Just the other day I was checking some of our bills and one that caught my eye was the Sky bill; it was more expensive than I remembered it being. After a quick check on our online account, I realised that our current deal was over and it was time to renegotiate. We have managed to okay deals in the past but nothing amazing. I had heard of certain packages and prices that other people had and they were A LOT better than ours. So, I took to Facebook to ask some other bloggers to share 9 tips for negotiating a better Sky package.
- Ring them up and explain that you have been with them for X amount of time and would like to know what they offer for loyal customers. It’s worked in our favour a few times! Toby and Roo
- Last year ended up cancelling as they were putting my costs up by nearly £50 (because I had discount already) funny enough they phoned me a couple of days later and offered me half price for a year. Will do the same this year if I’m not happy with what they offer me. Champagne and Petals
- Cancel after your contract then sign up as a new customer – I always find I get better deals that way and have used my husbands name instead of my own so they can’t trace it back to me. Then there were three..
- Call up at the end of each year and get them to go through their new customer deals for the new year with you – you might get them to lower the cost of your monthly bill and/or improve your package, even as an existing customer! Tattooed Tea Lady
- Ring up cancel your tv contract then wait for them to call and try to keep you as a customer you will get 50% off, our bill went from £126 to £62 a month and she told us to do the same again this year. MumDadPlus4
- Ring different days if you don’t like the deal they offer as they have different offers they are allowed to suggest on different days. Just Average Jen
- Sometimes threatening to cancel is enough to get you a good deal but if not then if you actually cancel they’ll usually call within a few days with a new deal. Just be careful that they might offer you a really good discount for 6 months but if you’re tied into the contract for 12 months it doesn’t work out to be that great a deal. Toby Goes Bananas
- For us they never offered a better deal and just let us cancel! Was quite pleased in a way though as they kept putting our bills up and even sent us a bill with an 8 month backdated payment for NOT having one of their services! Crazy company. Happily with Virgin now.
- Cancel, cancel, cancel! I decided to cancel and the best they could offer me was 40% off, a week or so later they offered me 50% off, a fortnight later it was 60% off and just as my cancellation day arrived they offered me 70% off! I will be sure to do the same this year too, I refuse to pay excessive amounts of money for television, internet or telephone for that matter! Rachel Swirl
I think as well as taking these tips into consideration, it’s worth doing some research as well. Before calling Sky I always make sure I look at what offers are available to both existing and new customers. Before trying to renegotiate we found out that existing customers can already get an offer better than what we have now and for only £1 wish more a month. That wasn’t really good enough though, especially after I learned what other people were paying.
Instead of calling we thought we’d try to use the online chat system this time around and it was fantastic. The man we dealt with was lovely and we were able to explain exactly what we wanted out of our new package. I really liked being able to see the chat and go back to look at what had been said, instead of being on the phone and maybe forgetting. Even without really threatening to cancel we were offered 50% off certain things and we were given different options for new deals. Some things we wanted weren’t included but the live chat helped me to ask for more without getting stressed or flustered.
We have now renegotiated our deal with Sky and thanks to some really helpful tips, we got a good deal. We’re now paying less than what our bill had gone up to, got a better TV package and better broadband so I’m really happy.
The on-line chat tip is a good one, saves forgetting what has been said