Sky are rolling in it

Ok
At the start of the year, our Euro was worth around 61p sterling.
It's at around 65p today.
My maths isn't great but that means that they are now getting nearly STG£1 extra for even every basic Sky sub they collect in ROI, not to mention box office etc.

How nice for them,it's making, what we complain about in the other threads all the more of a rip off Vs the UK.
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eth0_

What a ridiculous winge! Are sky supposed to change our subscription prices every time the exchange rate fluctuates? Think about what you just said, what company would be able to administer something like that??? And we don't pay the same sub as people in the UK AFAIK, it's the Irish subscription price.

And one more thing! Film Four in the UK costs £6 sterling. Which is €9.23 (at today's exchange rate). I ordered it last night, prepared to pay nine euro, and the customer services guy said it's €6.50.

So Sky aren't complete rip off merchants. Personally, I think they're providing a great service, box office is a bit pricey but hey, they're not NTL which can only be a good thing!

Well I'd expect the price of my petrol and home heating oil to come down shortly-why not my sky sub??
Think about it,they are getting a minimum of STG£100,000 a month extra from their 222,000+ ROI subscribers for being here-thanks to the strength of the Euro.
At least Chorus(bad and all as they are) and NTL are paying Irish taxes and regulatory charges.
At a minimum, they could pass that onto the subscriber by allowing us Wimbledon interactive and BB interactive etc.

This is not a whinge actually-just a statement outlining the extent of the creaming .
mm
Even at the start of the year the Irish Euro Sky sub when converted back to sterling was slightly more than what the UK subscriber is charged.
Film four are taking the loss by charging you less for their stand alone service by the way.

eth0_

Well that's the price it is, you seem to have missed my point that for Sky to change their subs rate everytime the exchange rate rises or falls, that's an administrative nightmare, and i've never heard of any company doing something like this.

Oil etc are commodities, their price fluctuates, that's a fact of life, you can't put a TV service in the same bracket.

With the Euro being at an all time low when sky decided to fully convert their Irish prices to Euro, perhaps they should have priced in sterling and convert each time,like on your credit card?

There aren't too many UK based companies providing a service (as opposed to a commodity) to ROI-certainly not to as many as 200,000 + customers.
So I don't accept that they shouldn't at least give something back to the subscriber, say in terms of UTV/ch4 and interactive etc.
The Euro is likely to remain much stronger than at the start of the year and is climbing every day.
Sky are making a speculative gain , from now on and , in my opinion not to give something back to the subscriber in return is more greed.
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Saruman

actually there is... for instance eh vodaphone have what.. 1 million customers here? or something very high anyway.

Anyway what happens if the Euro becomes stronger than the £, would you like them to increase their prices accordingly? thought not...

ShaneOC

I think that both madman and eth0_ both have valid points. As madman stated Sky did change the prices over when the Euro was at an all time low. I do not expect them to re-adjust the prices now that the Euro has strengthened, however it would be very interesting to see what would have happened had the rate gone the other way. I can imagine the letter now...



Dear subscriber,

Due to the poor exchange rate we regretfully inform you that we shall be increasing the cost of your monthly subscription by €10 a month. Please bear in mind that the exchange rate is outside of Sky's control. We do realise that this increase follows on very quickly from the last €15 increase last month but we would like to remind you that that was for development cost incurred by Sky in order to remove the BBCi and Interactive E4 functionality for the Republic.

Sky are still in talks with both UTV and Channel 4 and hope to offer them to subscribers in the Republic following the World Cup*.

Yours etc,
Sky

* UTV and Channel 4 will be standalone subscription channels at €20 a month and shall be available after the 2006 World Cup.

digiman

I think that sky digital should adjust their prices because if anyone remembers when sky digital came out first we paid the same prices as uk, but once the difference in the exchange rate got bigger sky put the prices in the republic up, same way as they put up the box office prices up over £1 in one go. Fair play to madman for pointing this out.
Sky are just ripping us off. wimbledon, world cup, uk terresterials the list goes on.

Originally posted by Saruman
actually there is... for instance eh vodaphone have what.. 1 million customers here? or something very high anyway.

Anyway what happens if the Euro becomes stronger than the £, would you like them to increase their prices accordingly? thought not...

I don't think you can use Vodaphone IRL as a comparison .
They employ hundreds here in the ROI and virtually all their infrastructure for the service of it's customers here, is in the ROI.
Consequently a big percentage of what they take in in phone bills is redistributed back into the Irish economy.
Only the profits are repatriated.
This is not the case with Sky, who only have a small office here.
( most of that infrastructure and the company aswell was purchased for a song,by that UK based company, when the Euro was very low, and as for the shares they gave in payment...:( but thats for another thread)

I wouldn't like sky to increase prices - period.
But as Shane said , they would definitely rise prices if the £ went the other way.

They should be investing this windfall in to the provision of the extra services,long being campaigned for in other threads here.
By my maths, with the subscriber base increasing to say 275k by the end of the year, and with the Euro staying where it is, Sky will have a windfall of up to stg£2.5 million or more within 12 months.
Plenty to be investing in extra services, I would think.
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spanner_head

Originally posted by madman
With the Euro being at an all time low when sky decided to fully convert their Irish prices to Euro, perhaps they should have priced in sterling and convert each time,like on your credit card?

One of my subs (Zee TV Chan 808) gets converted every month and it's a killer when the euro sterling goes crap. But now it's good. Zee TV sees ROI and the UK as one and will not bill me in euro (they bill the rest of europe in euro but not ROI).