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

[Ross]

If you cancel your sky before the contract is finished one has to give your skye box and all back i have been told .Or pay for it .Is this true

[Rhys]

Some people, like the "Advisor" below, say that Sky charge for an engineer because it costs money to send them out. They are missing the point entirely. What they should be asking is why it is necessary for Sky to send out engineers in the first place. Sky customers are paying Sky regular money in subscription fees on the understanding that Sky will provide a service in return. If Sky cannot provide that service due to technical faults, then they should be paying for the costs of restoring their service, not the customers. If Sky were prevented from charging people money for engineer call outs, then it would be in Sky's business interests to end the very common "No Satellite Signal is being received" messages. Instead, Sky are raking in the money by charging people for engineer call outs whenever these messages appear.

[Jana]

How much they will charge me for cancelling sky???

[lozzyboos0161]

hi all i have 2 sky boxes in my hom 1 sky+ hd n 1 standard sky box i am currently using them as freesat receivers , will I be able to move my sky + box upstairs without losing connection/ of freesat?

[aj]

hello just a quick question. does any one know how much it will cost to cancell sky? i have a twelve month contract and have been with them for 3 months?

please help
Antony

[Caroline]

The problem with just cancelling Sky and switching to Freesat, is if you have Sky Plus. The recording abilities of your Sky Plus box (even if you own it outright yourself like I do, having paid full price for it) will cease unless you pay Sky £10 per month. That is just daylight robbery. I own the box, I paid full price for it, I should be able to record Freesat onto it free of charge! This is one of the reasons I hate the Sky model of business.

[Brewster]

I got through and told them that I had an emergency trip to mane because of a bereavement which did the trick

Felt bad however the guy was brand new and even let me off the final payment

[sarah]

Hi, I have subscribed to sky 7 months ago with a agreed £45 half price package which included the whole lot with all the extra services. The first month they charged me £45, the second month they charged £55 ,the third month £65 and the fourth month £70! The direct debit failed the second month due to not expecting the higher fee, but after a hour long conversation , they explained that a mistake occured with the original fee which was no mor available, hovever the lady said that she will be NICE enough to find me a deal that can closely match it. So it was £55 from then onwards. Now the same thing happened the next few months, the fees kept going up and up. My service was cancel several times during these five months until I made over 20 phone calls for them to give me a pitiful apology for their mistake and wasting my time. I shall not even ,mention the bank fees incurred due to this. I obviously cancelled this subscription and they now want me to pay them £160 for the remaining contract! I am tired of phoning them and sending letters which are mysteriously disappearing from their systems. They are just ignoring me and have further passed my details to SIC which are pestering me on an everyday basis. I just don't know what to do now, could someone please advise me on how to fight this. Or should I just throw the towel in?

[Big Al]

@ Posted by: Rob | July 26, 2006 at 05:14 PM

You can find out about new FTA channels by searching the net.

Find out the frequency, symbol rate & fec then search for them in the Add Channels menu of your $ky box.

[Amber]

Can anyone tell me what will happen/ charges I may incure if I cancel my Sky subscription before the contract is up? I subscribed in December 2009 (I was blinded by the promise of recordable tv and fast RELIABLE- haha- broadband). I really don't like or trust Sky, I have the basic TV package with 20mb Broadband and the basic phone pacakge. Any info I could get would be great :)

[Advisor]

c lindsay ..actually your not quite right there, nss 29 means no signal is being received this means the box is having a problem receiving the signal,possibly input cables are loose/faulty,static electricity may have built up,or possibly an issue with the dish itself. People need to realise sky charge for engineers because it costs money to send them out! £65/€100 is a reduced cost, if your washing machine wasn't working&&you were out of warranty would you expect them to come&&sort it out for you FREE OF CHARGE? I don't think so..

[Ashley]

it really annoys me the fact that people try to scrounge money from a company how sad! You get what you pay for! If you don't want it cancel it who cares! It's you that will be watching freeview sados

[c lindsay]

I have just cancelled Sky and they have sent me a new Sky veiwing card. I read somewhere not to activate this as I will lose some of the channels I have already got,can anyone advise please.

[Peter]

When on your sky massage come out as 'signal not recieve' and on that massage top on right corner No '29'. Means signal has switch of by Sky intetionally as they want to insurance or one call out engineer charge from you, this is basically robbed money from you by Sky.

I just unsuscribe last May 2009.

[Simon Goodman]

[email protected]

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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

[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

[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]

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!!!!!!!!

[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

[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.