Went to watch my subscription Sky Channels last night only to find they had been switched off - even though the fee had been taken out of my bank account. This morning I contacted my “well-known Lanzarote based supplier of dish and card” to be told that I would receive a phone call from Manchester to explain the “new options” available to me. I got the call and was advised that I need to pay the UK address provider £100 per year for their services on top of the £38 Sky monthly subscription. Worse still they asked for my credit or debit card number and they would have me switched back on within the hour. Told them to stick it where the sun don’t shine and cancelled the direct debit (I’ll go elsewhere or do without)! So, please watch out for this latest scam - basically you’ve paid for your Sky Subscription but the UK address card suppliers blackmail you for an additional £100 per year!

Sorry to hear that Hugh but do you expect to get something for nothing in this world.

Word on the street has it Sky will be switching quite a few cards off supplied by foreign satellite dealers so be careful where you get it from in the near future.

He wasn't getting it for nothing... he was getting it for £38 per month...that was the agreement.

Read my last part of the thread and then you maybe able to understand it a bit better. Card holder addresses are going to be priceless hence the new payment which Hugh should have been told about in the phone call.

you will find that unless you get the card from a friends or relatives address that all firms are now charging an admin fee for the use of sky cards
by the way i am not a dealer in sky cards but know that this is common practise with people who sell sky as a third party .i.e sell you a sky card having bought it thru someone else 1st
as overhere already stated this is because of sky turning off many foriegn sky cards thru people ringing up when the cards go off and saying * excuse im in lanzarote FOR EXAMPLE and im not recieving certain channels ) believe me it has and does happen so its not a rip off iff you want a sky card with no string attached then get you own thru family or friends
craig

Thanks for info, craig--
I take on what you're saying, and like you say it seems to be the norm to pay this extortionate admin. fee, (as I have since found out thanks to helpful people like yourself.)

I think what really gripes is that my dish/card/Sky box supplier on Lanzarote "accidently" forgot to tell me that the admin firm in the UK would be switching off my subscription with no warning at all to me; but then, they would have no way of contacting me, would they?
So the blame for this cockup is squarely on the shoulders of of the so called expert in Lanzarote, in my opinion.
I wonder how many more people are going to lose their channels, and refuse to be blackmailed due to lack of info. up front ?

i know of 4 suppliers on the island where you ge tthis charge per year, so it is the norm and as JOhn says you need to pay for certain things i,e, if you want to keep your sky on an unknown uk adress then surely we do expect to pay that person for the priviledge although it is too high i think

Like everything else, it's a choice. And, in this case, one that only people who have no friends or family back in the UK have to make.

Certainly the installer should have given you some warning. £100 is actually somewhat on the low side. Some providers are charging £200 or more. What you're paying them for is their willingness to break the law by signing a contract with Sky saying that the card is for their use, at their address only. It's called "Deception" in legal terms.

Sour grapes by OP.

Pay up Billy no mates in the UK or go the free view root.

Some people are so squeeky arse tight.

And there's a pretty good chance that Sky will be aware of most of the Mail Box addresses anyway, so you'd be wasting your money.

Does anyone know the reason why Sky and BBC can't be officially subscribed to by the millions of expats living abroad?

I would imagine that they are only licensed for the UK and a spart of your agreement with $ky the reciever and card should stay in the UK.

Its because the copyright and their broadcast licence only allows transmission/viewing to the UK and they make a fortune selling worldwide rights.

However there is hopefully a fly in their ointment:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12355022

Which shows their hypocrisy when they vigorously pursue anyone in the UK who does this but turns a blind eye to the tens of thousands of Brit bars and ex-pats throughout Europe who do the exact same thing.

I don't think it's hypocrisy as much as pragmatism. It's easy to detect TVs in UK, but pursuing an individual in another country must be difficult and therefore costly.