SKYTV - how not to respond to customer emails

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wasabi2k

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# 175858 14-Jul-2015 10:00

I was reading the Sky Deals thread and though man - that is a lot cheaper than what I pay, but I don't really want to go through the hassle of cancelling and rejoining. Let's see what SKYTV can offer:

Hi There,
We've been SKY subscribers for a long time now - we jumped on MySKY when it came out and we do like the service.

I have been seeing offers to new customers on your website and elsewhere that have 2 premium channels and MySKY for $48 a month. We are currently paying $105 for Basic, MySKY, Sport and the HD Ticket.

Are we able to get the same deal? If not, why not?
Thanks

Pretty open I thought, not being demanding. Every opportunity to give me a discount. Their reply:

Hi Jeff
SKY account: xxxxxxx
Thanks for your email and feedback. We're always on the look-out for ways to look after our existing customers which is why we are working on some pretty exciting product enhancements bringing heaps of cool features including the new SKY On Demand service! Also please make sure we have your most up-to-date email address so we can bring you more channel rewards, competitions like these ones and of course, keep you updated on the great things to come. We'll always keep working to improve our service to you and look forward to continuing to provide you with great entertainment in the future.

If you have any further queries, email us back or talk to the Crew on 0800 759 759 during these hours: Weekdays: 8am – 10pm | Weekends: 8am – 9pm. Regards Sione Online Crew

So thanks for that and completely ignoring my original question. Suffice to say my reply was significantly less pleasant. This is not how you keep customers happy.

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# 1342795 14-Jul-2015 10:02

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They are the monopoly and they don't give a rats, surprised you didn't get a scanned image of a middle finger as a response!

graemeh

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# 1342798 14-Jul-2015 10:12

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Just ring them to disconnect the service then you'll be dealing with the "retention" team and the deals will appear.

xpd

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# 1342806 14-Jul-2015 10:24

Also, you only have to disconnect for 3 months to be accepted as a new customer again, and take advantage of any deals going on for "new" customers :)

We got a reasonable deal from them at start of the year, but still cancelled after our 6 month contract. Just not watching it and its full of repeats anyway. (Must have seen the same Top Gear episode about 10x in the past 6 months)

XPD / Gavin / DemiseNZ

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grant_k

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# 1342807 14-Jul-2015 10:24

graemeh: Just ring them to disconnect the service then you'll be dealing with the "retention" team and the deals will appear.

Yep, that's what happened in my case. I was offered 3 months free Movies and Sport if I would stick around. We ditched their service 6 weeks ago now and aren't missing it one bit. Everything I recorded off their encrypted channels I've now found online at zero cost, and mostly in HD instead of blurry SD. If you really want to stay then by all means get whatever deals you can, but for me there will be no going back.

DizzyD

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# 1342838 14-Jul-2015 10:36

Disconnect, re-signup (under your wife's name), problem solved. No need to wait 3 months.

Otherwise better still don't re-signup. Plenty of rugby streams are always available on the internet. Besides I don't see the point of having Sky right now just for the rugby WC which will be shown live at very difficult hours of the late night/early morning.

http://www.rugbyworldcup.com/fixtures (Add 12hour for NZTZ)

HumanMode

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# 1342941 14-Jul-2015 11:58

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Very similar set of circumstances to my inquiry via the phone. I asked why I couldn't be offered a deal for upgrading to MySky and they did a verbal shrug of the shoulders and said take it or leave it. As I was considering my options the call centre person hung up. Lovely. Now they're making a deal out of offering online services they should have had ages ago. All this is only possible when you're the dominant player and there are no other realistic options. If and when a new full package competitor arrives, although I have no complaints about the MySky service apart from a clunky box interface, I'll take it.

wasabi2k

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# 1342962 14-Jul-2015 12:53

NRL.

If there was a quality alternative - I would more than likely ditch sky.

And by quality I mean full HD quality - available on something I can watch on my TV that ISN'T a laptop.

mattwnz

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# 1343032 14-Jul-2015 14:14

I think your email was a bit on the abrupt side. It could have had some pleases in it.

Their reply is pretty much a paint by numbers defensive response, how many companies now responds to this type of question these days. If you can't defend it, you reply in this way. What you need to do is ask to speak to their customer retention team, to ask them to match the deal for a contract term.

nathan

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# 1343034 14-Jul-2015 14:15

Just leave and tell them why

When I did this they didn't even try to keep me as a customer, which was a surprise and really says it all

mad01

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# 1343041 14-Jul-2015 14:20

I had the same situation a while back.

When you leave you need to give 30 days notice. So just reply saying you want to leave, they will reply saying someone from the disconnection team will be in touch.

They got in touch with me within a few days and gave me 3 months free sky sports. Not as good as the new customer deal but better than nothing for not too much hassle.

Sideface

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# 1343062 14-Jul-2015 14:41

nathan: Just leave and tell them why

When I did this they didn't even try to keep me as a customer, which was a surprise and really says it all

I had the same experience.
I recently cancelled my Sky sub after 10 years - they didn't ask why, or make any attempt to tempt me back.

Life is better without Sky.

Sideface

xpd

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# 1343159 14-Jul-2015 16:20

Weve cancelled ours (yay, hello Netflix again!), they tried keeping us but wife just said she was redundant and that shut them up... for 20s. They then tried getting her to pass our deal onto a friend to continue with.... we said no and that was the end of it.

XPD / Gavin / DemiseNZ

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"If Pinocchio says “My Nose Will Grow Now”, it would cause a paradox."

JimmyH

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# 1345015 15-Jul-2015 21:11

That's a standard boiler plate email that they just cut, paste and send out en masse in response to emails - pretty much regardless of whatever you happened to actually email them about.

I have had it twice over the last couple of years. Recently, when I emailed them to state that the level of ads on the channels was bringing me close to cancelling, and even more bizarrely 2(ish) years earlier when I emailed them about a technical problem which eventually turned out to be water ingress into the LNB.

I can see why a "rah rah, OMG! new features coming soon" email might be sent to someone complaining about the service offering, even though not even superficially responding to the specific point a long-standing customer is emailing you about is pretty shabby. Totally mystified as to why you would send it to someone reporting persistent rain fade and advising you of signal and BER stats etc? Not even taking the trouble to read and respond vaguely appropriately to a bona fide email from a long-serving customer paying a lot of money, who has a legitimate service issue is, is simply lamentable customer service.

I'm wondering whether it is even a real person responding, or just a standard machine-generated auto-reply to pretty much anything they are sent?

nathan

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# 1345046 15-Jul-2015 22:33

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Low hanging fruit/target customer is someone who would never email stuff like this

Someone who would email rather than call is someone who is younger, who knows about streaming services that are 1/10th of the price, that know about technical unblocking of restrictions around geoblocking, who couldn't give a rats about grown men chasing a piece of leather around a grass pitch etc

Basically the people.on this forum are not the target market, numpties are

wasabi2k

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# 1345066 15-Jul-2015 23:02

So I've been offered 2 months of Rialto at half price or 2 months of SKY movies at half price.

yay. not.

And I am 30 and work in tech and I've been subscribed to Netflix for close on 2 years I think. I still watch NRL.

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