A lot of peeps on here seem to be more up to speed with this stuff than me, so hopefully I'll be able to get a few educated opinions on my current deal.
I'm with BT for landline, TV & internet.
I'm paying:
£55.01 - Broadband (Fibre 100 Halo 3 - Described as GFast @ 145MB) Total made up of £46.38 - Internet (as above) £8.63 - 700 minutes landline costs, including calls to mobiles. Complete waste of money as we never use the landline to make calls.
£26.21 - TV & Entertainment Total made up of £19.74 - Sports £6.47 - HD & 4K
AppleTV+ - £0.00 (3 month free trial ending in August, £8.99 thereafter. Won't be renewing due to being an extra bill I don't need atm).
I also have a separate Netflix account at £17.99 p/m, and also Amazon Prime (£79.99 p/y?).
I'm moving in the next few months, but tied into BT until May2025, so I must have got some sort of deal on one or more of those prices recently to be tied in (been with them about 7 years). So looking for ideas as to what may be a better fit in my new place, wherever that may be.
FWIW, I spoke to BT today to see if my account could be frozen if there was any gap in between my current and new address. The answer was no...however...they did say that if they couldn't match my current GFast @ 145MB internet speed at my new address, they would cancel my contract with no fees. I'm hoping there won't be a gap, but good to know.
Apart from the landline nonsense, I'm happy with what I've got, but would obviously like to shave a few squid if a can. Although in an ideal world I'd also like Sky Sports, but would depend on the price.
So, calling out to all you budding Martin Lewis ousters....!
I had a problem connecting the BT smart hub 2 to Sky Q (by wi-fi) - as did the BT engineer who visited my house. He tried various software patches to no avail.
In the end I went with Sky for broadband too - been very stable since. This was a year and a half ago.
1Gb/s broadband, with three booster hubs to increase signal around house, landline with free international calls, full TV package (sky sports, BT sports, movies, Netflix), and we have 4 TiVo boxes for various rooms in the house. You have to have an O2 sim as part of package though and we are paying £90 quid virgin and £20 O2 for one of the kids phones.
1Gb/s broadband, with three booster hubs to increase signal around house, landline with free international calls, full TV package (sky sports, BT sports, movies, Netflix), and we have 4 TiVo boxes for various rooms in the house. You have to have an O2 sim as part of package though and we are paying £90 quid virgin and £20 O2 for one of the kids phones.
I pay Sky £120 a month - full tv package but no broadband or phone. BT £37 a month for TNT Sports plus Netflix (£18.99) Prime Video (part of the annual fee) and Apple TV (£8.99). I also pay £55 a month for Broadband.
I'm being mugged I think, on a monthly basis, and after 25 years with Sky.
1Gb/s broadband, with three booster hubs to increase signal around house, landline with free international calls, full TV package (sky sports, BT sports, movies, Netflix), and we have 4 TiVo boxes for various rooms in the house. You have to have an O2 sim as part of package though and we are paying £90 quid virgin and £20 O2 for one of the kids phones.
I pay Sky £120 a month - full tv package but no broadband or phone. BT £37 a month for TNT Sports plus Netflix (£18.99) Prime Video (part of the annual fee) and Apple TV (£8.99). I also pay £55 a month for Broadband.
I'm being mugged I think, on a monthly basis, and after 25 years with Sky.
1Gb/s broadband, with three booster hubs to increase signal around house, landline with free international calls, full TV package (sky sports, BT sports, movies, Netflix), and we have 4 TiVo boxes for various rooms in the house. You have to have an O2 sim as part of package though and we are paying £90 quid virgin and £20 O2 for one of the kids phones.
I pay Sky £120 a month - full tv package but no broadband or phone. BT £37 a month for TNT Sports plus Netflix (£18.99) Prime Video (part of the annual fee) and Apple TV (£8.99). I also pay £55 a month for Broadband.
I'm being mugged I think, on a monthly basis, and after 25 years with Sky.
If you can’t be bothered haggling with Sky, you can log onto your account via the tv/box and if you are out of contract it lets you sign a new deal with discounts - it did with me anyway. Been 25+ years with Sky
1Gb/s broadband, with three booster hubs to increase signal around house, landline with free international calls, full TV package (sky sports, BT sports, movies, Netflix), and we have 4 TiVo boxes for various rooms in the house. You have to have an O2 sim as part of package though and we are paying £90 quid virgin and £20 O2 for one of the kids phones.
