Sky Loyalty/Retentions - Contract Renewal

[TheWhicker]

25+year Sky customer

Current out of contract Sky TV Bill - £119.00 (Full Sky UHD, Sports, Movies, multi-room etc.)

New "Offers" to sign for another 24 months - exactly same package items - £126.50

Sign up as a new customer, exactly same package - £88.50 (+£20 set up which isn't required)

Good to reward Loyalty!!

The fact they even charge you more to renew and stay with them is ludicrous business practice.

[Alanwigster]

Sad to say l think my times up, aside from the yearly in contract increases, my last in contract discount is coming to an end,  l'm advised by email that my prices are going up but with a smaller discount than l had -  and l believe no contract, but that isnt made clear. The thing is what Sky are offering for just TV  is almost as much as the top Virgin bundle, which includes broadband, all phone calls and an unlimited mobile sim. Now l'm not a fan of overseas call centers and l don't like an all eggs in one bucket senario  (broadband and phone is BT) the people in Scotland were always helpful so l have been willing to pay a bit extra because satellite tv is better and l support british jobs but now l see no point in loyalty, Sky had a wonderful product but seems determined to become just another streaming service, but still charging premium prices.

[Mark39]

@Alanwigster bear in mind that what you see on the Virgin website are new customer prices. You'd very likely be in the same position with them, as you are now with Sky, once your initial discounts have ended.

[Alanwigster]

Hi, yes l do understand that, but surely Sky wants to be better than that. I have stayed away from Virgin because of their poor customer service and yet, l lost signal 3 days ago to my dish, its 2 weeks to get an engineer, l call to discuss my contract, automated system, period on hold then transferred to a cheaply run call center in India and this is the same customer service level people complain about from Virgin.

It may be a promotional period but the value of all the content Sky want to charge £85 a month for is provided for around £35 and they are buying it in from Sky. How has the cost of Sky risen to over £1000 a year? Seriously a lot of content revolves around different channels/ providers anyway, so aside from Sport there is little that is truly exclusive to Sky.

It used to be said that it was easier to retain business than get new business, but that no longer appears to be the case, which is just sad.

[Colossus]

I, like most other 'loyel' Sky customers find this whole recontracting/new offers particularly distateful and I tell them each time I have to go through it. I've just had my 'new offers' letter and I am looking at a 25% increase in what I have been paying. It takes an absolute age to get somebody to talk/chat to and then the first two people invariably can't do anything other than parrot what the letter says. The customer service aspect is just poor from the start. The first person couldn't do anything. The second managed to 'reduce' my price rise to just 22%. It's just poor service. I don't think I will remain a Sky customer for much longer. I used to have Sky Mobile but I've now moved to Lebara. Looks like the TV will be shifting soon as well...

[xenon81]

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@Alanwigster wrote:

Hi, yes l do understand that, but surely Sky wants to be better than that. I have stayed away from Virgin because of their poor customer service and yet, l lost signal 3 days ago to my dish, its 2 weeks to get an engineer, l call to discuss my contract, automated system, period on hold then transferred to a cheaply run call center in India and this is the same customer service level people complain about from Virgin.

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Even though both companies use offshore call centres, there is still a major difference in the quality of service provided. Virgin constantly come last place in Ofcom's quarterly customer complaints bulletin, compared to Sky who are always first place with fewest complaints.

Virgin's customer service is just completely shambolic, even if you get through to someone in the UK there's a very high chance that your issue won't be resolved or any new contract will be messed up and cost far more than agreed.