDs went to CEX, my CDs are in a mate's loft, cassettes and VHS tapes in landfill.)
I also torrent stuff. But crucially, what I torrent is what I wouldn't - or couldn't - have paid money for. If I couldn't download it I wouldn't have run out and bought it, I just wouldn't be able to watch it. To my mind this is a victimless crime because there is no loss of a sale. This is why the whole "home taping is killing music" notion is bogus; when I was 14 and recording the top 40 off the radio, trying to hit Pause right at the moment Bruno Brooks started interrupting, I could barely afford the C90s let alone buy singles and albums.
If on the other hand I'd been happily paying £150/month to Sky or whoever and then gone "you know what, I'm going to sack all this off and just steal it instead" then that's a wholly different scenario. I know a couple of people who pay an annual subscription for hooky set-top boxes and that doesn't sit well with me at all, not only are they not paying the artists, services providers etc, they're actively paying pirates to rip off content for them.
This is, of course, simply me justifying my life as a master criminal. I have no doubts that everyone else says the same sorts of things to themselves regardless of whether they're whiter than white or have an eye patch and a peg leg. We all make our individual moral decisions (and have our own levels of disposable income).
Everyone who is with Sky should be calling and asking to speak with Retentions when their contract runs out.
Apart from Sky Stream (and I'm guessing Sky Glass) customers. Seems to be you don't get the massive price hike at contract end with those services.
We have a full Sky package, which is now about £150 a month
Are you my in-laws? They pay similar amounts and whinge that there is never anything on whilst watching GBeebies.
We rotate through the various streaming services except Prime (cheaper than paying delivery for protein powder and dog food) and Netflix (the wife loves their trashier programs).
We always go for the most basic Ad-supported (make a brew) tier.
Where they get you is sport but do the maths, if you want it for a particular sporting season say F1, then look at the length of the season and work out if its cheaper to subscribe for the whole year rather than the season.
It's defo worth negotiating with them atm as they seem keen to keep or bring back customers. You need to get past the Asia based retentions staff though and on to the UK people as they're the ones with the proper offers.
Just been through it myself as I'd switched from Sky to Virgin 18 months ago (but kept a Sky Mobile sim to maintain my VIP discounts). First offer from Virgin was broadband/tv/sports for £75pm. Went to Sky and they offered the same but with Netflix and broadband up from 320 to 500 for £60. I accepted that but then Virgin rang to for out the disconnection and cheekily counter offered their equivalent for £40pm which for quick cable fibre broadband, full Sky Sports package, Netflix and the Virgin tv channels (which is getting Sky Atlantic t the end of the month) is a blooming bargain imo! Seems they're all keen to fight for your custom.
If you've been with Sky a long time and are considering changing phone contract it's worth having a look what they offer via the VIP platform as well. I just scored an unlimited data/calls/text plan for £10pm and a 10gb plan for my lad for £5pm.
If you've been with Sky a long time and are considering changing phone contract it's worth having a look what they offer via the VIP platform as well. I just scored an unlimited data/calls/text plan for £10pm and a 10gb plan for my lad for £5pm.
That's a very good price but it's not wildly unusual these days. At that price point I'd be considering operators and service. Sky is O2 (as is GiffGaff), similarly priced Smarty is Three and 1pMobile is EE, for instance. One of those may be better or worse for someone in a given area.
We've reached the point with 'bundles' now where the only differentiator is data, surely no-one pays for texts or "minutes" any more. Once you've got enough, any more is pointless. You're paying £10/month for unlimited, but if you're using less than 10GB/month you could halve that bill. And with the prevalence of public Wi-Fi almost everywhere, if you are using more than 10GB/month I'd love to know how that's even possible.
Binned SKY and connected a Freesat box with hard drive to the SKY dish. Works in a similar fashion but doesn't cost anything. Not quite as slick n seamless but worth the occasional glitch for the money saved. Our Freesat box is a Manhattan, would probably try a Humax next time. We have stand alone subs for Netflix, Prime, Apple TV+ and Disney+. Binned Paramount+ when we ditched SKY.