I pay Sky £120 a month - full tv package but no broadband or phone. BT £37 a month for TNT Sports plus Netflix (£18.99) Prime Video (part of the annual fee) and Apple TV (£8.99). I also pay £55 a month for Broadband.
I'm being mugged I think, on a monthly basis, and after 25 years with Sky.
If you can’t be bothered haggling with Sky, you can log onto your account via the tv/box and if you are out of contract it lets you sign a new deal with discounts - it did with me anyway. Been 25+ years with Sky
I won't haggle with Sky - I'm just going to bin them off (and BT). I've just bought a second Apple TV 4k box and with that plus Now TV entertainment at £9.99 (might add all Sport for £36 or just pay a daily pass fee if there's anything in particular I want to watch) and UK TV Play for nowt I'll be quids in.
I couldn't have done any of that until a year or so ago when we finally got fibre (900 Mbps) - previously I was getting 2 Mbps.
I see that quite a few customers of sky have had the experience we had with them, after good experience with sky after 26 years they doubled our bill from 70 a month, to £140, despite several calls to to the 'termination department' and about 20 phone calls they were not prepared to match the virgin price with all new equipment and an engineer to install. After 5 months Virgin bumped up the bill by £5.80, never used the house line for 8 months. ( has free weekend calls apparently). I still get calls about rejoining, about every month on my sky mobile.
I had no issue with staying with sky, and would have been happy to have stayed with them for say a 8% increase, but despite immense haggling, they simply would not come below £90. The length of service, counted for sweet FA, they obviously decided that customers like us were not an important criteria, and did not buy films, rent films etc.
Do not notice any particular improvement or poor service with Virgin, but the deal is for 18 months, so will be going back to sky in all probability, IF we can agree the payments.
One thing we did notice is that the customer services of Virgin is based outside the UK, although the pre- contract calls seemed to be based in the UK.?. Besides the 'language issues', the people at Virgin have a very limited ability to address issues, although we have been lucky few have arisen.
The customer services at Sky ( I still haver sky mobiles) are far more flexible, and will eventually, after the usual haggling will claim to speak to 'someone' and negotiate in my experience.
So we shall see, that is if we do not move!..... Personally I feel all these providers are part of multi national companies and give not a jot for customers, or loyalty, and if we cannot get a good deal we will get a firestick,and stuff them!..... we shall see after Christmas time.
1Gb/s broadband, with three booster hubs to increase signal around house, landline with free international calls, full TV package (sky sports, BT sports, movies, Netflix), and we have 4 TiVo boxes for various rooms in the house. You have to have an O2 sim as part of package though and we are paying £90 quid virgin and £20 O2 for one of the kids phones.
I've got the same or very similar package with Virgin. I've negotiated a cheaper price for longer than I can remember. My existing contract just expired, it was meant to be something like £150 pm and I was paying £96 pm.
The contract was going up to £210 pm and I said I wasn't willing to pay more than my existing £96 Pm. For some peculiar reason they offered & I accepted £86 pm.
They then ballsed it up and I've had to contact them numerous times since March because they are utterly incompetent and untrustworthy.
However, it's finally sorted at £86 pm, a saving of £124 pm x 18 months = £2,232.
I’ve been meaning to sort out my sky contract but been waiting for fibre cabling to be installed in our crescent, it was meant to be installed in April but finally we got notification last week it was up and running. Anyway cut a long story short, in March sky but me on a rolling contract increasing my monthly payment from £138to £148 / month. For that I was on sky Q, crappy broadband, phone line, sky sports, and cinema, I also been a loyal customer for 25 years. You will probably understand I wasn’t happy to pay that (especially as I retired this time last year), I tried to get it reduced over the phone where they offered a reduction of £20 / month, I refused. Been looking at others but basically I didn’t there tele options where as good as sky’s.
