You may know I'm shortly going to move house. As a result, a lot of my recent phone calls and correspondence revolve around telling the various services I use that I'm off, and where my new abode will be. It's a little over 7 years since I last moved home and that involved a lot of letter writing and call centre queues. The advent of that Internet, however, has made it child's play to tell multiple companies of my pending whereabouts in minutes.
If only it were that easy with Sky.
First off, you can't cancel over the Internet. Shades of Setanta here, as you can't move for attractive deals or new customer offers, while the existing customer base can whistle for any such perks. I therefore deigned to call them the other night to find out whether it would be cheaper to move and upgrade my existing package, or to cancel it and get the Mrs to raise a new order in her name.
The answer was spectacularly the latter. Quite simply, they treat existing customers with unbelievable disdain.
Let me state at this point that both the people I spoke to were friendly, helpful and knowledgeable. It's just the company they represent who raised my ire.
The first bloke I spoke to gave me details of the move process. Basically, I want to upgrade from 1 box to 2. As there is no dish at the new house, it'll be £60 to have one installed. It will then be a further £129 for a second Sky box. So before I even watch owt, it's nearly £200. Bargain. I said I'd think about it and get back to them.
I got off the phone and fired up their website. It is no lie to say that within the next 10 minutes we ordered Sky Multiroom with 2 free boxes, free dish, free fitting and a £25 Tesco voucher using the Mrs' details. Literally 10 minutes and everything was free. I was most perplexed and no error.
The next logical step was call Sky back and say "You know what, squire? Shove it up your poochute". And to a certain extent, I did. Of course, as soon as you press the button which says "I would like to cancel please" I was sent to the back of the world's longest queue. '8 minutes' I was told I had to wait, and at almost exactly that time, I was put through. Again, a genial, helpful Scot, but his intention from minute 1 was clear - you ain't leaving no Sky, fool.
He wanted to know why I was cancelling, and knowing that they would take a dim view of me having raised a new order using different details, I spun an elaborate tissue of lies involving the expense of house moving and how I wouldn't be home as much after moving so I couldn't justify the cost any more. Using the skill of a world-weary detective, he then began to blow my story apart piece by piece. It actually got to the stage when I uttered the phrase "Look mate, I appreciate what you're trying to do here, but I'm literally cancelling my Sky tonight". That got through to him.
In the end, he offered to reduce the installation fee to £30 and the Sky box to £99, meaning that had I moved my current package with them, I would have been paying £60 more than I would if I threatened to leave them instead. Having already ordered a new package I could appreciate the brass neck of the greedy bastards, but allowed myself a rye smile at what could have been if I didn't do my research first.
In the end, he kept me on the phone for 25 minutes, discussing all manner of football-related themes (my password was of a soccer ilk). He reckoned it took 5 minutes to cancel my account, but he was obviously just spinning out the phone call to make more money out of me; a fact proved when the account miraculously completed the cancellation process at the exact point he ran out of things to say.
The above experience does beg further interrogation at a later date, as the practice of attracting new customers with kick-ass offers while treating your existing subscribers like shit is endemic in the service industry. I'll save that inevitable rant for another time, but for now I'm enjoying the honeymoon period of being a new customer, which will undoubtedly end the second our first payment hits their bank account.
What a bunch of robbing shitehawks.
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