And with the prevalence of public Wi-Fi almost everywhere, if you are using more than 10GB/month I'd love to know how that's even possible.
I am surprised you trust public wifi - I used 7GB of data in January. Usually it's less than 5GB
Binned SKY and connected a Freesat box with hard drive to the SKY dish. Works in a similar fashion but doesn't cost anything. Not quite as slick n seamless but worth the occasional glitch for the money saved. Our Freesat box is a Manhattan, would probably try a Humax next time. We have stand alone subs for Netflix, Prime, Apple TV+ and Disney+. Binned Paramount+ when we ditched SKY.
that’s what we did, but almost never use it now. I think the only time we’ve switched to it in ages was for the olympics (and I suspect we could have done that through iplayer on our Apple TV anyway).
serously thinking about unplugging it as it whirs away regularly using some power.
Now tv for our sports package. I managed to get 12m deals usually half price. So been paying £20pm. Just this past week email telling me that 12m was up and new price £35pm. Started to cancel online and process offered another 12m at 50% so £18pm. I couldn’t justify more than £20pm for any single package anyway. Tend to rotate every few months between Netflix prime etc as well rather than having all.
I've just got an email from Now saying their standard Entertainment package (€4/month) now includes HBO Now. Don't know what that adds over and above the Sky stuff, but it's free, so that helps!
This thread has come just at the right time for me.
Just got to beat the lethergy.
I have a Now TV box, but the power supply has gone walkabouts.
The input just says DC.
Can anybody tell me what the input voltage should be please.
You will probably need to look at the writing on the psu itself.
Thanks
If you are doing the "cancel" thing, it is essential that before you do it you log in to your Sky account and tick the box giving them permission to contact you with offers. If you have opted out of this, you won't get a call offering an improved deal...
Called them today on back of some of the suggestions posted up. Looks like we have managed to half the combined Sky and BT monthly bill, thanks all.
I've tried to do the cancel trick and it didnt get me very far and cos my internet was with them and would have gone off too, couldn't do it as I WFH. But, I am happy with the price I pay for Sky.
I have since the renewal last year been looking at going Sky free, but the thing that bugs me the most about apps and services is the cost and/or ads. Record something on the sky box and you can fast forward (easily) the ads. Stream ITV or C4 and you cant forward the ads unless you pay, so stuck watching 8 ads at the start of a show and many more during it. Also the ease of fast forward or rewind, on Sky Q boxes you see the picture go forward or backward, via streaming you dont see the screen and then you may get to unskippable ads again.
Even when I paid for ITVX premium, some shows still had ads in them too! I suspect this could be the same on other services.
The one thing which I have found super useful is an Apple TV app called TV Launcher, it will show a classic style now and next view and when you click a show take you to the other parties app and if logged in, play the show.
My alternative solution is a Labrador. A working line one with no 'off' switch. I take him out, play with him, watch him, and enjoy his company. No time to watch TV with him around.
Operating costs ate probably similar to the OPs Sky costs. But having my dawg means I'm not giving a penny to the right wing racist lieing meejah.
I recently bought a new TV with Freely and other streaming services. We pay for one streaming service at a time, but change which one every few months. Plus because it's got freely and all the main channel apps (BBC, ITV, C4, C5 etc) there's actually a lot of content. It also streams YouTube, so I watch some sports on there as well.
Had Virgin Media Cable way back in the day.
Haven't had a TV aerial since 2007. We've used Apple TV boxes, Amazon Firesticks, Playstations, and LG TV apps to watch stuff from.
We use iPlayer and the other 'terrestrial' apps for some stuff. Am impressed at the range of films on iPlayer.
Have had Netflix and Apple TV for a long time. The former because it seems to have a fair range of old and new stuff worth watching. The latter because Apple Family plan and it has some great stuff (and a fair amount of meh). Had Prime until they started running ads on the 'regular' sub. Had Now on occasion.
I hear some folks use a stack of Arrs and Jellyfin but it seems like witchcraft and piracy combined.
edit. we don't watch any live sports. Or even recorded sports. Not our thing so my meandering 'this is what we use instead of Sky' is probably not much use to the OP. £150/month seems like a large sum but spread over a few people who watch a lot of entertainment it's probably not that much per item I suppose.