Spoke to my boy who suggested we go over to the sky shop at Bluewater, which we did today. Came out with everything we already had, except the phone line which we only ever get nuisance calls on. Plus Sky screen instead of Q, the broadband is now upgraded to full fibre at 145mb/sec instead of 36mb., also got ad blocker and something else, total £68 / month as saving of £80 / month. All we had to do was get my wife to be named as the main person instead of me, sign up with her email address and thus become a new customer.
What really pisses me off is I’ve been with for 25 years, and how do they treat you, by giving all new customers this super deal for half the price of loyal customer who been with them for 25 years. Next time I will be back doing the same deal.
I had exactly the same experience as you at the Sky shop in Bluewater only that they said tell the call centre you are emigrating to Spain (and presumably getting divorced at the same time). However, I decided to be straight with the girl on the phone from Sky in that I was simply cancelling the old service as their representative at Bluewater said that by putting the contract in my wives name as a new customer would save me around £75 a month. I was expecting an argument but she couldn’t have been more helpful. All very strange but a good result financially so hey ho. Only got to wait for Open Reach to set up my home for ultra fast internet now then I’m good to go.
To be honest wished you had posted that earlier, just had a follow up call from sky, asking why and I felt extremely guilty going through my lie again. I think if you had I would have been brave enough to done what you did.
To be honest wished you had posted that earlier, just had a follow up call from sky, asking why and I felt extremely guilty going through my lie again. I think if you had I would have been brave enough to done what you did.
Sorry to hear that. You should’ve have been put in that position, Sky could quite easily block their own staff from signing up new customers at the same supply address if they wanted to rather than leave you to make a difficult choice as to how you handle the termination. I only phoned them today by the way so was expecting a difficult call after reading your first post.
If you can get yourself in the headspace that you will leave sky, and can do without a premium service for a few days, they will start texting you offers that get better and better over the 30 days notice. I caved with 3 days to go and got a 80 quid ish bill down to 22. That was with sport and entertainment but no movies.
Thanks cafcforever, it’s done now so I will just have to remember my story. I’m actually useless at telling lies, I’m that bad that I gave up many years ago. Anyway I’m pleased my post helped you reduce your monthly outgoings. Funny when they rung me back they ask if I had adverse comments re Sky, I replied yes, that Sky dosen’t respect those who have been loyal over long periods, I gave an example that they advertised massive savings to new customers but put existing customer rates up alarmingly, she agreed with me,
I’ve been meaning to sort out my sky contract but been waiting for fibre cabling to be installed in our crescent, it was meant to be installed in April but finally we got notification last week it was up and running. Anyway cut a long story short, in March sky but me on a rolling contract increasing my monthly payment from £138to £148 / month. For that I was on sky Q, crappy broadband, phone line, sky sports, and cinema, I also been a loyal customer for 25 years. You will probably understand I wasn’t happy to pay that (especially as I retired this time last year), I tried to get it reduced over the phone where they offered a reduction of £20 / month, I refused. Been looking at others but basically I didn’t there tele options where as good as sky’s.
Spoke to my boy who suggested we go over to the sky shop at Bluewater, which we did today. Came out with everything we already had, except the phone line which we only ever get nuisance calls on. Plus Sky screen instead of Q, the broadband is now upgraded to full fibre at 145mb/sec instead of 36mb., also got ad blocker and something else, total £68 / month as saving of £80 / month. All we had to do was get my wife to be named as the main person instead of me, sign up with her email address and thus become a new customer.
What really pisses me off is I’ve been with for 25 years, and how do they treat you, by giving all new customers this super deal for half the price of loyal customer who been with them for 25 years. Next time I will be back doing the same deal.
I had exactly the same experience as you at the Sky shop in Bluewater only that they said tell the call centre you are emigrating to Spain (and presumably getting divorced at the same time). However, I decided to be straight with the girl on the phone from Sky in that I was simply cancelling the old service as their representative at Bluewater said that by putting the contract in my wives name as a new customer would save me around £75 a month. I was expecting an argument but she couldn’t have been more helpful. All very strange but a good result financially so hey ho. Only got to wait for Open Reach to set up my home for ultra fast internet now then I’m good to go.
hope you haven't got the girl in Bluewater the sack
I’ve been meaning to sort out my sky contract but been waiting for fibre cabling to be installed in our crescent, it was meant to be installed in April but finally we got notification last week it was up and running. Anyway cut a long story short, in March sky but me on a rolling contract increasing my monthly payment from £138to £148 / month. For that I was on sky Q, crappy broadband, phone line, sky sports, and cinema, I also been a loyal customer for 25 years. You will probably understand I wasn’t happy to pay that (especially as I retired this time last year), I tried to get it reduced over the phone where they offered a reduction of £20 / month, I refused. Been looking at others but basically I didn’t there tele options where as good as sky’s.
