We certainly have, but that does not apply to the fee Sky paid for football which was certainly not at 0% inflation rate. It cost Sky a bomb and this is reflecting in the subs not just paid by those who want football but all Sky subscribers. The football should be paid, due to the high cost, solely by football viewers and not everyone.
I just wonder what percentage of Sky subscribers actually want or view the football. We have a number of people in our family alone who subscribe to Sky with absolutely no interest in football whatsoever.
Had my letter today, 10.1% (13.6% pa) price rise which is bad enough, but what gets me is the blatant lying by omission in it! They 'explain why we are doing this" as follows:
More 'must-see TV' [nothing new and significant cost-wise there]
More 'choice and control' [Sky Go improvements - meh].
Pretty feeble list there, no mention of why it's happening after only 9 months, and no mention of the main reason for the price rises, which we all know is their new Premier League deal. If anything their 'explanation' will just wind up most people even more; their letter is pathetic and grossly misrepresents the true situation (there should be a law against this!).
Don't know how Sky can possibly put the price up and force people to pay £4 more when Sky Sports will lose the rights to Champions League at the end of season plus they no longer have all the top picks for the Premier League games, also can't understand why you still have to pay £10 extra for to watch HD when it is now becoming of a standard thing.
Its clear to me $ky have over paid for the football rights and want non sky sports subscribers to foot the bill.
I know its only £3.00 (I'm on the family bundle) but it still represents a 9% rise.
Retentions offered me the same package for £20 p/m for 10 months which I declined.
It frustrates me that if you complain or threaten to cancel they will knock £'s off and those loyal customers pay on average 30-40% more for the same package.
Gutted to have cancelled but I feel I need take a one man stand in protest!
Its clear to me $ky have over paid for the football rights and want non sky sports subscribers to foot the bill.
I know its only £3.00 (I'm on the family bundle) but it still represents a 9% rise.
Retentions offered me the same package for £20 p/m for 10 months which I declined.
It frustrates me that if you complain or threaten to cancel they will knock £'s off and those loyal customers pay on average 30-40% more for the same package.
Gutted to have cancelled but I feel I need take a one man stand in protest!
Not worth replying to, when you spell Sky like that.
Ian.
Don't know how Sky can possibly put the price up and force people to pay £4 more when Sky Sports will lose the rights to Champions League at the end of season plus they no longer have all the top picks for the Premier League games, also can't understand why you still have to pay £10 extra for to watch HD when it is now becoming of a standard thing.[/QUOTE]
Where is it a standard thing that you don't pay extra for HD?
The final straw for me was sky announcing record profits of around 9% 2 days ago with the UK & Ireland making 6% profit, but then that was not enough for them so they decided to hit some customers with the 9% rise (BBC news website)
Total paid-for subscription products consistently rising, prices rising, yet ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) has remained pretty flat for several years.
Whether it be the increase in "pay-lite" Now TV customers, discounting of Sky subscriptions, or other reasons, ARPU is remaining flat despite the upward pressure of rising volumes of product sales and price increases.
Following the acquisition of the German and Italian businesses Sky has now dramatically reduced the number of KPIs it is reporting so it is now totally impossible to even attempt to analyse how the different parts of the business (in terms of products) are performing.
You are right that ARPU is fairly flat but I think the main reason for this is the rise in non-TV customers (ie broadband / phone only) which obviously have massively lower ARPU. These customers represent a growing % of the total so they are depressing average customer ARPU (ie TV customer ARPU could well still be rising a fair bit - and I think this is almost certainly the case).
It's also worth noting that Sky is not even reporting its TV customer numbers any more. People pointed out previously when they started combining the DTH TV number with NOW TV. But from December 2014 they have completely stopped reporting the total TV number at all. So all we now have is the total customer number (ie including non-TV) (**)
So in terms of analysing how they are doing I think we are really now down to revenues and costs (and obviously the resulting profits). They are still reporting these to the same level of detail as before (and splitting them between UK, Germany and Italy) (***).
OK, we still have the numbers for total customers and products but without any breakdown of these I don't think they provide much of use. Though I think the churn numbers (still available) continue to be of interest.
Finally I guess we should note that really all businesses boil down to revenues and costs. To take just one example Tesco doesn't report customer numbers and nobody would bother to think about that metric.
In the past the KPIs enabled us to understand in a lot of detail the individual drivers behind Sky's performance - but I'm afraid those days have now gone.
(**) In fact this quarter they reported TV customer growth but not the number of TV customers at the end of the quarter. But they will not be reporting this figure every quarter so it will no longer be possible to track the cumulative total.
