Why cant sky just give me the channels I want

lonewolf2010

All I want from sky is "sky1, Gold, Fx,Quest, Discovery and Living.
I have every other channel I want for free.They told me the only thing they can do for me is give me the variety pack and knowledge pack for 23 euro a month so I have now cancelled my subscription which I have had for four years. How hard can it be to activate a viewing card with just these 6 channels on it and id be happy to pay 10 euro per month. Does any body know of any other way of getting these 6 channels.
I have no interest in cardsharing or any thing illegal.
I think its about time Sky wake up and start giving people a bit of choice for once.

watty

They technically can do A la Carté, in Analogue days they could not.

But the present arrangement suits them and will only be more enlightend:
1) Pan EU legislation to forbid a pay Platform operator owning Channels
2) Pan EU legislation to force "a la Carté" only and outlaw fixed packages.

Be careful what you wish for. Under an A la Carté system some channels might be 1/3 price of a Mix pack and others might vanish.

lonewolf2010

Im going to call them every week about it as each person you talk to in sky has a different story.

John mac

lonewolf2010 wrote: »

Im going to call them every week about it as each person you talk to in sky has a different story.

how much will that cost you ?

lonewolf2010

The cost does not bother me. Its the principle of the matter.

charlie1966

Don't waste your money on Sky.
Don't waste your time on phone calls.
Enjoy what Free to Air has to offer.
If there is nothing on then read a good book, you will feel the better for it.

Cantona's Collars

lonewolf2010 wrote: »

All I want from sky is "sky1, Gold, Fx,Quest, Discovery and Living.
I have every other channel I want for free.They told me the only thing they can do for me is give me the variety pack and knowledge pack for 23 euro a month so I have now cancelled my subscription which I have had for four years. How hard can it be to activate a viewing card with just these 6 channels on it and id be happy to pay 10 euro per month. Does any body know of any other way of getting these 6 channels.
I have no interest in cardsharing or any thing illegal.
I think its about time Sky wake up and start giving people a bit of choice for once.

Do you live along the East Coast? If so you may be able to pick up the UK freeview service via aerial and stb.It has most of the channels you need along with the fta via satellite.
http://www.freeview.co.uk/freeview/Channels

Owenw

Don't waste your time and money. To hijack a phrase: they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience. Enjoy free tv and supplement with a few choice DVD / bluray tv boxsets. Top quality picture, & sound and no ad breaks!

excollier

Or put on the radio, then you can be entertained and do something else useful for youself at the same time!:D

rlogue

Actually fair play to the OP. I am of exactly the same opinion about the whole notion of packaging channels. After all, the whole Sky business model is built on offering products like Sky Sports or Movies and HD but making sure that punters have to pay for a whole lot of channels that they may not necessarily want before they can watch the sports or movies.

Coupled with the hobbled Irish EPG this is a classic example of how Sky screw the Irish consumer.

AnonymousPrime

charlie1966 wrote: »

Don't waste your money on Sky.
Don't waste your time on phone calls.
Enjoy what Free to Air has to offer.
If there is nothing on then read a good book, you will feel the better for it.

Ive never met an evangelical bookworm, until now.

charlie1966

AnonymousPrime wrote: »

Ive never met an evangelical bookworm, until now.

:eek:Have we met???

Sky are in the business of making money. If you don't like the way they operate then don't deal with them. They are not going to let you pick the only channels you want, even though they could quite easily. Also it is no use ranting to the grunts in the call center, they don't make the decisions, they probably don't get payed enough to give a sh--.

And no I don't work for Sky.

AnonymousPrime

charlie1966 wrote: »

:eek:Have we met???

