6 months ago, I rang Sky to cancel my account with them. To make me stay they said I could have the same package I had but for £7.50 for 6 months.

Today, as part of cost cutting measures (help pay for new macbook!) I rang Sky to cancel that, after a short discussion about how I really don't watch Sky, I really don't, I watch Lost on e4 that's about it. The guy on the end of the phone rather predicably offered the £7.50 deal again.

When I said no to that, he offered my 95% off for 6 months. That's 75p a month! I did say no to that to see if they would do it for free, but they wouldn't. So I took the 75p deal.

Anyone else had this? If not, it might be worth giving it a try.

Cheers

Cris.

I know they regularly offer the half price deals or the full pack for the normal price, but that is a good deal!

A few months back when lots of people were calling up to "cancel" they had apparently told the call centre lasses to stop giving the offers, but it seems they are back at it again!

edit: Another good thing I have heard is from people who "collect" overdraft charges from their banks - apparently most banks are refunding most or all of the charges to anybody who is writing to complain. I haven't had any to complain about but I have heard of people getting hundreds of pounds credited without question.

Gareth

A friend of mine has just had £1500 in charges refunded by HSBC

Now, I did just as well on mobile phones, "our minimum is £16 a month, but for you we'll knock the one off the front", when I phoned up and threatened to get a pay as you go (I only make one or two calls a month).... now what was that firm called....BT!

Digging up an old thread...

I have just rung my mobile phone supplier, O2. I told them that I was thinking on cancelling, which I was, but I may be interested in keeping the contract if they can reduce my monthly bill. Here is what they offered me...

Monthly Rental - £10
Included mins - 300 cross network
Included text - 500
Credit - £100

This what I was paying before...

Monthy Rental - £22
Insurance - £5
Included Calls - 100 mins + 50 mins cross network
Included text 50

This means that I now have more than double the minutes, 10 times the free txts and a £100 credit to the account which means I don't have to pay any thing for 10 months! I used to spend £300ish per year with O2, now it will be £20, I think I did quite well out of a 2 minute phone call! £280 in the bank!

What else do you think I could try this with?

Cheers

Cris.

I know it's all very well to be wise after the event, if you google, you'll find plenty of people who have been offered this sort of deal and then, when the bill comes in, O2 deny that they've ever had such a tariff. I wrote to the CEO, and got my money refunded and a free phone on top, when it happened to me.!

I'll tell you more at the meet!

A long while ago I was going to cancel my Tivo account because I was selling my box to my roommate, and moving into somewhere that someone else was already paying for Tivo. I got the usual efforts to keep me with them, then the standard 10-or-so minutes on hold (presumably while the guy talked to his boss), and then they offered to drop my bill to $5 a month. This is for standard Tivo service, not DirecTV.

Well, I took the offer and changed all my billing information online to my roommate's info. So I achieved the same result, but my roommate benefitted pretty well from the deal.

Everybody I know who's tried that tactic is quickly forwarded on to the transfers department.

I'm amazed this trick still works, it never has done when I've tried it. I've had my mobile contract for nearly 9 years. To be honest extra minutes and texts aren't really of that much use to me as I just use the company mobiles for all those sorts of things.

A hefty discount on a phone would be better (like an SPV5000 for £50) but then again, that actually costs them money so they're less inclined to do that.

Orange, at least, have some form of internal point scoring system for customers. They don't divulge how many points you have, but if you push for better deals they'll keep giving you more and more until you use your points up.

I had many hours of fun with them just recently. I've been with orange for many years, and never had an official upgrade. A few years ago there was some unpleasantness involving them putting someone elses new phone on my bill as well as my own, and when the dust settled I have a new 6310i and 100 extra free minutes per month for 18 months. However, I was still on the original, ancient tariff.

Over the last year or so, though, I've been using the mobile a lot more for work, and the bills were getting silly. So I hunted around and found the O2 seemed to have the best published tariff. I called orange and threatened to leave, asking for a PAC code so I could transfer my number. Their retentions department bent over backwards to accomodate me, eventually offering 500 minutes and 250 texts a month, plus a new handset, for £25 pm. That is something like two and a half times the most minutes I've ever used, for less than the original tariff was sans calls! Possibly one could do better somewhere else, but it's a significant saving so I'm fairly happy.

It got very complicated when I accepted the offer though, as at that point they said I was still under contract and therefore inelegible for either an upgrade or to move my number. This was news to me, and I said as much. Loudly. It turned out that some company I had never heard of had applied a miniscule discount to my tariff (about £1 pm) in february, which had apparently locked me into a new 12 month contract.

The next few hours were fun they gave me a number for this company I had never heard of. As it turned out, neither had the phone system. So I called back and spoke to another orange rep. They gave me another number, and a different company name. This one was disconnected. So, once more back through the system, to someone more senior in customer services. She spent some time wading through records and muttering, before announcing that it seemed to have been actioned by an internal operator using a non-existant dealer code!

I was put on hold for about 15 minutes, and when she came back she had apparently talked to the regional systems director about it. The contract was cancelled without another word. I'd guess they had also just fired someone I was put back to the retentions department who proceeded with the upgrade.

Then, as she was just doing the final bit, the phone went dead. I called back, but the number didn't work. Neither did any other orange number. For anyone, anywhere! My upgrade was so complicated I must have broken orange Nothing turned up in the next few days, so a week later I called again. This time the rep found the order had been entered but not completed, so he finished it off. I finally got the new phone the next day.

Oddly enough, I had a cold call a couple of days ago from one of the companies whose name had come up during this fiasco. I was somewhat honest with my feelings toward them...

pca

I had been pretty hacked off with Phones4U who as an 'upgrade' from my 6310i they game me a 3300 range phone and tried to tell me that as it had multimedia, polyphonic rigtones etc it was an upgrade. As all I wanted was GPRS, Bluetooth, Infrared and decent battery life and actively dislike polyphonic ringtones you can imagine I wasn't too chuffed.

A chat with O2 to get a competitive quote and then back to Vodafone got me a tariff which instead of costing me £120 a month now costs me £22 a month, stacks of free minutes, texts and internet access if I want it and a proper handheld again (6320i now)

Planning to speak to Sky soon - I don't use it much, so £25 a month seems a little high, and I could get telewest service where I live...I'll let you know how it goes.