Paying for Sky by Credit Card

[Undecided Adrian]

had a phone call from my Dad today saying he has had a letter from Sky saying that from 1st March if you pay for Sky by Credit Card you will be charged a 50p surcharge.

Does anybody else know anything about this as I thought just over 2 weeks notice was a little bit steep.

He said he will phone Sky and go over to direct debit, but also at the same time will drop some of his mixes as well, he's been wanting to do it for a while but not got round to it so Sky will now lose out on this anyways.

[NewsreadeR]

I pay by credit card and have not been informed of this. You can understand why, as Sky lose 1.5% or so. But no notice (or very little) is poor.

May ring up to threaten to drop the Sports and blame this as the reason. If they then credit me £6 (and your Dad) we are no worse off

[bloggsy]

Yes I've had the letter, in eight months time I shall be telling these useless thieving removed to shove everything I've got on sky where the sun doesn't shine. so for £6:00 they think they are gaining, they will instead be losing £600:00. The people at Sky must have removed for brains.

[BillBee]

I've also received this letter following last month's letter saying that my broadband will go up by £5 if I don't take Sky Talk. I prefer to pay by credit card and I don't want Sky Talk so, having been considering reducing my mixes for some time, these 2 letters are the triggers to do just that. I'm moving from Sky World to the 6 Entertainment mixes and I will almost halve my subs.
Will they never learn?

[Undecided Adrian]

I do agree that they have to pay for credit card charges but customer inertia should really be taken into account, people will happily let their package go on for months as phoning sky is too much hassle.

Then when they do have to to set up a DD they then decide to have a clear out and by charging 50p sky loses a whole lot more.

Personally I prefer DD anyways as it's a lot easier to get money back via your bank and to cancel a payee anyways.

[Ned Ludd]

The one big danger with paying by Credit Card is your inability to cancel it!
When I had a problem leaving Plusnet some years back, Plusnet absolutely refused to accept that I was leaving. They would not stop taking money off me. Visa said that they could not stop payment unless Plusnet agreed!
Only course open to me was to ring Visa and say that I had lost the card. They cancelled the existing card and gave me a new one with a different number. That stopped Plusnet from taking any more money.
Of course, as Adrian above has already said, with Direct Debit you do not have this kind of problem as you are protected by the DD Guarantee!

BT currently charge you an extra £1.50 if you do not pay by DD!

[NewsreadeR]

tbh On MySky you can easily change it over from CC to DD so taking a payment on it without my authorisation would be pretty hard to do. The only annoying thing is that Sky take it on 22nd of the month, whereas I specifically set it up to take it on the 25th of the month.

I wouldn't class Sky quite the same as Plusnet, and having paid by card for a few years, I have never had an issue with extra payments / wrong ones, apart from one made in manual error.

The only way that Sky have something in common is the lack of comms about Connect and their traffic shaping. I seem to remember PN burying their heads as well at the time. Only a few years later did PN admit that they had it wrong and issued a public apology.

[Ned Ludd]

Well, as I said, it was a long time ago. In those days it was the norm to pay by CC too. DD was almost unheard of!
But, I'll wager that you still can't cancel a regular payment taken by CC just by contacting Visa/MC whereas you can cancel a DD just by ringing your bank.

[Drone69]

At least Sky let use a credit card with no hassle. The muppets at Tiscalli say you can pay by credit card. What they don`t tell you is that they start phoning you 2 weeks before the bill is due. There are other ISPs that wont let you pay by credit card.

[oldun]

A DD is guaranteed (?) by the bank whereas a credit card payment is an agreement between yourself and the company you are paying. The credit card company are in no way involved and have no responsibility for the payments.

If you want to cancel a credit card payment then only the company being paid can do this.

A DD is far safer.