Currently have Sky broadband and HD  tv. BT Max Tv Fibre  package is about 1/2 the cost. Anybody got bad/good BT experience before I desert Sky please? 

As with my son, just phone Sky and tell them you are moving to BT, they will put you through to retentions who will price match/undercut and throw in a load of extras such as Sky Q, packages etc. Remember to haggle and ask for a fixed price contract.

 

BT will put price up mid contract up to 3 times a year, don't fall the trick of them waiving the price increase because the small print will tie you into a new long term contract. At the end of BT short term freebies/offers, the price shoots up and if you're daft enough to stay beyond your contract you'll end up paying twice or more. Don't complicate matters by getting their BT mobile offers, these are often tied to your other contracts.

 

If you go through Topcashback or Quidco, you can usually bag a hefty cashback in addition to BT rewards etc. The cashback offers vary from week to week.

 

I got £260 (£150 BT reward + £110 cashback) for a 12 month BT with TV HD plus BT Sport contract. The Youview is sh!t and basically freeview plus some obscure stuff nobody watches. Monthly started at £29 but was well over twice that at the end. Only did it for the cashback.

 

I moved to Plusnet (which is owned by BT) got some more cashback plus much cheaper monthly with just BT sport, much cheaper. And customer service is in Sheffield with people who speak and understand English, unlike Talktalk and BT, don't know about Sky CS.

 

All contracts on 80mb fibre btw, it costs them virtually nothing nowadays.

Edited 28 February, 20197 yr by xman

Sky in ireland CS is irish,for retentions.. actual problems.. god knows.

Eir (one of the roi providers) is like bt.. great introductory offer of quite cheap for 6months, But doubles after that.. for a 24month contract. .. and CS is utterly abysmal. Loads of people complain about the eir tv being unreliable and support being crap.

We just have vodafone bband and phone and a freesat box. Dont watch much actual tv these days, as most of it is ****e. Voda CS is deffo in the far far far east.. but, as much as i hate them they are consistently the best value for money over here. I know a few people who ditched sky for iptv set ups etc and its just driving them mental.

I have BT TV, BB, BT Sport (great for Baseball) & free weekend calls. Been with them for just about 15 months, with 3 months left. Original deal for all of the above was £45pm. We've had one price increase in that time, which was about £4.50pm. 

 

The TV package is called Max and is currently £15pm, but will go up to £20pm after 18 months. Max is mostly your bog standard Freeview but includes BT Sport, ESPN, Eurosport et al, and a few more premium (Discovery, History, Animal Planet) and HD channels - which are fed to your home via the broadband. A lot of the channels are dross, but far less than VM and Sky. More than happy with the You View box, it records 2 channels at once, which is far less than VM and Sky, but it hasn't bothered me, nor been an issue. 

 

BB is currently £30pm, but will go up to around £45pm at the end of 18 months. 

 

Weekend calls are included. We did have 24/7 calls included with VM, and I thought I'd miss that, but I don't as I just use my mobile. I would quite gladly dispense with the landline, which I'm looking into. 

 

Cannot comment on Customer Services as I've not had to call them or have an engineer out, unlike with VM and Sky. In the two contracts with VM I had difficulty connecting my Xbox to the WiFi. VM informed me my Xbox was defective. Funny how I've never had any issues connecting it with Sky or BT, and the equipment is in the same location!

 

We intend to stay with BT when our contract runs out, unless they do something stupid and double the price and refuse to believe we will actually leave them, which was the situation we found ourselves in with our previous contract with VM.

 

I find Sky and BT are about the same, but prefer the BT stripped down offering better. Think Lidl versus Sainsbury, not a lot of choice, but offers just what you need! 

 

 

Was a SKY customer for many years (basic package) but had reception problems with the dish due to a neighbours tree. Long story after they messed me about for several weeks decided to switch everything (including land line and broadband) over to BT whilst saving about £20 per month. Added bonus was getting BT Sport for FREE as long as we remain a BT customer. Been very happy with improved fibre optic broadband, several free sports channels, including Saturday evening live football and Champions League games midweek. Been with them 20 months now and would never go back to SKY having seen how much better the BT service is and bonus of being cheaper as well.

Note that leaving any provider before the end of your contract is very expensive. Always check the small print!

44 minutes ago, xman said:

Note that leaving any provider before the end of your contract is very expensive. Always check the small print!

Gave SKY the required 30 days notice. You pay them one month upfront so nothing to pay when you leave.

27 minutes ago, shyVRS245 said:

Gave SKY the required 30 days notice. You pay them one month upfront so nothing to pay when you leave.

 

That is only if you are OUT OF CONTRACT.

If still in contract, they will charge you early termination fees.

https://www.cable.co.uk/providers/guides/cancel-sky/

In the UK Sky CS is in Livingston, Scotland

3 hours ago, PetrolDave said:

In the UK Sky CS is in Livingston, Scotland

It's okay, just use Google Translate. 

14 minutes ago, Fin69 said:

It's okay, just use Google Translate. 

Fit like loon?

33 minutes ago, Fin69 said:

It's okay, just use Google Translate. 

The lady I spoke to there in Customer Services kept me on the line for 45 minutes while she tried every trick in her very thick book of excuses as to why I should remain a SKY customer. However I explained that with no TV signal I was paying for a service for which they could NOT provide me with a SERVICE, therefore unless I could convince my neighbours tree to stop growing by talking to it (neighbour would never cut it down) then I really had no option.

Once BT had my direct debit, they regularly raped my current account for large amounts not even close to the agreed monthly figure.

 

Cancelled the DD and paid manually until I could exit the contract.