(***) Note that from now on they are only producing a full Profit & loss Account at the half and full year - so there was no P&L Account in the Q3 numbers announced this week (though they did provide "headline" revenue and profit numbers; but no full breakdown of revenues and costs into their normal components).
Don't know how Sky can possibly put the price up and force people to pay £4 more when Sky Sports will lose the rights to Champions League at the end of season plus they no longer have all the top picks for the Premier League games, also can't understand why you still have to pay £10 extra for to watch HD when it is now becoming of a standard thing.
How are they forcing people?
Pay TV is a luxury item, there is free TV available (apart from the licence fee), no one forces you to have Sky, if you feel the price is not value for money, then cancel, like you would anything else you were spending your money on.
I'm on the Variety/HD bundle which was going up to £42ish. Got offered £15/month off for 10 months which I turned down.
Can I expect any better offers to follow, or was that the best I was likely to get?
The only thing I used it for was as a convenient recorder and to watch the F1. I can cope with the highlights on the BBC, and will look into a Freesat recorder if necessary.
I'm on the Variety/HD bundle which was going up to £42ish. Got offered £15/month off for 10 months which I turned down.
Can I expect any better offers to follow, or was that the best I was likely to get?
The only thing I used it for was as a convenient recorder and to watch the F1. I can cope with the highlights on the BBC, and will look into a Freesat recorder if necessary.
No good offers if you want F1 as you dumped the old HD pack and cannot get it back the only way to access F1 now is to upgrade the full sports bundle, so if you want access to all F1 races in future it's going to cost you more.
No good offers if you want F1 as you dumped the old HD pack and cannot get it back the only way to access F1 now is to upgrade the full sports bundle, so if you want access to all F1 races in future it's going to cost you more.
If he gets 50% off for 12 months, which is fairly common, he can afford to upgrade. It'd be cheaper than what he was offered.
If he gets 50% off for 12 months, which is fairly common, he can afford to upgrade. It'd be cheaper than what he was offered.
Oh that's good news though the offer was usually on your current package didn't realise you could upgrade to the full package and still apply the same percentage discount, may be tempted to try now.
£30 odd a month for the full package with all sports and movies for 12 months would be a great deal, no way I could ever justify paying over £50 for it.
Can I expect any better offers to follow, or was that the best I was likely to get?.
Okay, so to answer myself the My Sky started to offer me 35% off, but then that transpired it was only off the Variety pack and not the HD pack. With very minor extra haggling all done through the online chat I ended up at 50% off both for the next 12 months, which I'm happy with.
That's what Sky gets for increasing the price by £3. If they hadn't, I probably wouldn't have bothered calling them to cancel.
Okay, so to answer myself the My Sky started to offer me 35% off, but then that transpired it was only off the Variety pack and not the HD pack. With very minor extra haggling all done through the online chat I ended up at 50% off both for the next 12 months, which I'm happy with.
That's what Sky gets for increasing the price by £3. If they hadn't, I probably wouldn't have bothered calling them to cancel.
Where are you guys finding the discount offers via MySky ?
Is it under view my package or your offers.
I canx on Monday from Family with Sports and Movies, inc HD and Sky Go Extra and have not heard a thing or found anything via MySky. Maybe I wont get any offers if so I will have to learn to live without the luxury of Premier league football, the rest of the family movies and box-sets. I'm sure we can cope, we did in the past !
My bill inc TV, broadband, line rental and calls package went beyond the £100 mark which was the point at which I thought I need to act.
If offered I would probably take a 35% discount over 12 months, if not I will give it a go, probably buy a freesat + recorder and see how we get on.
...With very minor extra haggling all done through the online chat I ended up at 50% off both for the next 12 months, which I'm happy with.
That's what Sky gets for increasing the price by £3. If they hadn't, I probably wouldn't have bothered calling them to cancel.
Good work, and spot on.
Poster above, I never got 35% off via mysky (and yes all marketing prefs were allowed). I did get it through the post, after I'd already taken up a 50% offer over the phone!
My Sky TV went off yesterday after cancelling to Join Virgin. Just logged into my 'My Sky' account, and theres an offer there for 50% off any TV Bundle for 12 months if I go back.
Pity they weren't so generous when i actually put my cancellation through, otherwise I may have stayed o with them.
Anyway, can't/won't be back with them for at least 18 months now.
We've got the full package, but I've been trying to persuade the Mrs to drop Sky Movies.
I look every Friday to see what's new on the Premier Channel, and for at least the last year it's got about 5 new films, mostly cartoons or some dreadful low budget junk we've never heard of that after about 5 minutes gets turned off.
I've lost count of the decent , recent films I've seen for the first time on terrestrial TV, and have never aired on Sky.
