Sky dropping Variety Bundle channels and increasing prices

[Satsuma]

Sky have announced that they may be losing a whole bunch of channels from their Variety Bundle in a few days, as they are having a bunfight with Discovery over charges:

From 1 February, Discovery Communications’ portfolio of channels are unlikely to be available in Sky TV packages...In the UK and Ireland, this includes DMAX, Animal Planet, ID, Eurosport 1, Eurosport 2, Discovery Shed, Discovery Home & Health, Discovery History, Discovery Science, Discovery Turbo, Discovery, TLC and Quest.

https://www.sky.com/help/articles/chang ... el_changes

It looks like these have already been removed from their website. The remaining channels are as per the list on http://www.sky.com/shop/tv/variety-bundle. There doesn't seem to be any mention of what you can do if you are in a fixed-term contract for this bundle, but out-of-contractors can simply drop it from their subscription (we will be).

Furthermore, they are also increasing Line Rental, call charges and BB prices (got an email yesterday):

The price of your Line Rental is increasing on 1 March 2017 by £1.59 a month. This change will show in your March bill.

Our call rates are increasing on 1 April 2017 and your new rates, showing from your April bill, will be:

Call Connection from 16.9p to 19p
UK Landline from 11.5p/min to 12.54p/min
UK Mobile - Daytime from 11.5p/min to 19.35p/min
UK Mobile - Evening & Weekend from 11.5p/min to 14.25p/min

Despite the above, for now Sky remains the best value option for our needs, but we will be keeping a close eye on things.

HTH
Sats

[supremetwo]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-sky-pl ... ing%20News

European pay-TV group Sky plans to introduce a loyalty scheme to stem a rise in customer defections that, together with a jump in the cost of soccer broadcasting rights, cast a shadow over first-half results on Thursday.

The company, which has accepted a buyout offer from Rupert Murdoch's Twenty-First Century Fox, reported a 9 percent drop in first-half operating profit and said that the customer churn rate in its biggest market, Britain, rose to 11.6 percent from 10.2 percent a year earlier.

Both Sky and BT are paying too much for sport and expecting 'ordinary' customers to uncomplainingly pay for it.

[scrumpyjack]

Yes that is certainly true. No one in my household has any interest at all in football yet if we want any other sport we are paying heavily for the footie

[AF62]

Our call rates are increasing on 1 April 2017 and your new rates, showing from your April bill, will be:

Call Connection from 16.9p to 19p
UK Landline from 11.5p/min to 12.54p/min
UK Mobile - Daytime from 11.5p/min to 19.35p/min
UK Mobile - Evening & Weekend from 11.5p/min to 14.25p/min

I have Sky for phone and fibre broadband (the cheap deal from last October) which offers no inclusive calls at all at either weekends or evenings. Can't have fibre broadband without the phone, but I am damned if I am ever going to pay those rates to make a call, as charging £7 per hour for phone calls is verging on criminal.

Does anyone actually choose to pay these rates or are they just their to catch the unwary. Is it the regulator preventing them increasing them further, as the only people who are making these calls are probably the people who can't afford to pay them.

[supremetwo]

Our call rates are increasing on 1 April 2017 and your new rates, showing from your April bill, will be:

Call Connection from 16.9p to 19p
UK Landline from 11.5p/min to 12.54p/min
UK Mobile - Daytime from 11.5p/min to 19.35p/min
UK Mobile - Evening & Weekend from 11.5p/min to 14.25p/min

I have Sky for phone and fibre broadband (the cheap deal from last October) which offers no inclusive calls at all at either weekends or evenings. Can't have fibre broadband without the phone, but I am damned if I am ever going to pay those rates to make a call, as charging £7 per hour for phone calls is verging on criminal.

Does anyone actually choose to pay these rates or are they just their to catch the unwary. Is it the regulator preventing them increasing them further, as the only people who are making these calls are probably the people who can't afford to pay them.

Probable that most opt for the call package - £8 per month for calls up to an hour's duration including those to mobiles.

[Devjon]

I've never been able to get my head around the fact that people pay a not inconsiderable amount of money every month and yet still have to endure adverts. I have an Amazon Prime account and share a Netflix subscription with my daughter, any films / programs / documentaries that I choose to watch are advert free ( I did see an on screen notification at the start of each episode of a recent series that I watched that said "This program contains Product Placement" )

I accept the need for advertising on the Free to Air commercial channels and beleive the BBC licence fee to be an absolute bargain for what you get.
It's also quite noticeable while watching an advert free program just where the cut scenes are placemarkers for the adverts to be inserted.
I'm sure this must affect the writing, as scenes cannot be more than a certain length without a mini plot jump out to the adverts

[Satsuma]

I've never been able to get my head around the fact that people pay a not inconsiderable amount of money every month and yet still have to endure adverts.

Well, it's not that "considerable" at all actually. We pay £43 (which is about to drop to £32 when we remove the Variety Bundle outlined in my OP) and that gives us a great range of TV. And as it's Sky+, there aren't adverts either, as we either FF through them or are watching recorded shows anyway. The £43/£32 also covers line rental and unlimited broadband and apps like Sky Go (where you can d/l shows and watch on other devices). I think that's pretty reasonable?

I have an Amazon Prime account and share a Netflix subscription with my daughter, any films / programs / documentaries that I choose to watch are advert free .... It's also quite noticeable while watching an advert free program just where the cut scenes are placemarkers for the adverts to be inserted.

We also have Prime and Netflix, and I agree that the "cuts for ad break" are quite obvious. It's also a little sobering to realise the average 1hr programme would otherwise contain 15mins of ads, because on Netflix/Prime it's 45mins long. This can be even worse for some US shows where they have even more frequent ad breaks.

Sats

PS> I recommend Sneaky Pete on Prime. A few Eps in and enjoying it. Would also rec the imminent returns of The Walking Dead, The Blacklist and Scandal, but sadly they're on Sky so you can't watch them