 

BT are ROBBING DOGS. Never again.

 

Have tried BT, Talk Talk and SKY. BT are dishonest, Talk Talk's Huawei hardware was so shockingly bad we went back to SKY whilst still paying the TalkTalk contract - the TalkTalk STB was in the dustbin by then. Cant wait till we move to a cable area and try Virgin instead.

 

 

Edited 1 March, 20197 yr by camelspyyder

52 minutes ago, camelspyyder said:

Cant wait till we move to a cable area and try Virgin instead.

Might work, if it's an ex-Telewest area. If it's an ex-NTL area, from the frying pan to the fire.

Maybe I wont have to - after another overseas winter SWMBO is now competent at  FIrestick / VPN operation so I may just be able to convince her that we don't actually need pay-TV any more. Looking now at cheap broadband deals without home phone or TV.

 

 

Edited 1 March, 20197 yr by camelspyyder

1 hour ago, KenONeill said:

Might work, if it's an ex-Telewest area. If it's an ex-NTL area, from the frying pan to the fire.

When we lived in Southampton our Virgin (ex-NTL) connection stopped working EVERY time it rained (and their price was twice BT and the speed less than a fifth - in kbps not even Mbps), so we ditched them and went ADSL/VDSL so we had a choice of providers.

I might add that tech support is one area where Plusnet are excellent. If you are having connection or router issues forget Talktalk, you might as well whistle in the wind and be prepared to pay for the privilege.

 

After the first 2 or 3 days of connection, Plusnet sent a written guarantee of minimum download and upload speeds, based on their monitoring and what rights you have if the service drops below that level.

 

I did have issues, which had been around since I moved up to 80mb with BT, and I just accepted as a BT router problem. Plusnet talked me through all the checks telling me disconnect the extensions (which were the problem) then got Openreach to reset the DLM in the cabinet, and sent me the Openreach report of before/after cabinet stats and logs, phoned up and explained everything. Then followed through a week later with a phone call , he had checked logs and everything was still OK and asked if I was happy. 

 

Rock solid 80 down 20 up, bags of S/N in reserve, and zero drop outs/errors.

 

 

 

 

Thanks everybody for the useful gen. I will talk to Sky re a price drop to match BT. Otherwise I will use Topcashback and get the BT max deal at £49 pm for 18 months and top up with Now TV. I just need to persuade SWMBO who is adducted to Sky....even though most if the channels are replicated on Freeview and we have Amazon Prime, Netflix ! 

Best of luck. I tend to find they don't actually believe you'll leave, then go in a huff when you do.

 

I was £45pm with VM for (an admittedly brilliant package) which was normally £95, but bizarrely was actually worth £120 - work that out! 

 

When it came to end of contract I engaged in the merry dance of renegotiating. They refused, before reluctantly knocking £4 off the new £90 price. I then left and for about 2 months or so I was getting at least one letter a week offering me my original package at a reduced price. By then it was too late as I'd already signed up to BT. 

 

Sky was pretty much the same. Fingers crossed BT will be different when my contract is due up. 

15 hours ago, Redboy said:

Thanks everybody for the useful gen. I will talk to Sky re a price drop to match BT. Otherwise I will use Topcashback and get the BT max deal at £49 pm for 18 months and top up with Now TV. I just need to persuade SWMBO who is adducted to Sky....even though most if the channels are replicated on Freeview and we have Amazon Prime, Netflix ! 

We splashed out on Netflix about the same time as moving to BT and for the money think it is much better value than Sky Movies which my Dad has. Been surprised how much choice there is whether films or series and we rarely watch normal (BBC/ITV) tv anymore.

Divorce proceedings begun, emailed Sky tonight and cancelled notifying them of intent to stop payment after 31 days. Then I booked a BT Max HD package, arrives in 2 weeks. I will lose F1 HD but gain MotoGp and Premier league footy etc so can't be all bad.Annual saving will be £about £400 including the cost of Now Tv for £6.99 to watch Sky Atlantic, Arts etc, which were mostly the ones we watched, the rest are on Freeview or Netflix/Prime which we have already. Wait for me to start moaning about BT broadband, Tv etc 

Should have let BT handle the divorce, they give the notice etc. under OFCOM rules.

 

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/advice-for-consumers/costs-and-billing/switching/switching-broadband-provider

 

Expect Sky to deny receipt of email and if BT takes over before the 31 days, well, could be stressful.

 

Fingers crossed all goes smoothly, but never assume unacknowledged communication is sufficient.

Some people may find this handy;

 

https://www.broadbandchoices.co.uk/guides/help/successful-broadband-complaints

 

On 01/03/2019 at 16:57, PetrolDave said:

When we lived in Southampton our Virgin (ex-NTL) connection stopped working EVERY time it rained (and their price was twice BT and the speed less than a fifth - in kbps not even Mbps), so we ditched them and went ADSL/VDSL so we had a choice of providers.

My Mum's in an ex-Telewest area, and when we phoned to report a phone line fault they gave us a warning that if it was our handset they'd charge us, so I explained that we'd tested the line multiple times, and a few hours later, after fixing the fault they phoned back to say that the issue had been with one of their line cabinets. Can't argue with that standard of service IMO.

Personally I've found Plusnet support went down the pooper in the last few years. Their managment of my house move was woeful and I ended up without service for 6 weeks. They then renaged on a promise to refund the time without service and refused to acknowlege that I had a complaint.

 

I had to wait two years to drop them.

 

Now with SSE on a one month rolling contract. 35Mb fibre (FTTC) for £15 a month less than Plusnet offered to continue 17Mb broadband.

 

I don't have Sky either but do pay for Prime and Netflix.