Be aware, even if it says you will get 50% in mySky, the agent might not offer it.
They offer 35% first, say no, then they offer 50%.
For anyone worried about giving Sky the 30 days notice for full cancellation I would advise to go ahead & cancel, ignore their 10% discount or whatever they may offer on phone, must ensure that marketing preferences are allowing Sky to contact you though...
Within 24hrs of me cancelling I was offered 35% off for 12 months on My Sky a couple of weeks ago, I had planned to hold off hoping for 50% but 3 days later got the call looking me back, agent coudlnt/wouldn't honour the same deal that was on MySky, giving me 35% off for only 10 months + £50 credit (no new contract)... Worked out the same anyway... Yesterday received 2 letters from Sky, one telling me about price rise (that I knew about) & the 2nd offering 35% off for 12 months if I came back (I had already agreed to stay)
I fully intended to cancel but have re-contracted with a 10 month discount reducing my monthly payment from £52.50 to £34 - not bad I think for multiscreen.
Well, Sky must be getting desperate. They've rung my mobile - I'm a broadband/phone customer but I've never heard from them beforr r/e TV.
Whatever package I took I would be charged half-price for a year. Told them all I wanted was a non-football stand-alone sports package.
"We don't have football for the next two months" So what? we're infested with it for the other ten and I don't want to pay for it.
"Football's a very popular game". Not here it isn't,
"Your package will be £23 after the half-price discount". Multiply that by 12 and what do you get? £276. £276 for the occasional cricket game and the even more occasional game of hockey.
She seemed most put out that I wasn't interested. Wonder if what customers say will ever filter through to the top??
Well I've been and gone and done it, cancelled the lot. £23.50 for the old Variety pack (discounted with extra channels) now saved, though they did offer me £10 off the new price for Variety i.e. £20 instead of £30 a month. That's 33.3% off, though online they now say they will offer 35% off. I'd already cancelled Sky Sports a few months ago. Told him the last two price increases, within 9 months, were unacceptable (actually, the 9 months has annoyed me even more than the price rise because it's a sneaky hidden extra cost).
I will see if anything else emerges but to be honest, I think I can get all I want from BT TV at much lower costs than any Sky discount deal, with one exception: CNN. Maybe I will miss MUTV next season too, but I'll live.
Comments
Had my letter today, 10.1% (13.6% pa) price rise which is bad enough, but what gets me is the blatant lying by omission in it! They 'explain why we are doing this" as follows:
More 'must-see TV' [nothing new and significant cost-wise there]
More 'choice and control' [Sky Go improvements - meh].
Pretty feeble list there, no mention of why it's happening after only 9 months, and no mention of the main reason for the price rises, which we all know is their new Premier League deal. If anything their 'explanation' will just wind up most people even more; their letter is pathetic and grossly misrepresents the true situation (there should be a law against this!).
I know its only £3.00 (I'm on the family bundle) but it still represents a 9% rise.
Retentions offered me the same package for £20 p/m for 10 months which I declined.
It frustrates me that if you complain or threaten to cancel they will knock £'s off and those loyal customers pay on average 30-40% more for the same package.
Gutted to have cancelled but I feel I need take a one man stand in protest!
Ian.
Following the acquisition of the German and Italian businesses Sky has now dramatically reduced the number of KPIs it is reporting so it is now totally impossible to even attempt to analyse how the different parts of the business (in terms of products) are performing.
You are right that ARPU is fairly flat but I think the main reason for this is the rise in non-TV customers (ie broadband / phone only) which obviously have massively lower ARPU. These customers represent a growing % of the total so they are depressing average customer ARPU (ie TV customer ARPU could well still be rising a fair bit - and I think this is almost certainly the case).
It's also worth noting that Sky is not even reporting its TV customer numbers any more. People pointed out previously when they started combining the DTH TV number with NOW TV. But from December 2014 they have completely stopped reporting the total TV number at all. So all we now have is the total customer number (ie including non-TV) (**)
So in terms of analysing how they are doing I think we are really now down to revenues and costs (and obviously the resulting profits). They are still reporting these to the same level of detail as before (and splitting them between UK, Germany and Italy) (***).
OK, we still have the numbers for total customers and products but without any breakdown of these I don't think they provide much of use. Though I think the churn numbers (still available) continue to be of interest.
Finally I guess we should note that really all businesses boil down to revenues and costs. To take just one example Tesco doesn't report customer numbers and nobody would bother to think about that metric.
In the past the KPIs enabled us to understand in a lot of detail the individual drivers behind Sky's performance - but I'm afraid those days have now gone.
