[Closed] I never got "the call" from sky tv, what next and what package have you got?

Was talking about this very subject after heavily researching Virgin as a package, then other broadband operators yesterday after realising the fanfare of “average 63mps” applied to hardwired connections only, and our Sky bill has crept from £50 to £63 in 18 months.

I’m pretty convinced to move to Virgins current £60 deal where I’d get more for my money and look again in 12 months, hoping for the above scenario to occur in the 30 day notice period...

About this t8me last year I did the same and it took a little while for Sky to call. In the meantime, we used a Now box. It wasn’t a bad thing, but when Sky offered to reinstate at half price it took away my argument. I’m planning to do it again, shortly, but have to persuade the rest of the household first. As we’ve also now got Amazon Prime, I may have another line.

There's a nice little cashback offer on Quidco for Virgin deals. I got £240 a couple of years ago, before switching back to Sky,

Topcashback probably do something similar

Quidco cashback

After almost 2 years I still get offers by mail from them but as it's a collosal waste of money I never take them up on it.

You should be getting endless emails from sky offering you a cheaper deal, no?

We've got our virgin down to £30 a month for 100mg bb and a new tivo box. No extra channels but no need with Netflix.

You should log onto the Sky website and check any offers they've sent you. Other than that the usual No TV, Netflix, Prime etc. alternatives - all have something to offer in their own right but not nearly as much content as most Sky subscriptions, you just need to decide if you'll use it enough to justify the high cost.

BBC Licence and Netflix is the only tele I have ever paid for. We also have Amazon Prime tele but I don't regard that as paid for, I would be paying that anyway. My kids would revolt without Netflix but neither they don't ask for, or need, Sky.

Surely freeview tele and Netflix is more programme choice than you would ever actually need?

Hmm edit seems broken - forgot to add, you aren't eligible for new customer offers until you've not subscribed for 12 months but not sure if any offers they sent you pre-cancellation are still valid...

I waited untill the final day then cracked, called them and was offered a decent deal to stay. They told me they keep your account on file for 12months so if you call back they can reactivate it and you are not regarded as a new customer until after 12months away.

The sky box is giving us all the hd freeview stuff still so that's a bonus. Virgin is s not an option for us as tbere is no cable in our area, We'll I presume you need cable?

Literally just signed up for virgins £60 full house movies bundle with £220 cash back from quidco. Sky can go swivel, have never recieved any kind of offer from them in 3 years.

If you still want some Sky-type TV, you could get a NOW TV box as a temporary replacement. Various offers around like this one, which gives you a lot of Sky content and pause/rewind for a lot less. Generally they do rolling offers on the monthly passes if you shop around.

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-and-home-entertainment/digital-and-smart-tv/set-top-boxes/smart-box-with-4k-voice-search-4-now-tv-pass-bundle-10186154-pdt.html

Does £13 per month really make that much difference to your family income ?

I can see £50 making a difference, but not £13.

£220 cash back from quidco."

Thanks for that tip!

“the call” ?

Anyway, Amazon Fire stick and you've got access to Prime (if you have the subscription) and Netflix (additional subscription also), plus the on-demand BBC, ITV etc stuff that I guess you lose from Sky box when it reverts to a Freesat package. Not sure if Amazon does download and watch later kind of stuff. Not sure what the Fire sticks offer in terms of recording.

If your TV has a satellite input, or even just with Freeview, it might have recording and pause/rewind built in. I think mine does, though I have to attach a USB drive to the TV. Never tried it.

Got no real reason to watch live TV myself though so I think I could live without it, and on-demand can be paused/rewound anyway.

I called Sky yesterday and told them I wanted to cancel as I didn't see the value in £33/month for the ability to rewind/pause/record (yes, we do still record stuff in our house even though we're Netflixed up).
They started offering new deals but keeping previous forum posts in mind I dismissed them...... nearly.
I did wonder whether we'd actually get a call back (we only have the variety package), so I went with the offer of exactly the same as we've got now but for £17/month for 18 months (£22 including Sky HD - which I'm still in two minds about, and may cancel, as 75% of our viewing is all FTA anyway).

