Sky increasing their prices by $2.18 per month

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#619598 4-May-2012 15:11

CYaBro: Sky cancellation confirmed for the end of our 12 month contract.

We got the half price deal for 12 months and probably have about 5 months left.
We've been in two minds if we should continue with it after the 12 months or cancel.
This price increas has just made that decision for us.
Thanks Sky!

Sky put up their price every year, this shouldn't be a surprise.

To a subscriber it blows.

To a shareholder it's great.

2 sides to every story.

mattwnz

20147 posts

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#619600 4-May-2012 15:13

Talkiet:
networkn: [snip]Price increases always make customers assess the value. They WILL lose money as a result of this price increase.

Entirely silly decision.

[snip]

I don't think so. They will lose a few customers, but as you also said, there's a lot of behavioural inertia - if most people kept their rugby channel / sports package / HD ticket / whatever after the RWC finished, how many are _really_ going to cancel over $2.18 per week?

Answer - almost certainly less (in terms of $$$) than the additional revenue they make from the people that stay.

Cheers - N

That may have been the case in the past, but I feel over this last year people have really been looking at what they have been spending due to the recession. But when there is no alternative for live sport, people can't just switch providers, they have to chose whether they want to go without something.

vinnieg

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#619607 4-May-2012 15:23

CYaBro: Sky cancellation confirmed for the end of our 12 month contract.

We got the half price deal for 12 months and probably have about 5 months left.
We've been in two minds if we should continue with it after the 12 months or cancel.
This price increas has just made that decision for us.
Thanks Sky!

Same here, exact same deal. Hardly even watch Sky these days, find it a waste of time.

I have moved across the ditch. Now residing in Melbourne as a VOIP/Video Technical Trainer/Engineer.

NonprayingMantis

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#619608 4-May-2012 15:24

mattwnz: I think they need some competition. You don't see ISPs increasing their prices, infact quite the opposite.

Actually Telecom put the price up on some packages last year by a coupleof bucks, and Orcon increased the price of Genius from $70 to $75 around September.

networkn

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#619610 4-May-2012 15:26

NonprayingMantis:
mattwnz: I think they need some competition. You don't see ISPs increasing their prices, infact quite the opposite.

Actually Telecom put the price up on some packages last year by a coupleof bucks, and Orcon increased the price of Genius from $70 to $75 around September.

I think he misspoke, I think he meant decrease in VALUE rather than overall price. Sky hasn't increased it's VALUE in quite some time.

I intend to contact someone at sky to make my voice heard. It's not about the $2 which I couldn't really care about, it's about not getting value from a price increase.

Talkiet

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#619622 4-May-2012 15:43

networkn: [snip]
I intend to contact someone at sky to make my voice heard. It's not about the $2 which I couldn't really care about, it's about not getting value from a price increase.

There's no rule saying that a price increase must equate to an increase in value.

Say I resell widgets for $10 each, and my costs for widgets go up from $6 to $8...

I have a few choices, but the obvious 2 are:

- Continue selling widgets for $10 and lose money (let's assume this includes dropping to an unacceptable ROI)
- Raise the price of my widgets to perhaps $12

Now, it's the same widget but it costs the end user $2 more. There's less value there, but I strongly doubt you're going to say that I (the reseller) should have absorbed the cost increase and started losing money.

This is just an illustration of a principle, I know Sky TV is more complex than a widget - I'm suggesting that your implied expectation that a price increase should give you a value increase can, in some circumstances, be an unreasonable one.

There are always choices. Unfortunately though, sometimes the choice includes forgoing something you like because you can't justify the price.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

MikeB4

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#619632 4-May-2012 15:57

Given that 90% of the Sky content is several years old eg Living Channel- Grand Designs. They should be reducing the price.

Companies like Sky, Telecom, TelstraClear etc believe in value reduction and price escalation.

Samsung

Shop now on Samsung phones, tablets, TVs and more (affiliate link).

rugrat

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#619639 4-May-2012 16:07

50 cents just over a week, extra charge and it's a reason to quit.

I'll probably quit one day but it will because of to much adds, them lowering picture quality because they refuse to buy more band width and New channels have to share existing band width, they could knock off one of approx 10 pay per view channels but except for when extra sports channels on, they won't do that.

And even though you're paying them money for start services, pay per view no cheaper then someone your're paying no monthly service to, ie apple movie downloads, and tivio, though range is a bit low with tivo.

mattRSK

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#619642 4-May-2012 16:11

We have recently got rid of sky and haven't missed it. Well maybe some of the sport.

