Any reason not to get the Sky deal?

[papillonrouge]

So, I am very tempted by the £19.50 per month Sky deal which gets me a Sky+HD box, free installation, broadband and weekend and evening calls. If I add £11.50 they will take over my BT line rental as well.

We currentl have Freeview, a BT phone line and O2 broadband. The phone rental plus package is £16.50 per month and the broadband is £13 per month.

So, for about £2 per month more I can get the Sky + functionality and Sky Atlantic (the only Sky channel that appeals, but it appeals a lot!).

This feels like a no brainer...am I missing something?

I should also say that our internet usage is frequent but very basic - FB, MN, surfing and shopping.

aslong as u dont move b4 the deal ends -we had to and were totally screwed over - they say its easy to take it with u but they dont mention the £120 instillation fee and the fact they wont continue ur current deal and u have to have a new one which now costs £11 more a month!

Sounds like a good deal.
I've got sky and got them to take over my BT line. You get caller display for free too. BT charge (or did do) for that.

BT can provide Caller Display free if you opt in to BT Privacy, but while opting in, you need to make sure not to allow BT sales people to pester you - there's some box allowing them to contact you, while providing Caller Display, and getting you listed on the TPS [Telephone Preference Service] to block cold callers.

You can also be switched to ex-directory for free (only around 50% of households are no longer listed, so you would just come off the list of numbers someone dialling from the phone book would pester).

If you have Sky whatever you do don't move to another property and try to cancel the package, even if you're outside the tie in. Despite the fact that they have never been instructed to install at the new address, they will refuse to believe you have no service and continue to charge, then threaten court action when you refuse to pay.

Oh, and I didn't mention the 35 minute long queues on thei "customer service" number.

I will never ever deal with Sky again - I don't care how good a deal may appear on the surface. I would advise anyone not to touch them with a very long barge pole.

What are Sky like for dealing with faults on your phone line?
When we have problems up the telegraph poles after bad weather, BT are pretty quick at sorting it.

I have had no trouble with them at all, including moving house and getting new installation free. I also cancelled for a while when things were tight, kept the equipment etc and re-joined a few months later. Never had toruble getting through to customer service and get a courtesy call every 6 months to ask if all is ok and do I want to review any of the package - last time they called they saved me a further £8 pm with some special deal.

ALthough I thought having HD meant an additional charge of £10pm - just something to check!

Can you provide a link to this Sky+ HD offer, because you may find it works out a bit more costly after the initial contract, unless it 'rolls' on (as HD normally has a 10 pounds per month surcharge over whatever package deal you have).

It does sound good (hence my interest in the deal) but I would tend not to go for them having the line rental, as telecomms and broadband suppliers face fees going to/from BT line rental, and usually pass those fees on. So even if they absorb the fee for switching you to Sky, you may at some future time have a fee to pay to switch the line back to BT, and a possible interruption to broadband and phone service.

In terms of faults on the line, knowing I'd talk directly to BT would give me a bit more confidence than someone from another firm such as Sky, who then passes the details on - you have lost the timestamp of when Openreach are told about the fault. (Also, even though Openreach is meant to treat them all equally, I suspect BT gets a tiny amount of priority from Openreach).

Also, keeping with BT means one could get the 10.00/month line rental (by paying a year up front), and divert calls through cheaper services such as 1899.com

However I'd consider the Sky option as (a) they'd add a dish and do the installation, and (b) after the first year, I'd cancel the service, and use a FreeSat HD box. Sky would probably offer me some deals to keep me, eg "FreeSat from Sky" - so I could switch back to Sky later, or if I cancelled and said I was getting FreeSat boxes anyway, they may later offer inducements to return.

I was with Sky in the long-distan3t past (10+ years ago) first before the DigiBox came on the scene, when they had 60cm and 80cm dishes. Anyway, I was given 3 months of movie channels free on Christmas (when I was unemployed, so used it to the full and was a bit of a hermit while everything froze outside!) and later, offered all channels for a year but with me paying only half the rental (17.50 a month, yes it was a long time ago!)

With a bit of extra kit and 2 more cables from the dish, it would be possible to add boxes to other rooms (3x bedrooms) at limited cost (one off for parts and cable), where Sky would charge 10 quid per month per room.

Does seem a generous deal - are you in an area which is being switched to digital ? If so, unfortunately, I'd probably be ineligible (I missed out on the offers at the time this region was being switched).

LRN beat me to it about the HD fee, but that mkes it doubly important to check :)

(In my defence, I started typing this around 10pm after seeing the OP when no other comments were showing, but then got this Mac to sleep, so the room was quiet while I watched some TV... then earlier thought I remembered seeing the OP, so went hunting for my part-prepared response.)

A slightly different thought - as I have seen it mentioned elsewhere today, is that Primus are meant to offer line rental at 7.99, so I will have to check whether 1899 works on their service. I'm willing to save over 4 quid a month vs BT rates for not staying with BT if I can still make cheap calls with 1899.com and have broadband from someone else too. (I think saving 40 quid a year will cover me for any fees I may need to pay if I did ever decide to switch back to BT.)

A friend of mine on twitter tweeted last night to say that he was switching back to BT from Sky. Why? Price.

So check the price list of phone calls. Make sure your calling pattern is actually cheaper under Sky. Different providers charge different fees for calls to different number types, plus minimum connect fees.

Sky Talk Tariff Guide

Have to say a max connection fee of 52p (on 070 numbers) is quite staggering.

070 numbers (aka "personal" or "follow me" numbers have been around for years and used to be from free/national rate to 15p/min [when destination was a landline] to 37.5p/min [for calls going to some mobiles]). I used an 070 number costing the top whack only for companies that badgered me to give them a number, and in some cases where I wanted to be sure I would not get unwanted SMS messages (070 does not pass them through, even though the 07 part makes it look like a 'mobile' number... they are in a way 'mobile' because the destination can be changed from London to Liverpool while the number stays the same, but they are not using mobile networks like Vodafone or Orange etc).

For anyone wanting to call mobiles (esp in the day) and spend at least a tenner a month on landline bill for calling mobiles, then some may find it cheaper to get a cheap PAYG phone and a SIM deal. I use Asda SIM (8p/min to landlines and mobiles, and 4p per SMS) only for calls to mobiles as 1899.com charges 10p/min. No connection charge for my Asda calls, and few enough of them that a 5 quid top-up lasts 2-3 months for me. YMMV :)

Also, with 1899 offering me calls to landlines at 5p per call (even if it lasts an hour or more) I have to wonder if the 'all inclusive' deals are good value - do other people really make 100+ calls a month, excluding times when BT offers free calls anyway (weekends in my case, to 01/02/03 nd 0845/0870) and what if they're out half the time and spend a few weeks away on holidays each year - paid for calls they never make.

Can understand more convenient than having to dial 1899 before calls (I save it in phone address book for relatives and friends I call most often, just dial it for other calls), but I only get billed 3 quid every 2-3 months for my landline calls and can spend an hour talking to a client while sorting out a PC problem, so know it will never 'break the bank' but prefer paying for what I use, not for things I might never get through... like 3000 texts a month :)

Wow - thanks so much for all the responses, been away for a couple of days so haven't been on MN but will read through them all tomorrow and work out what it's best to do.

This is why I am useless at technical stuff - reading all this just makes me want to weep and stick with what I have, and no one has even mentioned relative internet speed which is what everyone in RL keeps going on about. Thanks for all the advice.

Unfortunately I can't provide a link - I called their call centre about the offer without HD and the guy on the phone said he could do an HD deal for me as well with a free 2 months sport and movie trial.