Certainly worth making the call to cancel, but don't rely on them ringing you back with some mega-offer!

I'm sure you used to be able to pay to retain the pause, rewind and record for free to air channels on Sky boxes. Not sure how that would work with Q boxes as they're owned by Sky and you have to return them at the end of the contract.

You could buy a Humax box or similar to do the pause, rewind and record. Then get Netflix and maybe Prime and you'll probably not miss Sky services, but if you do then there's always Now TV too.

Literally just signed up for virgins £60 full house movies bundle with £220 cash back from quidco. Sky can go swivel, have never recieved any kind of offer from them in 3 years.

Wait till you get to the end of your contract with Virgin. They absolutely refuse to do any sort of deal to pursuade you to stay nowadays. Their broadband isn’t that great (I supposedly had 100mb but very rarely got that, popular times it was always around 30mb max)
I went to sky and found every aspect was much better than Virgin, the V box feels like it’s 10 years old compared to the Sky one for a start.
Apparantely Virgin are losing customers really fast - I can see why as their service is nowhere near the quality you used to get 4 or 5 years ago and the recent channel loss debacle was just a joke. It’s a shame as I’ve been a customer of theirs pretty regularly since they were NTL but it’d take a lot for me to go back.

i'd be working on the 'nothing to lose' bluff if it were me i think. ring em up, say youve just been called by them and the operative had made you a good offer which you were going to take (just think of anything youd accept) and then it just cut off!! "can you find out who it was that rang me please, id like to take up the offer......." theres no way that theyd find that out even if it WAS genuine, just play the 'cant believe youve got no record, he just offered me x and youre saying theres no record of it?' etc etc etc.....

fair chance itll be sorry nowt we can do etc, but like i say, nowt to lose and they dont know their arse from their elbow anyway.

“average 63mps” applied to hardwired connections only

Well yes, if for example you take your tablet down the of the garden for a bit of YouTube of a Summer Eve and you're wading into battle with a single bar of Wi-Fi signal, you ain't gonna see max bandwidth.

Anyway, IF you've got a decent terrestrial signal you could do worse than going for a streaming solution.

I've got 100Mbps fibre from Virgin, plus a couple of quid extra for Freeview Channels (we DON'T have a terrestrial signal) via a Tivo for a bit of pause, rewind, record - however we almost never use that now, plus NowTV for all the premium stuff. It takes a bit to get used to, but it's good for us.

All-in it's £40 a month I think, tbh if we could get a decent signal I'd do away with virgin and just have fibre from an OpenReach provider.

I'm so close to making the call to Sky, but what happens when they switch you off? Am I right in thinking that when you cancel, you keep the box & dish & all the free channels (BBCs/ITVs/Dave?) but not Sky1 etc?

Will I need to buy a new box?

I’m so close to making the call to Sky, but what happens when they switch you off? Am I right in thinking that when you cancel, you keep the box & dish & all the free channels (BBCs/ITVs/Dave?) but not Sky1 etc?

Will I need to buy a new box?

You keep the hardware and I believe it continues to function as a FeeSat box, however they disable the recording / pause feature.

There are some good free-sat boxes about and some smart TVs have this function, you can even add an external HDD to record shows

Well it sounds to me that Sky vs Virgin is much of a muchness and not worth the bother...

fair chance itll be sorry nowt we can do etc, but like i say, nowt to lose and they dont know their arse from their elbow anyway.

Waste of a phone call really. Firstly they do have records of customer contact and secondly the 'special' discounts are authorised by the retentions team not the normal cs people so a cs person that you'd be speaking to wouldn't authorise a special deal just because you said you'd agreed one (especially as there would be no record of it).

Now TV, entertainment £8 month, paying £5 for the next 3 months of movies and sport when I want it for a week. Works on 4 devices so sharing with my folks too.