Spoke to my boy who suggested we go over to the sky shop at Bluewater, which we did today. Came out with everything we already had, except the phone line which we only ever get nuisance calls on. Plus Sky screen instead of Q, the broadband is now upgraded to full fibre at 145mb/sec instead of 36mb., also got ad blocker and something else, total £68 / month as saving of £80 / month. All we had to do was get my wife to be named as the main person instead of me, sign up with her email address and thus become a new customer.
What really pisses me off is I’ve been with for 25 years, and how do they treat you, by giving all new customers this super deal for half the price of loyal customer who been with them for 25 years. Next time I will be back doing the same deal.
I had exactly the same experience as you at the Sky shop in Bluewater only that they said tell the call centre you are emigrating to Spain (and presumably getting divorced at the same time). However, I decided to be straight with the girl on the phone from Sky in that I was simply cancelling the old service as their representative at Bluewater said that by putting the contract in my wives name as a new customer would save me around £75 a month. I was expecting an argument but she couldn’t have been more helpful. All very strange but a good result financially so hey ho. Only got to wait for Open Reach to set up my home for ultra fast internet now then I’m good to go.
so can I ask how much your deal is and what it is for?
I’ve been meaning to sort out my sky contract but been waiting for fibre cabling to be installed in our crescent, it was meant to be installed in April but finally we got notification last week it was up and running. Anyway cut a long story short, in March sky but me on a rolling contract increasing my monthly payment from £138to £148 / month. For that I was on sky Q, crappy broadband, phone line, sky sports, and cinema, I also been a loyal customer for 25 years. You will probably understand I wasn’t happy to pay that (especially as I retired this time last year), I tried to get it reduced over the phone where they offered a reduction of £20 / month, I refused. Been looking at others but basically I didn’t there tele options where as good as sky’s.
Spoke to my boy who suggested we go over to the sky shop at Bluewater, which we did today. Came out with everything we already had, except the phone line which we only ever get nuisance calls on. Plus Sky screen instead of Q, the broadband is now upgraded to full fibre at 145mb/sec instead of 36mb., also got ad blocker and something else, total £68 / month as saving of £80 / month. All we had to do was get my wife to be named as the main person instead of me, sign up with her email address and thus become a new customer.
What really pisses me off is I’ve been with for 25 years, and how do they treat you, by giving all new customers this super deal for half the price of loyal customer who been with them for 25 years. Next time I will be back doing the same deal.
I had exactly the same experience as you at the Sky shop in Bluewater only that they said tell the call centre you are emigrating to Spain (and presumably getting divorced at the same time). However, I decided to be straight with the girl on the phone from Sky in that I was simply cancelling the old service as their representative at Bluewater said that by putting the contract in my wives name as a new customer would save me around £75 a month. I was expecting an argument but she couldn’t have been more helpful. All very strange but a good result financially so hey ho. Only got to wait for Open Reach to set up my home for ultra fast internet now then I’m good to go.
so can I ask how much your deal is and what it is for?
If you click on the see previous quotes red man you can see my deal and what I got for it was £68 I believe cafcforever was very similar to mine, this was down from £148 / month.
I’ve been meaning to sort out my sky contract but been waiting for fibre cabling to be installed in our crescent, it was meant to be installed in April but finally we got notification last week it was up and running. Anyway cut a long story short, in March sky but me on a rolling contract increasing my monthly payment from £138to £148 / month. For that I was on sky Q, crappy broadband, phone line, sky sports, and cinema, I also been a loyal customer for 25 years. You will probably understand I wasn’t happy to pay that (especially as I retired this time last year), I tried to get it reduced over the phone where they offered a reduction of £20 / month, I refused. Been looking at others but basically I didn’t there tele options where as good as sky’s.
