Cancelling Sky to get a better deal: Need advice

[jakesmith1986]

Hi,

I am moving to a new house on the 29th of this month, and I approached a Sky salesman in my local Tesco.
He told me that if I cancelled my account, and started a new one at my new address I could get free installation, HD+ box, 6months line rental and 3months broadband (Plus £50 in Tesco vouchers). All I would have to do is pay £30 for sky to take ownership of the BT phoneline.

I called sky this morning, and they told me that if I did this, both the salesman and myself will be fined £400, as they check new customers' bank details/names etc to make sure people dont quit and re-subscribe for better deals.

I cancelled my service after being told I had been placed on this "list" for 12months, and rang the salesman back.
He told me not to worry, as they cant actually check, and that he has done it thousands of times.

Has anyone on here ever been caught out when doing this? Should I just cut my losses and not get these deals, or is the salesman telling the truth?

 

[Starburst]

If you intend to well defraud someone you don't tell them

Yes if members of a household sign up to SKY thanks to a different name/bank account then yes they can be treated as a new customer and of course if certain details like address and bank accounts change then signing up under the same name can also work.
However both these work as SKY do not go to unreasonable lengths to cross check all possibilities but if you tell them you are planning to do this then they can place a flag on your name or household in terms of getting certain deals.

At the end of the day if you sign up with new bank and phone details they won't know or if your partner does with their own account they won't know but obviously you don't attempt to sign up under the same name and banking details even if you hadn't already given them warning

 

[jakesmith1986]

Thanks for the advice!

I didnt realise I couldnt resubscribe at my new address as a new customer, thats why I didnt think anything of telling them what I was doing. From the sounds of it, I probably could have gotten away with it if I didnt say anything.

The whole idea of it struck me as pretty shady though, what with an employee of sky telling me to go ahead and rip them off and that its fine as he has done it thousands of times before.
Also, the salesman was planning to sign me straight up to a new account, but sky will still have my details for the 30days it takes to cancel my old account. Chances are they would have noticed a new customer pop up with a bank account of a cancelled customer.

I decided to go with BT anyway, as they offered me a pretty good deal.

I also meant to ask this too originally; The sky website says that I can keep my @sky.com email address for life, but the cancellation rep said it will go when my account is shut down. Which one is correct?

 

[Starburst]

I also meant to ask this too originally; The sky website says that I can keep my @sky.com email address for life, but the cancellation rep said it will go when my account is shut down. Which one is correct?

The email address is probably frozen when you leave but since it's not like hotmail as in a generic third party provided email service it's useless to anyone who doesn't subscribe to the SKY ISP.