Losing customers

[Tomjah]

No wonder Sky is losing customers as over the last few years Customer Service has dramatically gone downhill. Clearly Sky now sets itself very poor customer service standards and then fails to meet them. I challenge a director/senior manager to sit with a customer for hours trying to talk to untrained staff who have no power to make a decision. After 17+ years with Sky I have had enough with dealing with this outfit. Endless hours on the phone being shunted from one incompetent to another. No one can email you and you are lucky to get a text from a no reply number!

My question was very simple in asking them for a price equal or better than they offer a new Sky Q customer. 3 hours and 18 minutes and 4 departments later no answer.

The only way for Sky to improve is by hitting them in the pocket by leaving and encourage other disgruntled customers to do so. I have given them 31 days notice today and asked to be only contacted by email. 

[PandJ2020]

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@Tomjah wrote:

My question was very simple in asking them for a price equal or better than they offer a new Sky Q customer.

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Looks like those days are gone.  Only new customers get those offers and you have to negotiate especially hard to get close.

[Rob11]

I agree SKY have lost it, but given they are now ownd by Comcast it figures.  Comcast are a horriblle lot only interested in how much they can get from you....I cancelled SKY end of last year after they hiked up my monthly subs.  They sent me a 'don't leave' deal so I rang them and their rep said the deal expired four days ago but he could offer me a deal for £2 a month more, that was it the offer had expired and computer says NO..I think the guy was unable to honour the offer as Comcast dos not operate as a Brit company would or as SKY used to.  On principle I wouldn't pay more than the offer they sent so they have lost me as a customer.  Just posted the SKY Q box back and replaced it with a fresat recordable which is wondrful and will save me a bunch of money!

[Tomjah]

Rob sums the situation up rather well. Incompetence pettiness and lack of ANY customer service cascades throughout the company. Luckily my contract ends tomorrow so no longer plagued with incompetence and nonsence. I urge existing Sky subscribers to review there requirements as the  'value' of Sky has diminished over the last few years  

[Birchy23]

My subscription was hiked from £60 to £74.71 then up to £103 all in a few months. I simply said enough is enough and after nearly 30 years with sky, I cancelled it.  Costing me a fortune to watch sports for example, just to watch my team, then what happens??? .... TNT (BT) take a huge chunk of the games, plus all the European games, which is another subscription (solely to watch just my team). Then over the Xmas period, guess what?? another subscrition required called Amazon.  We are absolutely being played here. Licence fee, the cost of purchasing the TV, the electricity to run it,  then the subscriptions and equipment. The cost is just astronomic,  then they whack it up whenever they want. Yes i'm afraid that when it costs almost as much to watch TV than it cost to feed a family for a month enough is enough - to those who agree, vote with your feet as they say. 

[TimmyBGood]

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@Birchy23 wrote:

 Costing me a fortune to watch sports for example, just to watch my team, then what happens??? .... TNT (BT) take a huge chunk of the games, plus all the European games, which is another subscription (solely to watch just my team). Then over the Xmas period, guess what?? another subscrition required called Amazon.  We are absolutely being played here.

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Which was, of course, entirely the choice of the Premier League to maximise their own income by having platforms bid against each other for rights, and not letting any one provider have all the broadcast matches. 

https://www.premierleague.com/news/3741409 

Still, those £60K a week player salaries don't pay themselves...

[Rob11]

I agree with all you say, when one works out what SKY costs in viewing time, it is ridiculous. After I ditched SKY, I worked out that it was costing me around £10 per hour to watch F1, the rest of SKY is nothing special....I now pay for ITVx which is £5.99 a month and includes Britbox, I resubscribed to Netflix at £4.99 a month and I will watch F1 on CH4...saving myself around £500 a year. 

[bruce]

Like yourself, prices were just getting stupid, we were paying up to £180 a month for everything, so we decided that we just were just not going to pay stupid figures like that anymore, we still pay about £70 just for basic sky, and internet. That could also change soon. It is funny if you look around online, you can eventually find what you want to see without paying those horendous figures.

[Rob11]

I feel sorry for those trapped in having broadband and TV from Comcast/SKY,  they rope you in for a contract at one price and you know they are going to raise the price during the period.  THe Government need to stop these onerous contracts....they should not be allowed to whack up the price midway through a signed agreement.  People who are paying through the nose for what can be bought far cheaper elsewhere need a reality check.

I could hardly believe the post that said they were paying £180 a month and would advise them to ditch SKY as soon as the contract ends. It is easy to switch broadband suppliers, as easy as changing your socks, but people get hooked paying these sharks forever for some reason. The TV market is full of suppliers, you can get Netflix, Prime, Para on monthly contracts and ITVx is free with ads.....SKY is 18 months and you never know how many times they are going to whack up premiums...vote with your feet and walkn away from these sharks.

[Daniel0210]

@Rob11 

Sky are allowed to potentially increase their price once every 12 months. This is in April in the UK so could impact an 18 month discounted deal twice. 

[MarkGoldsmith]

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@Daniel0210 wrote:

@Rob11 

Sky are allowed to potentially increase their price once every 12 months. This is in April in the UK so could impact an 18 month discounted deal twice. 

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This is the same for every service provider. TV, broadband, mobile phones - all companies are allowed one annual in contract pay rise and much like last year this year will be high as they are dependent of the recent inflation figure.

in fact unless I'm mistaken last year Skys annual price increases in some areas were actually less than their competitors as Sky didn't increase by the maximum they were allowed.

[Tomjah]

It is amazing what is out there free of charge via apps etc. TNT formerly BT sport is all free via my EE account using the Discovery App. An Amazon fire stick is another revelation!

I have sent all the Sky equipment back and will now NOT be losing hours and weeks of my life talking to people who refuse to give you there full name or individual identifying  number, being transferred from one useless department to another, multi security nonsense numerous times and no-one able to make a decision.

A new issue that has now arisen is poor wi-fi in half the house. A teccie engineer neighbour has informed me that a reason for my now even poorer internet via sky is that the numerous sky  Q mini boxes acted as boosters to my internet signal. Although I have internet downstairs bedroom 2/3 and 4 are far below the Sky 'every room promise'. I will wait a few weeks and regain some will power before I do battle with Sky again C'est la vie !!!!!!!

Any advice greatly appreciated. I pay for the best that Sky can offer which was always poor with lots of drop outs due to open reach fibre box being over 500 metres from property and the last 500 metres via copper on telephone poles between many trees 

[Mark39]

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@Tomjah wrote:

I have sent all the Sky equipment back...

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Have you given notice to cancel? Returning your equipment won't cancel your Sky contract.

[Tomjah]

Notice given and even that was a trauma as Sky refused to accept written termination (I was out of contract) without several phone calls and email correspondence 

[TimmyBGood]

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@Rob11 wrote:

SKY is 18 months and you never know how many times they are going to whack up premiums...

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Typically once, because mathematics dictates that one annual price rise will fall within an 18 month minimum term.

The exception would be where the customer has taken up an offer such as the one last year which was 'half price until the end of 2023', or a specific 'free' period (usually three months).

Unfortunately some subscribers appear to be unable to work out this means prices will rise.

A rather fairer criticism is that the magnitude of the inevitable annual increase is unknown at the time of accepting the contract, because it's based on a government calculation of CPI the following December, and that might be 11 months away.