Why is sky SO expensive?

[Thefaceofboe]

I just phoned to try and bring our bill down as it’s around £115 a month due to my partner having multiple sport packages, so wanted to cancel movies and see what else I could do to make it a bit cheaper.

They have offered me a ‘deal’ to stop me from cancelling movies... for £140 a month

They said it’s because my current deals are going to run out. Bloody wish I hadn’t bothered now.

Anyone with virgin media and would recommend them over sky? Getting fed up of extortionate prices

I've no idea why it's so expensive but plenty of people seem willing to pay it!
I've been with Virgin media for years and never had any issues with them. I pay £60 a month for the basic TV package, phone line and wifi (which has been brilliant while working from home). If you're thinking of switching find someone to refer you as you used to both get £50.

Virgin are just as bad to be honest. Prices rise above inflation every year and loyalty doesn't pay.

The only way to keep things low is to swap between Sky and Virgin with a new contract every 18 months. Also never accept their first deal, the only way to get their best deal is to phone up to cancel and spend half an hour rejecting all their offers until they come up with a tolerable one. Don't be afraid of rejecting them all and hanging up, chances are they'll send you a final offer again before disconnecting.

Don't know how it works with sports but Now TV is a good alternative to Sky. But you can get sports on Now TV without a contract, so can join up for one off events or cancel when seasons end etc.

Movies is £12 a month, but you can always get a deal. We're currently on 'half price for a year' and have virtually never paid full price - you just log into the account, tell them you're cancelling due to cost and see what deal they offer.

But if your DP has 'multiple sports packages' then he should be paying for that out of his own personal spending money without impacting household finances.

Moneysavingexpert has good advice about minimising the cost of pay TV.

We’ve been with sky for 3 years since moving into our current house and always managed to haggle them down to something reasonable but this time they are sticking to their guns I appreciate it’s the sport package and multi room which being up the price but I still think it’s crazy expensive. I barley watch sky cos I can never find anything decent on it which is why it’s annoying me paying such high prices.

Does he need multiple sports channels?

@KoalaOok apparently so! I say multiple but I think it’s actually only sky sports and BT sport. Even if I cancelled 1 of them, the price would still be £120 because of our discounts ending which i still won’t pay.

I think it's the sport that makes these packages expensive.

Some of it is straightforward profiteering, some of it is 'cos they have to pay for the rights to various sporting associations (the FA, FIA etc) and these organisations are all basically bent.

Luckily DH would rather watch paint dry than sit in front of any televised sport and Sky have yet to set up their Paint Drying channel and I'm not bothered either so we don't have it.

I didn't have the best customer experience with Virgin when we were on it so I can't recommend unfortunately.

Get him to check his mobile phone contract -- I'm with EE and I can get BT Sport (and/or Britbox I think) through them for free if I want it. (Obviously on my phone, but I think I could 'sling' to the TV in turn.)

@BarbaraofSeville NowTv sounds interesting, I think it’s have a look at that. We aren’t bothered about movies tbh, we added them while we were both on furlough last year but probably only watched 2/3 because everything decent was on Netflix.

How about dropping all the sports channels, that is what is costing the money.

Does you partner watch that much sport?

Netflix and / or Now TV plus broadband should be enot for most people.

Because you have sports movies and multiroom. and netflix

They can't keep quadrupling the Chief Execs pay in years when profits are falling without charging you plenty can they?

This was 3 years ago - I bet he's not had a pay cut since.

www.theguardian.com/business/2017/sep/13/sky-chief-executive-jeremy-darroch-pay-quadruples-to-16m-despite-profits-fall

[quote Thefaceofboe]@BarbaraofSeville NowTv sounds interesting, I think it’s have a look at that. We aren’t bothered about movies tbh, we added them while we were both on furlough last year but probably only watched 2/3 because everything decent was on Netflix.[/quote]
There are no decent movies on Netflix.

Try calling their bluff. I’ve heard people have had success by asking to cancel then at the last minute they get passed to some sort of retention team who offer a better deal. Maybe look on moneysavingexpert board for tips on this?

