Last year Sky bought half a million broadband customers from O2 and BE (part of O2). The transition’s been smooth for many, but some say that Sky is charging them a ‘supplement’ for not having other Sky products…
Sky’s website tells O2 customers to either ‘wait or migrate’. You can pre-empt the switch by calling up Sky to take advantage of a ‘special offer’, or you can wait for Sky to move you. Either way, according to Sky, ‘it’s business as usual’.
However, as some former O2 customers are finding, it’s not business as usual at all. In fact, customers who choose to stick with a standalone broadband deal but don’t take out Sky TV or Sky Talk, have told us they’ve been charged a ‘supplement’ for the pleasure of not using these services.
PhilRag14 writes on Sky’s community forum:
‘Without any warning I find I’m being charged for not having a particular service (the aforementioned “supplement for not having SkyTalk”)?!?! Surely this is some mistake but sadly it seems not. How any decent company can charge people for not having something is beyond me.’
An incentive to buy Sky Talk and TV
This is all despite the following claims on Sky’s welcome website, which say that:
- Sky will try to match or beat your current combined home broadband and phone (where applicable) monthly subscription price, where they can, including any monthly offers you get.
- The only change you will notice on your payments is that Sky will start collecting them instead of O2/BE
- Sky will transfer only the services that you subscribe to with O2/BE – you won’t have to take Sky Talk if you only have home broadband from O2/BE.
- You can take Sky broadband without Sky Talk and Sky TV.
Firstly, these customers may not ‘have’ to take out Sky TV, but being charged not to take them out seems to leave customers with very little choice. Secondly, Sky might match the broadband price, but these supplements are in some cases doubling the monthly charges O2 customers were previously paying.
A Sky community coordinator explained to unhappy customers that these supplement charges are not a mistake and that ‘the Sky Broadband package is offered at a discounted rate for Sky TV subscribers’ and that ‘you should have received correspondence in the form of an email or letter to advise of this before migrating’.
Frustrated O2 broadband customers
Twitter is also full of complaints from ex-O2 broadband customers:
So @O2 sell their broadband to Sky. Sky take over and then bill me supplements for NOT having Sky TV or Sky Talk with them.
— FawnDoo (@FawnDoo) January 11, 2014
Broadband. Sky have taken over O2 and doubled my bills.Being charged standard supplements for services I DONT subscribe to – TV and phone!
— vegetarianconsultant (@AbsoluteCooking) January 10, 2014
Being charged for services you don’t use, especially when this move wasn’t your decision, doesn’t seem right. So we want to hear from you – are you a former O2 or BE Broadband customer? Have you been hit by Sky’s ‘supplement’ charges? How do you feel about it?
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