Cancel Sky TV and save £21 a month

If, like me, you never watch the 400+ channels of rubbish offered by Sky, cancel your subscription. I was paying £21 a month for more than two years (plus an additional £40 charge when we moved house).

Fortunately, a colleague here at thisismoney pointed out that you can cancel the contract and the subscription and move on to Freesat, keeping the Sky satellite receiver. You still get 120 channels, including all the terrestial channels plus the likes of Sky News, CNN and extra Beeb channels, which is more than the 34 you get on Freeview. You also get FilmFour on both, as of last Sunday.

You might get the impression from Sky that you might need to buy a £20 Freesat card for this to work. Not true. Just write them a letter, giving 30 days notice (you can do this in the 11th month of your 12-month contract). The service automatically switches over on your existing viewing card.

So get writing now (I couldn't get through on the phone)...

Sky Subscribers Services, PO Box 43, Livingston, West Lothian EH54

Don't forget to check out our digital TV finder tool at www.thisismoney.co.uk/digital-tv-finder

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

>> Blog: 'The cost of moving house - broadband, phones and all that jazz'

Comments

[Rob]

Andrew, This is in part correct. Being an avid tightwad/thisismoney fan I cancelled Sky over 18 months ago. However although you do get the channels you mentioned (ie all the channels available free as of the time of your cancellation), you do not receive any updates to your viewing card after this date. So if any new channels eg E4, More4 come along you are essentially "frozen" and will not receive them. At least this is what has happened to me! You need to go and spend the £20 to get and updated chip which knows about these new channels. It's hard for a scrooge like me to part with this kind of cash which is why I've not done it yet, but I'll probably do it eventually.

[Andrew Oxlade, This is Money Editor]

Hi Rob.
Thanks for that - very useful to know.

I guess I'll stick with what I've got for now - Film Four was included - and make a call on the extra £20 if they add more free channels.

Maybe Sky will try and match Channel 4 by making some of its film channels free. Here's hoping.

Andrew

[Tony]

Or you can do what I did - spend £50 on an Elvis Multiprogrammer and unlock the 16f84 chip that these cards carry. was great on On Digital - lasted a month. But will only last a day or two with Sky But then just generate new keys on the card - easy!!!!!!!!

[Peter Jones]

Can anyone tell me why Sky Channel 423 - The Golf Channel has disapeared. I was happy watching this channel up till about 30.12.07 but now the channel is unavailable.

[Tony Critten]

Yeah I've noticed that sky channel 423 that was UK golf channel is now 'Arsenal TV' - does anybody know why this has happened as I used to watch the golf all the time in 2007!
thx tony

[Robert barrell]

I cancelled my sky about 2 months ago and a couple of days ago kept getting no sky signal received message. i can no longer get any channels at all any ideas

[Kev]

I cancelled Sky too. Their biggest problem is that up until now, their entire business model has been pile it high, sell it cheap and accept a high churn rate (% of existing subscribers leaving) in favour of finding new subscribers. But with a churn rate now over 10% plus they are fast running out of new subscribers, they have seriously got to get their act together once they hit the new subscriber "saturation crunch" in terms of quality.

We're the only first-world country on the planet who finds it acceptable to pay a high subscription fee in return for 15-20mins of blaringly loud adverts per hour on channels whose content was paid for decades ago by the BBC & ITV. And where you have to play a game of "guess who's talking" when one persons face is covered by the large DOG channel ID in the top left corner, and the other by a big "Press Red" in the top-right. And a huge "Coming up next..." banner right across the bottom.

Cheaper and easier just to take out a £10 per month subscription to an online flatrate DVD rental service and rent all the TV series out on DVD with no adverts on-screen graffiti at all.

[Brian Bee]

I have been a Sky customer for several years and pay by direct debit on the 16th of every month. However I have now bought a new Panasonic t/v which is Analogue/DTV and Freesat. Therefore on 18th Oct I cancelled sky by phone. Have now received a bill for £2.20 for the two days difference, although I disconnected the sky box immediately on the 18th. The bill is plus £4.00 admin charge, therefore total bill £6.20. I am very upset at this charge and would greatly appreciate your advice on how to respond.

[Arthur MGinnty]

Pay the £2.20 you owe and say you wil not be paying the £4.00 admin charge as it has cost you more in telephone and correspondence charges plus your own time to cancel due to their extortionate telephone call charges, retention techniques and other time wasting. As a gesture of goodwill you will write off your £82.58 fee for costs and time incurred cancelling if they write off their £4 admin charge.

[Simon Goodman]

james.murdoch@bskyb.com

write to this email with your complaint. i did and it took about two weeks for correspondance but i had a £30 install fee waivered. give it a go.