Haggle with Sky, the AA & more
The top 15 firms to haggle with
If you're willing to haggle, you could slash bills for breakdown, broadband, mobile and more. This guide includes the top 15 service companies to haggle with, sector-by-sector tips and how to access firms' hidden deals departments. Our last poll showed a huge 89% of those who haggled with Virgin Media and TalkTalk were successful, as were 85% of those who haggled with the RAC, and 84% who haggled with the AA.
Thinking of leaving your provider? Try our related guides...
Breakdown cover haggling | Broadband haggling | Car and home insurance haggling | Mobile haggling I Haggle with BT | Haggle with Sky | Haggle with Virgin Media
The top 15 companies to haggle with
When it comes to haggling, don't think it's limited to backstreet bazaars. Big savings are available in the UK on contracts for broadband, TV, breakdown cover and much more.
More often than not, the best deals are offered to new customers. Switching apathy and brand loyalty means existing customers often remain on contracts which are more expensive than those for newbies.
This is because most people already have mobile, TV, home phone and broadband contracts. So firms providing these services need to tempt customers from other companies with new, cheaper deals to expand their businesses.
Loyal customers are corporate manna from heaven. Firms love them, as they stick with them no matter what, paying full whack without checking if their deal is competitive or can be beaten.
This lets them rake in regular, guaranteed, easy profit. So ask yourself a question: do you want to be a customer whose business is fought for, or one who's taken for granted? If you don't want to be taken for granted, take the haggle challenge.
In a nutshell, call up and ask for a better deal. Say you're paying too much or rivals' deals are cheaper. If that doesn't work, tell them you're leaving. You'll usually get put through to companies' super-powerful hidden deals departments.
Hagglers have reported an over 80% success rate with Virgin Media, the RAC and more big firms
In our December 2023 poll, over 4,000 votes were cast on which firms MoneySavers have tried to haggle with in the last year and how they got on. Hagglers revealed higher-than-80% success rates with big-name companies such as the AA, RAC, TalkTalk and Virgin Media.
PROVIDER (TOTAL VOTES) | NO SUCCESS | SMALL SUCCESS | BIG SUCCESS | TOTAL SUCCESS RATE | LAST YEAR |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1. Virgin Media (473) | 11% | 25% | 64% | 89% | 85% |
2. TalkTalk (79) | 11% | 37% | 52% | 89% | 77% |
3. RAC (141) | 15% | 33% | 52% | 85% | 85% |
4. AA breakdown (309) | 16% | 31% | 53% | 84% | 81% |
5. Plusnet (76) | 20% | 54% | 26% | 80% | 65% |
6. Sky (646) | 21% | 33% | 46% | 79% | 84% |
7. BT (274) | 24% | 44% | 32% | 76% | 64% |
8. Admiral (151) | 25% | 48% | 27% | 75% | 77% |
9. Churchill (92) | 27% | 50% | 23% | 73% | 68% |
10. AA insurance (83) | 26% | 39% | 35% | 73% | 71% |
11. O2 (127) | 28% | 42% | 30% | 72% | 72% |
12. Other insurance provider (116) | 29% | 37% | 34% | 71% | 63% |
13. EE (168) | 30% | 34% | 36% | 70% | 68% |
14. Direct Line (122) | 33% | 44% | 23% | 67% | 68% |
15. LV (119) | 37% | 56% | 7% | 63% | 66% |
How big can the savings be?
All it takes is a quick phone call or live web chat and you could be quids in. If you need some inspiration, here are just some of the many successes you've told us about.
Let us know how you get on via the MSE Forum, successes@moneysavingexpert.com or X, formerly Twitter, using the handle @MoneySavingExp.
Reading through Martin's tips on haggling with Virgin Media has served me well – I managed to negotiate a saving of £21.50 per month on my TV, broadband and phone bundle. Happy days
- forumite Cangrejito
After reading your tips on haggling with Sky I called them and ended up with a £30 a month reduction without losing any of my channels/extra boxes. £360 a year saving from a 10-minute phone call is fantastic!
- David
I found I could get fibre, plus TV including most of my Sky channels, from BT for not much more than my Sky TV alone. After threatening to leave Sky, they matched my ending Plusnet broadband deal AND discounted the TV – result! MSE saved me almost 30 quid a month!
- Carole
The price of my cover kept going through the roof until it hit £240+, so I phoned RAC and said it was way too expensive and might leave. After rejecting the revised offer the price was finally slashed to £100, and the package was upgraded too.
- forumite Alan the Anonymous
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Step 1: Benchmark the best deal elsewhere
Haggling for a discount on your monthly contracts can be daunting, even for hardened MoneySavers. But honestly, as long as you do it right, there's nothing to be scared of.
The first step is to see what you can get elsewhere. We've sector specific tips on how to do that for each of the main service providers, ordered by how easy it is to haggle with each...
Broadband and home phone – Red hot haggling
Haggling a discount on your broadband and home phone is one of the easiest ways to cut costs. Because there are so many cracking deals on the market, you'll have a lot of leverage when it comes to persuading your current provider to reduce your bills (and if they don't, simply switch away).
Mobile phones – Hot for haggling on contracts, cold for pay-as-you-go
Haggling on monthly mobile phone contracts can slash the price you pay. It doesn't work so well with pay-as-you-go mobiles, as there are so many hot offers available to all online, and, of course, there's no contract for you to haggle about.
Breakdown cover – Haggle your heart out or ditch and switch
Haggling for a reduction is one of the quickest and easiest ways to cut breakdown cover costs. In our poll, the RAC and AA were the top providers to haggle with. For a full breakdown, see the 2023 poll results.
Car and home insurance – Haggle with care
Haggling on car and home insurance is far better than just auto-renewing – your insurer will often beat its own original renewal price.
Yet this is one area where you should never just haggle and nothing else. It's far better to use comparison sites to find the best price and then check for hidden cashback, then use that final figure as the benchmark to haggle with your existing provider.
Step 2: The powerhouse technique: Tell 'em you want to leave
Once you know what you could pay elsewhere, it's time to up the haggling anti - and actually make contact with your provider.
The most important thing to understand is this:
The 'disconnections department' is usually called 'customer retentions' internally. It's their job to stop you from leaving – so they're given huge deal-making power to get you to stay.
So whether you're dealing with broadband, mobile, TV or any other service, the company involved usually has this secret, super-powerful department. And the holy grail of haggling is to deal with customer retentions rather than normal customer services.
If you don't get the deal you want from customer services, the key to getting to customer retentions is telling them you are considering leaving. Of course, we don't want you to lie. But if you don't get a good enough offer, you should genuinely think about ditching and switching.
Once connected, repeat your request. The more genuine you are about disconnecting, the greater the chance you'll get a better offer, matching the market's best tariffs.
- Try again if you don't get a good deal first time. We've heard many customer retentions operators have quotas on how many deals they can give out in a day – so you may have been unlucky. Either that or you got someone having a bad day, or maybe you didn't use enough charm. Read our haggling tips below to boost your chances.
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Step 3: Use our top tips to boost your chances
Read these handy haggling tips for a few extra pointers:
Have your say in our forum!
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