Spoke to my boy who suggested we go over to the sky shop at Bluewater, which we did today. Came out with everything we already had, except the phone line which we only ever get nuisance calls on. Plus Sky screen instead of Q, the broadband is now upgraded to full fibre at 145mb/sec instead of 36mb., also got ad blocker and something else, total £68 / month as saving of £80 / month. All we had to do was get my wife to be named as the main person instead of me, sign up with her email address and thus become a new customer.
What really pisses me off is I’ve been with for 25 years, and how do they treat you, by giving all new customers this super deal for half the price of loyal customer who been with them for 25 years. Next time I will be back doing the same deal.
I had exactly the same experience as you at the Sky shop in Bluewater only that they said tell the call centre you are emigrating to Spain (and presumably getting divorced at the same time). However, I decided to be straight with the girl on the phone from Sky in that I was simply cancelling the old service as their representative at Bluewater said that by putting the contract in my wives name as a new customer would save me around £75 a month. I was expecting an argument but she couldn’t have been more helpful. All very strange but a good result financially so hey ho. Only got to wait for Open Reach to set up my home for ultra fast internet now then I’m good to go.
so can I ask how much your deal is and what it is for?
If you click on the see previous quotes red man you can see my deal and what I got for it was £68 I believe cafcforever was very similar to mine, this was down from £148 / month.
Thanks, useful info for when mine comes up in July.
Can’t fault the install of our new sky stream and broadband. Broadband speed is as they at 146mb, tv works fine, even managed to connect everything onto the new broadband without any problems. So overall very good, and I’m saving £80/month so even happier.
Can’t fault the install of our new sky stream and broadband. Broadband speed is as they at 146mb, tv works fine, even managed to connect everything onto the new broadband without any problems. So overall very good, and I’m saving £80/month so even happier.
Trouble for us is, if sky give up on satellite delivery and move to streaming given our Internet speed we will be stuffed. Had 0.2 mps when we first moved in and when fiber was finally available to a box half a mile away we average 20 mps. So once all users are switched over I dread to think how much the speed will drop.
My package was about to jump up to £107, it had been £67 then up to £88. Called yesterday and the girl I spoke with could only do £5 cheaper.
Called today to cancel, got a deal at £68 per month for 24 months. I did remove the sky mini box, hardly use it and decided not worth paying for anymore.
Annoying that you have to this little dance with them, call yesterday took about 15 mins. Today was over half an hour.
My package was about to jump up to £107, it had been £67 then up to £88. Called yesterday and the girl I spoke with could only do £5 cheaper.
Called today to cancel, got a deal at £68 per month for 24 months. I did remove the sky mini box, hardly use it and decided not worth paying for anymore.
Annoying that you have to this little dance with them, call yesterday took about 15 mins. Today was over half an hour.
It is a ridiculous process you need to go through every time. I think it also leads to lower customer satisfaction even when you do get a decent discount, because you always still have the feeling that you could have got more.
It's like car insurance. Get your renewal quote, might look elsewhere, give your current insurers a ring and suddenly it's £70 cheaper. Why not just offer that in the first place. It's like a merry go round. ESure lose a client to Admiral, Admiral lose a client to Aviva, Aviva lose a client to Hastings Direct who lose a client to ESure.
I would prefer it if it had a price that was the same for everybody. I appreciate people have different packages but the elements of the package should have a certain price by law. Otherwise customers are being ripped off, especially ones that aren't so good at haggling. Also new customers should pay the same as loyal ones! Not less. Then the companies have to pitch those prices at a level to keep customers. I don't think it is morally right that a company can sell essentially the same thing to one person at a far higher price than another. You could still have contracts by applying a fixed percentage reduction if you do.
I would prefer it if it had a price that was the same for everybody. I appreciate people have different packages but the elements of the package should have a certain price by law. Otherwise customers are being ripped off, especially ones that aren't so good at haggling. Also new customers should pay the same as loyal ones! Not less. Then the companies have to pitch those prices at a level to keep customers. I don't think it is morally right that a company can sell essentially the same thing to one person at a far higher price than another. You could still have contracts by applying a fixed percentage reduction if you do.
