Cancelling Sky – My Advice/Experience

Quite sometime ago I explained on this blog that I was considering ditching Sky. I have moved to using an Apple 4K TV with apps and I am very happy with this setup after a trial. I then just pay for the apps and in some cases, subscribe to ad free services.

Before cancelling Sky, I was expecting it to be a difficult task. I did have to jump through a few hoops but these are my experiences and learnings. It wasn’t quite as difficult as I expected.

Sky start trying to push for you to update your contract a couple of months before it expires. A poor deal was appearing on the Sky app.

I contacted about 6 weeks before the contract was due to end knowing I was determined to leave. My advice is to cancel or renegotiate via the messaging options at the bottom of this Sky page here. The feedback from those who phone is that it is a nightmare and can take hours. Whereas the cancellation process via messaging page took about an hour.

Eventually my cancellation was accepted. If you phone before the 30 days, they will treat the cancellation as a future dated notice. So they have acted on my instructions in advance and the contract will end at the earliest point. The reality being I have given advanced notice of leaving and the cancellation is now set to be acted on.

As you would expect, they make a few offers. All the offers were Sky Q based. Surprisingly, they did not offer Sky Stream which was the one thing they could have persuaded me with to stay. None of the offers were appealing and they were still expensive. Had they checked what I would have been interested in, maybe a deal could have been reached.

Once processed, it all took about an hour and I received emails confirming the account closure for Sky TV. As a chat service, I was at least able to smoother things.

The emails confirm what services will end on the agreed date and reassure that your Netflix account stays live and billing will be via your Netflix account in future.

The only app I now need to sort and pay for in addition is Paramount Plus. I will then be good to go.