How to Cancel Sky TV Ireland Subscription Easily

If you are searching for information on how to cancel smoothly your Sky TV account, look no further. This is how I did it, after spending some time on their terms and conditions page, chat with Sky Support and also on the phone. I can tell you what you are going to find once you call them asking to cancel your account. Be prepared to deal with their customer retention agents, trained to keep you into their cage.

Alternative and Cheaper options to Sky TV
Although there are not too many alternative options in the Republic of Ireland, as the same as the Internet Broadband providers, you can move towards Netflix for a fraction of the price. Funny enough, Sky TV itself offers an alternative way to watch their programs without contract, called NowTV. You won’t need any decoder, just a device to plug to your TV or the app if you have a smart TV and that’s it. If you have a smart TV such as LG or Samsung, you can also install All 4 app and watch their TV programs on demand for free.

How to Cancel SKY TV: Little bit of T&C lingo
Before starting, you need to know what Sky Ireland writes in its help page about cancelling your Sky TV subscription . This will probably set some lingo on the T&Cs (Terms and conditions) page you should know so to avoid early cancellation fees:

1. Cancellation Period: “A minimum of 31 days’ notice (cancellation period) is required to cancel your Sky TV services”
2. Minimum Contract Period: Is the minimum length you will have to pay for the Sky TV service. Mine was 18 months but probably because related to an offer.
3. Early Cancellation Fee: If you cancel the Sky TV service before the minimum contract period, you will incur to pay a “fine” for early cancellation, unless you are within your cooling off period. Sky Ireland is very vague about this in its pages and you have to dig further till you find a page that tells you something. I found this page and also this PDF file, where it tells you (in their own way) how much is the damage.

Sky TV Early Cancellation Fee Explained
You pay the early cancellation fee if you cancel your subscription before the end of the contract.
How does it much cost? It mainly depend on the service you subscribed. For example, mine was a Sky Q bundle. So the monthly penalty or fine is € 33.

Example of early cancellation fee
If I subscribed 12 month contract to Sky TV with a Sky Q box on 1 January 2019 and I cancel this service on the end of June 2019, I will be charged € 33 x 6 (rest of 6 months of the contract) = € 198 Penalty fee. So basically you have to count how many months/days are left to the end of contract. In the case above were 6 months. If we are talking about a Sky TV Package (€ 21.64 per month left) would add a total of € 129.84 penalty fee for early exit.
If this is the case, you have 2 options: First, wait till the end of the contract and then cancel the service. Second, see if you can downgrade the package to the minimum amount, such as just basic TV, then when the contract expires ask to close your service.

How did I cancel my Sky TV Subscription?
The quickest (and only way) is to contact their phone support on 0818-719-819
Once you get the line you have to tell to an automated bot that you want to cancel your subscription. Subsequently you will be asked if you are the sole account owner, then you will have to state on the phone your password (you set when you activated the service the first time on the phone with the agent). Once this is done you will put through a real operator.

>>>First Tip: Contact Sky TV Customer Support phone line in the morning. They opens at 9:00 am so be sure to call them between 9 and 10 am to get through a customer representative quickly instead of waiting in the queue. This because the number you call is not free but it has a cost per minute. If you call in the early morning you will get through quicker.

Get ready for the Retention Agents
After you are connected to a customer support representative, they know already what you are going to do. They are trained as “customer retention agents”. So they will try to stop you from leaving the TV service. I put in the title above “Agents” because you will talk to more then one.

Here what happens…

The first agent who gets the call will ask you how can help (they know already you want to quit) but this is a trick because you might feel bad telling to a very sincere voice that “I want to cancel my Sky TV account”. Once you tell your request, they will start asking “May I ask you why you want to cancel your Sky TV account?“. Usually is the price, the monthly price is expensive. Either or not this is your problem, never ever tell that the problem is the price, because they would narrow you down offering a downgrade of the TV service or offering some particular package which is less expensive but you will end up staying with them.

What to tell them then? You have to tell them something that cannot be argued. In my case I told them that I was moving towards an healthier lifestyle and I wanted to start reading books instead of watching TV. As you can see, it is not an issue about price, hence it cannot be addressed by offering something better, because it is a subjective reason. Also I have added that I was selling my TV (so to give more weight to my statement).

Of course this won’t stop them to try changing your mind. On the contrary you still have to deal with more agents as per their standard protocol. My advice is to let them do their job and at the end of their conversation just stay tight with your main reason. Don’t give them too many information because it can be used to profile you, finding a way to let you change your mind. If they know you less they cannot find weak points to challenge you. One thing that is though to NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming) is to find or create the “rapport” with the other part. This often happens when asking questions and getting answers.

What we talked about?
The first agent proposed me to downgrade my package offering me a basic Sky TV so I could keep Sky instead of closing. I was told by this person that once the account is closed, in case I wanted to reopen in 6 months (for example) I might had to pay an activation fee. So it was better to keep it basic, wait some time and then if I wanted to get back with my package they could do it. Nope! I wanted to cancel my account. Once I said this, they put me on hold telling me that they were going to prepare the request to send to the accounts department. After 3 minutes, another operator talked to me asking me why I was going to cancel my account. Same answer as above. Again they will offer you a downgrade package, then another offer so to keep you with Sky. I said again thanks but I wanted to cancel my account. This thing lasted for a while and I talked to 4 agents in total. Once they understood that they couldn’t convince me to stay with them, the last one asked me if I was using a broadband. Why? Because they will try to sell you their broadband service. In this case you can just tell them that you have “All you can eat data” on your mobile and you use it to check your email now and then. Bingo! You nailed it. Now it is the time to talk to the accounts agent. It is not just an accounts agent but again, he/she will ask you the reason why you want to leave etc. You know what to say at this point. After that you will see the light and in 31 days you will be free from Sky TV. Just another thing, be sure that you get your free parcel from them so you can return their decoder. This because if you don’t give it back you might incur of a fine. Example the Sky Q will cost you € 300 fine.

Just last thing I promise. Don’t cancel the SEPA direct debit payment with Sky unless you are officially done with them. Once they got their decoder back you can happily cancel it, not before. In case you have still to pay something to them before the official cancellation and your direct debit is removed they will escalate this to a credit collector company which will also charge you interests and fees on top of the debit.

I hope you enjoyed this article and it was helpful to you. If you want to share your experience please leave a comment below and I would be happy to read it.

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Donald Piccione

Digital Marketer, MSc - Dublin Ireland
Donald Piccione is a professional marketeer with over 10 years experience in SEO, PPC and Digital Automation.
Since 2008 he is also the founder and editor of an Irish News website for Italians called Tuttoirlanda.

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