This is a new type of capitalism though. It wasn't common years ago where you had private companies making pofits but there was a view that charging people different amounts for the same product was wrong. There used to be a view where loyalty was rewarded and that was beneficial for private companies, now many penalise it.
This is a new type of capitalism though. It wasn't common years ago where you had private companies making pofits but there was a view that charging people different amounts for the same product was wrong. There used to be a view where loyalty was rewarded and that was beneficial for private companies, now many penalise it.
It has always happened with many products. For instance a supplier would sell cheaper to a national supermarket as opposed to smaller stores (partly due to buying power but not exclusively). This then means that a consumer gets its product cheaper by the route. I agree this now happening more widely now eg supermarkets giving card holders cheaper prices than non-card holders. sorry to everyone else, don't want to derail the thread.
Comments
I'm with BT for landline, TV & internet.
I'm paying:
£55.01 - Broadband (Fibre 100 Halo 3 - Described as GFast @ 145MB)
Total made up of
£46.38 - Internet (as above)
£8.63 - 700 minutes landline costs, including calls to mobiles. Complete waste of money as we never use the landline to make calls.
£26.21 - TV & Entertainment
Total made up of
£19.74 - Sports
£6.47 - HD & 4K
AppleTV+ - £0.00 (3 month free trial ending in August, £8.99 thereafter. Won't be renewing due to being an extra bill I don't need atm).
I also have a separate Netflix account at £17.99 p/m, and also Amazon Prime (£79.99 p/y?).
I'm moving in the next few months, but tied into BT until May2025, so I must have got some sort of deal on one or more of those prices recently to be tied in (been with them about 7 years). So looking for ideas as to what may be a better fit in my new place, wherever that may be.
FWIW, I spoke to BT today to see if my account could be frozen if there was any gap in between my current and new address. The answer was no...however...they did say that if they couldn't match my current GFast @ 145MB internet speed at my new address, they would cancel my contract with no fees. I'm hoping there won't be a gap, but good to know.
Apart from the landline nonsense, I'm happy with what I've got, but would obviously like to shave a few squid if a can. Although in an ideal world I'd also like Sky Sports, but would depend on the price.
So, calling out to all you budding Martin Lewis ousters....!
Have I got a good deal as things stand!?
In the end I went with Sky for broadband too - been very stable since. This was a year and a half ago.
Like above though I've heard and read lots of issues with Sky Q (especially if you have multiform/mini's) with non sky broadband.
we are with virgin , got the Volt package.
I had no issue with staying with sky, and would have been happy to have stayed with them for say a 8% increase, but despite immense haggling, they simply would not come below £90.
The length of service, counted for sweet FA, they obviously decided that customers like us were not an important criteria, and did not buy films, rent films etc.
Do not notice any particular improvement or poor service with Virgin, but the deal is for 18 months, so will be going back to sky in all probability, IF we can agree the payments.
One thing we did notice is that the customer services of Virgin is based outside the UK, although the pre- contract calls seemed to be based in the UK.?. Besides the 'language issues', the people at Virgin have a very limited ability to address issues, although we have been lucky few have arisen.
The customer services at Sky ( I still haver sky mobiles) are far more flexible, and will eventually, after the usual haggling will claim to speak to 'someone' and negotiate in my experience.
So we shall see, that is if we do not move!..... Personally I feel all these providers are part of multi national companies and give not a jot for customers, or loyalty, and if we cannot get a good deal we will get a firestick,and stuff them!..... we shall see after Christmas time.
I've negotiated a cheaper price for longer than I can remember.
My existing contract just expired, it was meant to be something like £150 pm and I was paying £96 pm.
The contract was going up to £210 pm and I said I wasn't willing to pay more than my existing £96 Pm.
For some peculiar reason they offered & I accepted £86 pm.
They then ballsed it up and I've had to contact them numerous times since March because they are utterly incompetent and untrustworthy.
However, it's finally sorted at £86 pm, a saving of £124 pm x 18 months = £2,232.
Called today to cancel, got a deal at £68 per month for 24 months. I did remove the sky mini box, hardly use it and decided not worth paying for anymore.
Annoying that you have to this little dance with them, call yesterday took about 15 mins. Today was over half an hour.
sorry to everyone else, don't want to derail the thread.