Cancelling Sky/Call your bluff

I tried today for another discount after getting six months of a discount already in early 2010 and again this year, just told them times were hard and I had to prioritise my spending and that €48.50/month for the 6 mixes and High-Def was too much, the girl on the phone wouldn't budge so I left my 30 days notification go in for cancellation. If they don't give me a reduction and keep my package around the €30 a month I was used to paying then I will call their bluff and cancel.

Sky are a shower of gangsters charging €15/month extra for High-def which is no longer a new fangled novelty and is how all tv should be broadcast, heck even the lemmings in RTÉ are even getting into HD albeit slowly.

I can download everything Sky broadcasts anyway and if they don't drop the price I will cut it off, I have a Dual Sat/Terrestrial PVR already but my Saorview reception is unusable and I am desperately waiting for saorsat to come on stream so I can get the poverty stations from Montrose. The ball is in Sky's court now and if they refuse to drop the price I will cut it off and use the money on a 24mb broadband connection and a few premium filehosts instead.

I've had Sky since 2001 and back in 2006 the box went faulty, rang Sky oh that will be €100 call out, I cancelled and resubscribed under a different name to get the free box offer at the time. Within a few days of my cancellation Sky rang me back offering a free callout on my old account, I went with it and they came out and replaced the LNB and gave me a new Sky box. I then subsequently cancelled that for good feigning immigratiion as I was tied into a 12month contract on the new subscription I had taken out at a different address getting a new dish and box installed at my nan's for good measure.

When Sky dropped the Sky+ fee in 2007 (used to be a €15 recording fee) I got that in and in 2009 when I got a nice Panasonic HDTV and got in Sky+HD, this box went faulty then in January so I rang up complaining and again threatened to cancel unless the waived the callout and replacement box fee (they wanted something like €200) anyway they wouldn't budge so I put in my 30 days notice.

About a week later as I expected a girl rang from their "Customer Relations Department" asking for my reason to leave Sky, I told them I wasn't going to pay for "No Satellite Signal Being Received" and most certainly not pay for the new box, she then waived the callout fee including a new box and gave me a 6 month reduction which ran out last month. I got a refurb HD box and instead of €48.50 a month for the six mixes and HD pack I was paying €31.

I'll be awaiting a call from the customer retention team again so we'll see how it goes, obviously my account had been quite heavily discounted over the last two years so I'm finding it harder to get the discount but if say you've been paying Sky away for any period of time over the last while I'd definitely recommend you ring up and threaten to cancel and even do cancel and you get a discount if not on the day then sometime during the 30 day lead period to cut off.