(**) In fact this quarter they reported TV customer growth but not the number of TV customers at the end of the quarter. But they will not be reporting this figure every quarter so it will no longer be possible to track the cumulative total.
(***) Note that from now on they are only producing a full Profit & loss Account at the half and full year - so there was no P&L Account in the Q3 numbers announced this week (though they did provide "headline" revenue and profit numbers; but no full breakdown of revenues and costs into their normal components).
How are they forcing people?
Pay TV is a luxury item, there is free TV available (apart from the licence fee), no one forces you to have Sky, if you feel the price is not value for money, then cancel, like you would anything else you were spending your money on.
I'm on the Variety/HD bundle which was going up to £42ish. Got offered £15/month off for 10 months which I turned down.
Can I expect any better offers to follow, or was that the best I was likely to get?
The only thing I used it for was as a convenient recorder and to watch the F1. I can cope with the highlights on the BBC, and will look into a Freesat recorder if necessary.
No good offers if you want F1 as you dumped the old HD pack and cannot get it back the only way to access F1 now is to upgrade the full sports bundle, so if you want access to all F1 races in future it's going to cost you more.
If he gets 50% off for 12 months, which is fairly common, he can afford to upgrade. It'd be cheaper than what he was offered.
Oh that's good news though the offer was usually on your current package didn't realise you could upgrade to the full package and still apply the same percentage discount, may be tempted to try now.
£30 odd a month for the full package with all sports and movies for 12 months would be a great deal, no way I could ever justify paying over £50 for it.
Okay, so to answer myself the My Sky started to offer me 35% off, but then that transpired it was only off the Variety pack and not the HD pack. With very minor extra haggling all done through the online chat I ended up at 50% off both for the next 12 months, which I'm happy with.
That's what Sky gets for increasing the price by £3. If they hadn't, I probably wouldn't have bothered calling them to cancel.
Where are you guys finding the discount offers via MySky ?
Is it under view my package or your offers.
I canx on Monday from Family with Sports and Movies, inc HD and Sky Go Extra and have not heard a thing or found anything via MySky. Maybe I wont get any offers if so I will have to learn to live without the luxury of Premier league football, the rest of the family movies and box-sets. I'm sure we can cope, we did in the past !
My bill inc TV, broadband, line rental and calls package went beyond the £100 mark which was the point at which I thought I need to act.
If offered I would probably take a 35% discount over 12 months, if not I will give it a go, probably buy a freesat + recorder and see how we get on.
Good work, and spot on.
Poster above, I never got 35% off via mysky (and yes all marketing prefs were allowed). I did get it through the post, after I'd already taken up a 50% offer over the phone!
So you may not see it.
It said:
Hi <name>
And the 35% offer was either just above or just below that, with a number to call or a link to click to chat to them about it.
Clicked chat and I was away.
Pity they weren't so generous when i actually put my cancellation through, otherwise I may have stayed o with them.
Anyway, can't/won't be back with them for at least 18 months now.
I look every Friday to see what's new on the Premier Channel, and for at least the last year it's got about 5 new films, mostly cartoons or some dreadful low budget junk we've never heard of that after about 5 minutes gets turned off.
I've lost count of the decent , recent films I've seen for the first time on terrestrial TV, and have never aired on Sky.
They offer 35% first, say no, then they offer 50%.
For anyone worried about giving Sky the 30 days notice for full cancellation I would advise to go ahead & cancel, ignore their 10% discount or whatever they may offer on phone, must ensure that marketing preferences are allowing Sky to contact you though...
Within 24hrs of me cancelling I was offered 35% off for 12 months on My Sky a couple of weeks ago, I had planned to hold off hoping for 50% but 3 days later got the call looking me back, agent coudlnt/wouldn't honour the same deal that was on MySky, giving me 35% off for only 10 months + £50 credit (no new contract)... Worked out the same anyway... Yesterday received 2 letters from Sky, one telling me about price rise (that I knew about) & the 2nd offering 35% off for 12 months if I came back (I had already agreed to stay)
Whatever package I took I would be charged half-price for a year. Told them all I wanted was a non-football stand-alone sports package.
"We don't have football for the next two months" So what? we're infested with it for the other ten and I don't want to pay for it.
"Football's a very popular game". Not here it isn't,
"Your package will be £23 after the half-price discount". Multiply that by 12 and what do you get? £276. £276 for the occasional cricket game and the even more occasional game of hockey.
She seemed most put out that I wasn't interested. Wonder if what customers say will ever filter through to the top??
I will see if anything else emerges but to be honest, I think I can get all I want from BT TV at much lower costs than any Sky discount deal, with one exception: CNN. Maybe I will miss MUTV next season too, but I'll live.