Wait till you get to the end of your contract with Virgin. They absolutely refuse to do any sort of deal to pursuade you to stay nowadays.

Not my experience in November, they halved the price for the same bundle and the chap was astounded when I said he was too late. We had moved to Zen and over 2 weeks had elapsed so no cancellation possible. No way was I going back the superhub 3 in modem mode was a pile of dross with near constant drop outs at peak times and no fix for the software in over 18 months.

Wait till you get to the end of your contract with Virgin. They absolutely refuse to do any sort of deal to pursuade you to stay nowadays.

I'm not sure that's true. Mine ended about a year ago, I called them up, didn't bother with the whole "I'm leaving" performance, just had an open and honest chat with one of their guys about renewing. I got my bill reduced from £60ish to £45ish. I'd rather not pay that much, but we're kinda stuck without a decent terrestrial signal. The discount was partly by removing channels I hadn't watched in over 12 months (they seem to have that data) and part retention discount.

Ultimately, like Sky their costs are very front loaded with the hardware and install costs, some of that's getting easier for them as lots of houses now have a dish, cable or both installed, but if you're happy to keep your existing hardware you can usually make a deal.

If you go into it like the old days, thinking if you cancel you'll get a call from a desperate Call Centre Monkey begging you to stay with the full package for £10 a month or whatever you'll probably be disappointed.

We went from a full sky package to in essence freesat over a year ago. We paid £10pm to keep record/pause etc.

We then cancelled all Sky and it just became a freesat box with Sky interface (which is nicer than freesat imo) but annoying at same time as all the channels you can’t get are there.

Been off Sky 6 months and not 1 phone call or email to tempt us back.

Now moving home and will prob go back to Sky as new customer. £37pm for fibre, telephone and tv is hard to beat anywhere.

Well yet another letter arrived this am with an offer, went straight in the bin.

I’ve never played the Sky Subs roulette... Last time I had problems with my very old Sky Box they charged me £35 for a new one, and £40 for a new router.

When the engineer came around last time (about two years ago) he offered me a SkyHD+ box for £20,  so I bought it. I had too much stuff recorded on my other box at the time so still have the HD box chugging away.... and the new one under the bed gathering dust.

Wouldn't know where/how to start changing them over TBH, so that would be another engineer call out no doubt... and a new card ? 🤷‍♂️

Unplug old box
Plug in new box
Remove card from old box and put into new box

Done.
(obvs no existing records or fave channels etc.)

Now moving home and will prob go back to Sky as new customer. £37pm for fibre, telephone and tv is hard to beat anywhere.

I took out this deal, I am not getting on with the homehub, coverage seems poor in small/medium size house and wireless speed is awful when there is very little channel interference. Going to have to split the 2.4ghz and 5ghz channels to see if this improves anything...

I never got any of the calls when I binned sky off. Then again, when I sacked Sky broadband off, no calls. Just letters saying I had left early (I hadn't) and I owed them money (I didn't), I rang the number and they told me I owed nothing but would I like to come back!

I think something was mentioned that when you terminated they weren't allowed to call you (broadband side at least).

I'm thinking of canning my virgin and going for the vodafone superfast 2 package (average 63...) as, although the virgin download speed is more, in reality you are never receiving a feed of that speed and vodafone upload speed is more as well.

Main reason for sticking with virgin was eurosport and Fox in HD, but haven't watched anything on Fox for a while and watch Prime or Netflix most of the time.

The vodafone package doesn't have phone line rental either, which is good as I mostly only get cold calls on there anyway.

So will probably get a freeview box.

THIS IS IMPORTANT:
Before you bin Sky, or call to discuss binning them, make sure that you log on to your My Sky account and review your contact preferences. Make sure you agree to receive marketing contact from them via email or phone as you prefer.

If you leave it like it was when you ticked/unticked the boxes when you signed up, then they are not allowed to call/email you. In effect you are huffing and puffing waiting for a message you have already told them they don't have permission to send you.

Rule 1- Check your preferences before playing Cancel-my-sky bluff.