In a way, yes

mrdsmith

Your idea is great for customers, but bad for Sky.
This is NEVER going to happen.
Firstly, it would be too complicated to allow people to choose what channels they want, for various reasons, such as advertising it would be extremely difficult, any new customers wouldn't know what channels they want.
How do you decide what to charge for a certain channel, i.e. quality, content.
Finally, Sky would lose a serious amount of revenue if they implemented your idea.
Its just never going to happen.
Oh, and do you seriously think the employees at the call centre really give a crap, besides there is absolutely nothing they can do about it. They get a serious amount of complaints in general, but they don't care. And with over 10 million customers in the UK and Ireland, their strategies must be working. Sky don't and never have really cared about their customers.

Its just a dream which will never come true.

ricman

If you are in an area that has cable,you can get discovery and living tv,eg on the upc analog basic channels.And even with no sub a sky box still gets fta channels,bbc,itv,c4 etc
those channels maybe be on digital terestial tv, in a few years ,but they wont be free.

lonewolf2010

Well I got my sky ftv card to add a bit more variety and guess what?
When I go to the channels I want which are scrambled its says to view this channel i can add it for £1 or €2 per month. How can I add these to an english ftv card that im not even supposed to have in Ireland in the first place.

ricman

You have to subscribe to 1 or 2 packages, 22 euro is the minimum subscription, then if you are a customer, you pay,2euro for music, 2 for arts package etc
MY friend pays 45 per month, entertainment,movie,channels package, if she wants arts she has to pay another 2 euro.IF you dont like it,get cable tv,or wait ,there,ll be ten digital terrestial channels,in 2 years in ireland.
Like cable tv, its not viable,you cant just pay for 5 channels on upc.
it seems fair ,if you are not a pop music fan ,pay nothing ,if you are 2 euro is a tiny amount to pay.Those messages come up for sky subscribers,eg if you go to mtv, and have not signed up for the music channels,it,ll come up,pay 2euro for mtv,smash hits ,etc

mossym

lonewolf2010 wrote: »

Well I got my sky ftv card to add a bit more variety and guess what?
When I go to the channels I want which are scrambled its says to view this channel i can add it for £1 or €2 per month. How can I add these to an english ftv card that im not even supposed to have in Ireland in the first place.

so what, now you're giving out that sky aren't detecting that you're not supposed to have this card? you'd rather they detected you're not supposed to have it and automatically switch it off. they're working on the assumption that you legally have the card and are using it in the way they intended.

if youa re that unhappy with them why on earth do you persist with them. they are an optional service. if you want the service they provide you pay them for it, if you don't want it you don't pay for it. it's the exact same business model used in every industry all over the world. do you think you can walk into a shop., tell them you want to buy a box of roses, but you only like some of the sweets so you're going to take out the ones you like and only pay for those?

again, if you don't like what sky have to offer leave. they offer services the way they want, and it's up to you to decide if they are what you want. if not walk away

like previous poster, no connection to sky

lonewolf2010

It seems perfectly viable to me. I have the equipment the card and am willing to give them 10 euro a month for a hand full of channels.120 a year is better then nothing a year. People just seem to accept what is on offer.

mossym

lonewolf2010 wrote: »

It seems perfectly viable to me.

have you actually thought it through?

10 million customers(not sure if this is right, someone mentioned it earleir in the thread). right now they have 9/10 different packs that people opt into. maintaining their customer database requires recording for each customer which of the 10 packs they have and charging them for it. with that there are constant threads on here and other forums bemoaning sky for not being able to get their billing right


so now sky move to a select what you want option. the options now are for every customer to have a totally unique setup from what, the 800+ channels available on sky?( i know some of them are fta so the actual number may be less). can you imagine even with a small number of errors how many billing errors this would cause? how many support people it would take to fix those? how many extra support people it would take just to go through each users account adding the channels they want? you'd end up paying for those people, meaning your few channels would cost as much as the packs you have now.

plus the forums would be full of complaints, and the sky bashing that goes on now would look pale in comparison. great for public image

i cannot possibly see how that would appear viable to anyone

lonewolf2010

Looks like I just have to admit defeat on this one. There is nothing else available in my area so hopefully with saorview and freesat sky might re think there package options in the future when they loose enough customers