Sky price hike: how to cut your bill
Sky confirms price rise from December - we look at what you can do to fight back and cut your bill.
Sky is bumping up its line rental prices by 6%, just five months after hiking the cost of its TV packages.
The standard line rental will jump from £16.40 a month to £17.40, while Sky Talk voicemail will rise to £1.25 amonth from £1 a month. That's a £15 a year bill for a service that used to be free!
Calls that you make outside of your allowance will also be more expensive. The connection fee will jump from 15.9p per call to 16.9p, while calls to UK landlines and the access charge to call service numbers will both increase from 9.5p per minute to 11.5p per minute. On the plus side, calls to UK mobiles will drop from 12.7p per minute to 11.5p per minute.
Letters are being sent out from today with a full breakdown of the new costs, which will come into force from 1st December.
BT, TalkTalk and Virgin have all announced price rises in the past few weeks.
What can you do about it?
The obvious solution really is to switch.
If you are still within your minimum contract, you can leave without paying a penalty so long as you call Sky within 30 days of receiving notification about the price hikes. You can leave at any point without paying a penalty if you are outside of a contract period.
Alternatively you could haggle to see if you can get a better deal. Give Sky a call and say that you are leaving. You'll be put through to the retentions department, who will most likely offer you a better deal in order to stay. Make sure you research the best current deals on the market, and mention them during your call.
loveMONEY's editor John Fitzsimons managed to cut the cost of his phone and broadband bundle with Sky by £10 a month by doing just that earlier this year, so it's definitely worth a go.
Why has Sky hiked its prices (again)?
Sky is currently trialling 4K Ultra HD TV along with up-and-coming broadband technology, including advancements in fibre optics, and it said that this investment in "market-leading innovation" was one of the reasons it needed to raise prices.
Last week Sky hooked up a house in York to an incredibly fast 940mbps fibre broadband connection.
Want to switch broadband and TV too? Check out How to switch your phone, broadband and TV packages. After that, head over to broadbandchoices.co.uk to compare the best deals on the market.
Get cashback on your household bills with these brilliant current accounts
More tips and tricks from loveMONEY:
Say no to 0870 numbers: hot to call them for free
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