Sky TV

[WalterShite]

Can anyone give me some advice here?
A couple of years ago, I signed up to Sky TV and internet. My contract with them was for a year and I have never signed up for anything new since the year was up, just continued to pay the bill and use the service. I tried to cancel twice before but they discounted my package so I stuck with it.

I called a few weeks ago to cancel and they wouldn't let me, they said I had signed up for another years contract and would not be able to cancel it. I didn't sign up or agree to a new contract at all. I have received no correspondance from them to indicate that this was put in place. They said that it was on the notes that I had been told, that they would need to listen to the recording of my call and get the operator I spoke to to call back, they haven't called me.

Does anyone have any advice or experience with this? I am certain I didn't sign up to anything and I really can't afford it any more. I want to phone them back today and get it sorted but I feel like they know what they are talking about and I don't.

You agreed to a new contract when you agreed to the cheaper deal.
It is in the small print on their site.
It is in the small print in the email confirmation they would have sent you for the last deal. The last deal would have been something like £30 for the first 6 months and then rising to £90 for the remaining 6 months. A run down of services would have also been included.

I never received any such email or any other correspondance from them. If I had done, I would have cancelled it within the "cooling off" period. The first couple of times I agreed to their cheaper deals I was still able to cancel if I wanted to, but I didn't because they just gave me another cheap deal so I don't see why the last time signed me up to a contract. It was certainly never mentioned on the phone.

Bloodyteenagers is correct. By threatening to leave they have offered you a new lower rate which automatically comes as part of a new contract. It's the same with Virgin etc and mobile phones and utilities etc etc. They should however tell you this. IMO putting it on website is not sufficient because surely that assumes one would read the website in the first place, but I am no legal expert. In your shoes I would find the complaints email address and write. I would say what happened, that you did not knowingly enter into a new contract and that no one told you. Then say you did not receive anything in writing and that you spoke to person X on date X who guaranteed that your call would be investigated. That this was X weeks ago and that thus far no one has got back to you. You should then say what you would like them to do.

When we got a cheaper deal with Sky a couple of years ago they definitely told us that we would be entering into a new contract and read throughall the t&cs.

to be honest everyone always says they never recieved anything. you prob did at the time and just thought it was junk mail ect
they will have a copy of email date and time sent. the notes on acc is really all they need and if they listen to the call i would say it will be in there i deal with this daily and would say 99% of the time it has been said but the customer hasnt noticed.

As others have said, when you agreed to the discount/cheaper deal you agreed to sign up for another 12 month contract, it will have been explained to you, you can still cancel but you will have to pay a fee, which is probably what you confused with being able to cancel at any time.

Thanks for the replies everyone.
I read all of my mail and am careful not to dismiss anything that I know I pay for eg. Sky, o2, car insurance as junk mail. I would have remembered something that told me I was tied to it for a year.
It's possible that I might have missed something that was said over the phone but if they had said explicitly that I would be committing to a years contract I would remember agreeing to that. I would also remember them reading out a list of T&C to me. None of that explains why they havent bothered investigating or contacting me again.

I don't mind paying an early cancellation fee if that sorts it out, but as it stands I am due to have a significant reduction in my income and so decided to get rid of TV altogether. If I need to keep Sky I also need to keep paying my TV license and we no longer even use the TV.

I will try the complaints adress. I do better in writing than I do over the phone anyway, thanks all.

And according to their notes they did tell me over the phone but they could write anything on their notes which is why they said they would listen to the phonecall