NonprayingMantis

6434 posts

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#619650 4-May-2012 16:24

Talkiet:
networkn: [snip]
I intend to contact someone at sky to make my voice heard. It's not about the $2 which I couldn't really care about, it's about not getting value from a price increase.

There's no rule saying that a price increase must equate to an increase in value.

Say I resell widgets for $10 each, and my costs for widgets go up from $6 to $8...

I have a few choices, but the obvious 2 are:

- Continue selling widgets for $10 and lose money (let's assume this includes dropping to an unacceptable ROI)
- Raise the price of my widgets to perhaps $12

Now, it's the same widget but it costs the end user $2 more. There's less value there, but I strongly doubt you're going to say that I (the reseller) should have absorbed the cost increase and started losing money.

This is just an illustration of a principle, I know Sky TV is more complex than a widget - I'm suggesting that your implied expectation that a price increase should give you a value increase can, in some circumstances, be an unreasonable one.

There are always choices. Unfortunately though, sometimes the choice includes forgoing something you like because you can't justify the price.

Cheers - N

That is true, but it is generally good marketing form to at least pretend to give value with a price increase - which is what sky are doing in their letter. Personally I don’t even have sports so trying to justify a cost increase by saying they spent money on a product I don’t buy is pretty shonky.

mattwnz

20147 posts

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#619660 4-May-2012 16:38

KiwiNZ: Given that 90% of the Sky content is several years old eg Living Channel- Grand Designs. They should be reducing the price.

Companies like Sky, Telecom, TelstraClear etc believe in value reduction and price escalation.

My telecom bill has gone down a lot...but that is competition for you.

Kyanar

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#619813 4-May-2012 20:59

NonprayingMantis:
That is true, but it is generally good marketing form to at least pretend to give value with a price increase - which is what sky are doing in their letter. Personally I don’t even have sports so trying to justify a cost increase by saying they spent money on a product I don’t buy is pretty shonky.

I just sent them some nice feedback pretty much saying that. My impression from the letter is that they are trying to subsidise increased sports content costs by making everyone pay for it. Looking through it, many customers actually gain no value from Sky's changes at all, and yet they're expected to pay more so that Sky doesn't have to increase the costs of the Sport package to a point where people will actually balk at paying it. Let's pick apart their letter shall we?

- In October 2011 we brought SKY subscribers unprecedented coverage of the All Blacks historic victory
in the Rugby World Cup. The only broadcaster to show all 48 games live.
If you subscribed to Sky Sports. Everyone else didn't get this content at all.

- Now for the first time SKY Sport has secured the rights to broadcast the Summer Olympics and that
also means unprecedented coverage for our subscribers.
Another Sky Sports subscriber only benefit.

- In July SKY Sport will deliver an additional 5 dedicated Olympic channels from the 2012 London
Olympics (MY SKY Sports subscribers with the HD Access Ticket can access 8 HD channels).
Another Sky Sports subscriber only benefit.

- So that you can get even more from your SKY subscription we have also enhanced isky.co.nz where
you can watch great SKY content even when you are away from your living room.
Since a majority of the content requires additional payment, they've got more than enough avenues to make people who actually benefit from this cover the cost

- We have also been working hard on improving the value you get from a SKY subscription by creating
an award winning SKY app which is available on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch (we are shortly
launching an Android version) which you can download for free to your device.
Useless without MySky.

- Earlier this year we launched closed captions for the deaf across many SKY channels.
Which should have been the case from day one. I can't see how you can tout "making it so more people can use our service" as a value-add. That should have been absorbed into business costs since it results in increased subscriber numbers.

Basically, I told them I considered their letter an insult to their customers' intelligence.

JimmyH

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#619866 4-May-2012 22:25

I will keep it, at least until Game of Thrones is over, then I will reconsider cancelling. At the very least, I will probably drop some more packages shortly.

For me it's not so much a marginal price change (and, to be honest, I don't really care about $2.18 a month in the scheme of things). It's about value for money. That means the price in relation to content and the viewing experience. Hell, I would happily pay another $10-15 a month and count it a good bargain, if the quid pro quo was:

- Ending ad breaks in the middle of shows
- Ending the ceaseless bombardment of the same 2-3 promos over, and over, and over, and over again
- Ending loud voice overs over the credits as shows end (I'm looking at you SoHo!)
- Toning down the channel logos plastered on the screen
- Allocating more bandwidth to existing channels - the picture quality on some of them is *terrible*

Content wise, I don't need any more living/news/music channels, There are already plenty. But SyFy would be nice.

Otherwise, as I'm not really watching much sport, ditching Sky and using the money for something like a bigger broadband cap, a VPN subscription, and Hulu+/Netflix subscriptions is probably they way I will go.