Personally I don’t understand why people are happy to pay a fortune for Sky and still get bombarded by 2 mins of ads every 12 minutes (sports seems to be even worse).

It’s the sports. In order to be able to watch the scottish premiership, the English premier league, the champions league and the scottish cup, we need the full sports package on sky, BT sports AND premier sports. Then the big boxing matches are pay per view on top.

If you’re a sports fan they have you over a barrel unfortunately. All the different companies have to buy from each other and they won’t let them discount through another provider..Although cancelling does tend to sharpen their focus with a better deal on their own products and we now have BT sports only on the app not on sky which I think worked out slightly cheaper.

I’m glad neither of us is into watching sports because I think that’s what pushes the bills up SO high. We have internet, phone and tv, no movies or sports (we have all the other channels though) and it’s about £50 a month which is more than enough. I have heard good things about NowTV as you can have just the sports for example. They’re part of Sky. Several of my friends have virgin media and it’s just as pricey, unfortunately.

Phone up and cancel the lot. Say you can't afford it. They might give you a deal.

I also second looking at subscription services, particularly if you already have Netflix/Amazon prime. I've also had really good experiences with NowTV, very easy to change what you want each month or cancel completely. Every time I change or cancel I get an email offering a cheaper deal within a month. I think most of the channels you watch live will be available on a regular TV and you could find good alternatives cheaper on subscription services like NowTV (they have separate film, tv series, children and sport individually cheaper than £120).

Do you need multiroom? You say you barely watch it, do you have DC, do they watch it?

Do you watch the standard pay channels?

We have an old flatscreen TV with a basic version of Freesat built in. We use this to watch the normal free channels via the satellite feed - we have a Sky dish from years ago but don't pay anything. There are two TV aerials on our roof but neither work so Freeview not an option.

We have a Now TV stick, which we use for the Now TV movies service at £6 a month. We also have Netflix at a tenner a month and use the normal channel catch up apps (BBC iPlayer, Channel 4 etc). We sometimes but rarely pay for Now TV entertainment, usually when I watched Modern Family, but now that's finished, I don't bother. So we pay £16 a month for TV plus the TV licence, add in fibre broadband and it comes to about £50 for all TV and broadband services, but we don't have any sports channels unless there are any free ones. I think that's more than enough to pay.

It says Now TV Sports is £34 a month for 11! sports channels but there's an offer of £25 a month for 6 months.

I phoned up recently and with the customer advisor got it down from £86 to £81.... I laughed but apparently I should be great full as it was going up to £110. So went through the online process to leave them and swap and got it down to £60 which for tv and broadband including sports is better than I could get it anywhere else.. always go through the motions of leaving..

I have just moved from Sky to Virgin this week! I was paying £120 to Sky for SkyQ, Multiroom and all channels, internet etc PLUS £30 a month to BT for BT Sports! I now get all that from Virgin with much better internet and the BT Sports through them for £64 a month!! I am saving £80 a month which is crazy and I haven't lost anything! We also got an extra BTsports channel which my DH is happy with!

No we don’t need multi room as it’s in our bedroom so really unnecessary, which I also tried to cancel but it barley brings the price down because of the current deals ending. I rang up to cancel as much as I could and the price went up!

Does you partner watch that much sport?
Yes I’m hoping I can convince him to cancel bt sport and find a way to stream the games on his laptop.

Really love Netflix and Amazon Prime. Tried Britbox and I did not really see much value in it. For Sky the really big attraction seems to be the sport, live football in particular. Of course I would never do this -but my DH might-, but via the internet it is possible to see just about any football match which is on for free with a bit of googling and link following. As you say, Sky is mega expensive otherwise.

Phone up and cancel the lot. Say you can't afford it. They might give you a deal

This is what I did as we’ve done it in the past and got the same deal for £90 with broadband which I’m more than happy with, but this time wouldn’t budge below £130 even though I was trying to cancel movies and multi room

I won't shock you with what we were paying but customers of 17yrs and I managed to get ours down by £50 the packages we were on were apparently obsolete