This thread prompted me to look at my Sky contract.
Last August it was costing me £55pm as I had 'upgraded' to include Sky Sports. 6 months later and my latest bill was now £77 !!
Rang them up and played hell with them. They said it was some discounts had ended + annual inflation. Not sure how discounts can end on a 6 month old contract.
They put me through to retentions and now got it down to £56. I quoted the offer price of £35 they currently have for the same package I have and they said thats for Sky stream, the only difference between Stream and Q is that on Q you can record. Mrs FD is not prepared to give up her ability to record to save £20pm 🙁
What does she record that she can't get on-demand instead?
Genuine question, I thought pretty much everything did that these days, but I haven't had Sky in years.
What does she record that she can't get on-demand instead?
Genuine question, I thought pretty much everything did that these days, but I haven't had Sky in years.
I agree but its that ability to just look at the TV listings for the week ahead and press the record button and not worry. (you know how it used to be done in the good old days on your video recorder) 🤣
There is an element that by looking on iplayer etc you could miss something interesting that you would notice browsing through the listings.
To be fair the Sky interface (TV guide) is nice and easy to use.
Kicked SKY into touch a few months back.
Got a Freesat box (Yes @cougar we like to record stuff so you'll have to accept it), Paramount subscription (£35 pa), Netflix (5.99 monthly) and Disney+ (Tesco clubcard) and haven't looked back.
Sky were an absolute nightmare to deal with. Took 10 months before they could sort out the cancellation and they ended up giving me a pile of cash back.
Don't watch sport. Can you go pay as you go with Now TV?
If you've been with Sky a long time and are considering changing phone contract it's worth having a look what they offer via the VIP platform as well. I just scored an unlimited data/calls/text plan for £10pm and a 10gb plan for my lad for £5pm.
And with the prevalence of public Wi-Fi almost everywhere, if you are using more than 10GB/month I'd love to know how that's even possible.
I'd regularly go over my old 10gb limit but always had some in the piggybank to top up. Don't know where you live but around here the public WiFi is limited and not usually very good so it's often better to use data. Linking the kids iPads to my phone when away from home also gollops plenty of data, as does long, slow days at work where I'm reluctant to use their WiFi.
What does she record that she can't get on-demand instead?
Genuine question, I thought pretty much everything did that these days, but I haven't had Sky in years.
I agree but its that ability to just look at the TV listings for the week ahead and press the record button and not worry. (you know how it used to be done in the good old days on your video recorder) 🤣
Yeah, my wife also really missed the ability to record when we moved to Virgin. Yes, most of it's available on catch up but not always straight away (eg, you see something you want to watch but it's half an hour in) which can be annoying but I don't watch much telly so don't really care.
According to the Sky chap I spoke to if you move to their stream only services you can go through the listings and highlight stuff you want to watch and it's then stored in your favourites, similar to having a recorder.
Don't watch sport. Can you go pay as you go with Now TV?
Yes - but a day pass is very expensive compared to a monthly pass.
Best thing with all these services is sign-up to marketing emails. If you're away for a short while an offer will be winging it's way to you! 🙂
Such a timely thread!
Had Virgin for ever, been out of contract for years. Don't even know the landline number. Got all the telly channels and good broadband. £160 quid a month. Yep.
Kids and I watch football but not that much. Most of what Mrs Tyred and I watch is BBC content, BFI or Mubi, both of which are complete bargains I happily pay for. Kids are adept at surfing free trial deals for streaming services they're bothered about.
Suddenly BT Full Fibre is available for just over a quarter of what I'm paying Virgin.
The Virgin broadband is good - its fast and reliable. Not as fast as claimed, but plenty fast enough for us. Outages are very rare.
Don't care about losing PPV sport and the films and all the non-terrestrial channels can get in the sea.
Two questions - what are BT like for customer service and what's my best/simplest/cheapest option to replace the Virgin Tivo box (not that I even think that's worthwhile, but Mrs Tyred still likes it)?