I'm going to give some advice regarding Retentions, because a lot of the people who call me go completely the wrong way about it and end up getting stone walled from me and leaving dissapointed....
First off remember the person your speaking to takes about about a hundred calls a day, with each person basically saying exactly the same thing, it's a game and for you to go away happy both of you need to 'Win' from this call.
1) Be polite, the agent doesn't HAVE to give you an offer, they dont really care whether you cancel your services or not but their bonus is based on getting a certain percentage of people to not cancel their services. And most people are only calling to get some money off so if an agent doesn't like you they can easily let you cancel and make up the numbers on the next calls.
2) Be Patient, dont call when your in the car or in a hurry as this call is going to take an average of 20 minutes mainly because the agent has a call structure which they have to follow in order to meet their bonus requirements. If they dont ask certain questions or read certain information out to you then it's potentially going to cost them a months bonus, if your not going to allow them to get these things done they are not going to do their best for you , they will either not give you any offers or they will not give you their best offers.
3) Dont threaten/Demand. If the first words out of your mouth are either 'Give me this/that or im going to goto *insert competitor here'* or 'I've had letters from my door from competitors offering much cheaper prices' then it's going to make the agent argumentative, rather than trying to help you out it's going to turn into an argument about price comparisons or the difference in services.
But first, what most people get wrong is....Get through to the right department!
Cancellations;
If your out of contract for your TV then the team you need to be speaking to are the cancellations team, not downgrades. Tell them that you want to cancel your whole package either because you've seen better offers elsewhere or because your not watching the TV and they will give you an offer on the whole package to reduce the costs and stick you in another contract.
Downgrades;
If your in contract for anything this is a trickier game, first off remember that you cannot just say 'I dont want to cancel anything I just want it cheaper' as this isn't going to go anywhere, the agent is ONLY allowed to make an offer based on what your not in contract with and say your looking to cancel. If you have Movies/Sports you can tell them you want to cancel these and they will make you an offer to discount them, if you have Multiscreen tell them your thinking about cancelling that and you can get an offer on that too, you want to work on the highest value packages based on 3 criteria...
1) DTV (Digital Television) this comprises of Basic TV (Original, Variety, Family) and Premiums which are Movies/Sports. You never get good deals on the Basic TV so Movies/Sports are the things you want to be discussing here. Movies/Sports are £35 a month, Half price for 6months is a standard good offer usually available. You can only expect £2-3 a month off basic TV and that's on a good day.
2) Products, This includes Mutiscreen and HD. Multiscreen is the highest value product here so that's your target if you have it. HD is worth £5.25 per month Multiscreen is 11.25. Half price Mutiscreen for 6/12months is usually available.
3) Comms, This is your Line Rental and Broadband. This is always a good one as Sky is competing highly with other providers for these services so you can usually get a good offer on these. Line rental half price for 12months or a recontract on the BB free for a year is possible.
But remember, you can only have ONE offer on each of these criteria, the system will not allow you to 'Stack offers' so you need to get the best one on each of the three.
