We pay a sky-high price for consumer loyalty
ON November 2, 1982, there was much ado as the people of Britain were rewarded for their patience with a fourth television channel free of charge.
Ever since 1964 they had made do with three functional channel buttons on their sets. Now, if they pushed a fourth button at four-ish in the afternoon, they would see coloured blocks coalescing to form a giant ‘4’ on the screen. For 14-yearolds, it was pretty exciting.
In a few moments the Countdown clock would count down its first 30 seconds and, in the numbers round, viewers would have their first chance to gaze admiringly at 21-year-old Carol Vorderman’s arithmetic skills.
Channel 4 News, as I recall, went on for half the night but a delicious parody of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five mysteries, called Five Go Mad in Dorset, followed. Required viewing. No one I knew at school the next day admitted to not seeing it.
Day 2 of Channel 4 brought P’tang Yang Kipperbang, a made-for-TV film about a teen romance which charmed Britain’s socks off. I’m not sure Sky Movies has heard of it.
It was correspondence from Sky, actually, which prompted this bout of small screen nostalgia. Was I aware, its letter asked, that I own my Sky equipment? And had I considered the pickle I would be in if suddenly it went on the blink?
Expectation
I had not, to be fair. I’d assumed I’d just get on the phone and wait an hour to shout at someone. Well, not to worry – for only £9 extra a month, Sky Protect will insure the equipment for which I already pay nearly £1,000 a year in the expectation that it will function correctly.
It is true I don’t just get television for this price. I pay part of the money to sit and wait for my computer to get on with what I have told it to do. That part of the package is called broadband.
Another part goes towards the obsolete instrument which, in the days when my mother was alive, rang two or three times a week. Since losing her, the only people calling that number rather than my mobile are those, like Sky, who wish to sell me things I don’t need.
But it is fair to say most of this £1,000 a year goes on the stupendous number of TV channels I can access. On Channel 511, for example, Alex Salmond’s new life as a television presenter for a Russian station bankrolled by the Kremlin is on display.
On another station, called QVC – Channel 660 on my set – Baroness Mone shows up from time to time to flog cheap jewellery.
Yes, indeed. A few short decades after the memorable launch of a fourth channel on our sets, stations were bubbling up and closing down at such a terrific rate there was nothing remotely momentous either about their introduction or demise.
Not that everything I could watch when there were only four channels to choose from I can still watch now that there is a choice of hundreds. The sum of almost £1,000 a year I pay Sky was not enough to afford me live pictures of the Open at Carnoustie last month. No, sport is extra.
Nor, once I had paid this extra sum, would it be possible to sit back and reflect that I had all the channels I could possibly want (and countless ones I couldn’t) at the best price available.
That is because within a year or so of signing up to it, your TV and broadband provider typically offers you the worst price available. All its competitors will offer cheaper packages in the hope you will defect.
Then, 18 months down the line, they will bring on the pain with dramatically increased prices of their own.
Overpaying
According to watchdog Ofcom, around 20million of us now have TV and broadband deals whose minimum contract period has expired and are more than likely overpaying for our viewing packages.
The solution? To suck it up – or else endure the 18-monthly aggro of more set-top boxes, more holes drilled in walls, more wiring threaded around skirting boards and more tall stories about broadband speeds.
All of which makes being a consumer of TV a lot like having car or home insurance or a mobile phone deal or being the customer of a utility company which puts gas or electricity in our properties or having a mortgage.
In every case, the very consumer loyalty which once brought discounts and bonuses is today ruthlessly punished by stealth price hikes and imaginative new ways to screw even more from the customer.
Stick with any of them beyond the minimum contract period and soon they will be sending letters to determine just how stupid you really are. This week, Sky wondered if I was stupid enough to pay extra to insure my set top box when it was already obvious I should leave them and pay less for more channels.
So now I must cast a jaded eye over all the new channels I would get with Sky’s competitors. For a 50-year-old who remembers November 1982, it isn’t even as exciting as Countdown.
It’s a chore made necessary by a refusal to let them win.
And I suppose I’ll have to decide what to do about that ancient landline. Keep it, I guess. Just in case yesterday is in touch.