Monday, September 03, 2007

Setanta - what you need to know....

I decided to subscribe to Setanta Sports this weekend, I thought for £10 a month with no annual contract it sounded like fairly good value. However, having taken the plunge I discovered that there's also a £10 connection charge which is hidden in the small print. Quite why in this digital age of instant communications you have to pay a 'connection charge' is beyond me, could it just be purely a money-making ploy?

Not only that having become a subscriber I then discovered that Setanta will continue to deduct £10 a month from my bank account until I tell them to stop and I have to give them 30 days notice, which effectively means you are locked in for two months. Suddenly instead of being cheap it starts to look a little expensive.

I guess subscribers will have to pay the £10 connection fee each time they subscribe, but on that I'm not certain. My view is that many new subscribers will not even realise that they need to cancel if they don't want to continue receiving Setanta, added to which unless they read the small print they wont know about the 30 day notice period and once they discover these facts they will feel a little hard done by. That is how I felt anyway.

Setanta have paid a lot of money to get a slice of the Premier League action, good luck to them, but I'm not convinced about their marketing methods.

Moral of the story - always read the small print.

4 comments:

  1. You must have little to be worrying about in your life if you feel hard done by a £10 connection fee in order to receive a brand new service from a vendor. Would you expect BT to give you a phone line for free or SKY to give you free installation? Its a £10 connection fee, not unreasonable imho.

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  2. I'm glad someone else feels the same way as me about this.

    I was tempted into looking at Setanta, after a mate told me it was £10 for a month and you could pay a month at a time.

    I also didn't know about the connection charge, nor about the fact that it was a recurring payment.

    Not rubbing it in at all, but I was fortunate in finding this out before I signed up, and duly decided not to.

    Although I don't miss PremPlus, I would be more willing to pay per game for games I knew I wanted, than commit to £10 a month and not necessarily have an interest in them.

    So if Setanta are listening, a change to your policies may indeed get you more customers. If you care.

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  3. Wait a bit longer and try and give notice. The customer service line bombs you out when you say you are an existing subscriber. They will not take cancellations by email. You have to basically write to them. I am in the process of doing so but I intend to send by recorded delivery. Their customer service is non existent

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  4. I feel the same. Nowhere on their TV advert or main website pages does it mention a £10 connection fee or recurring charge. I've complained to the Advertising Standards Agency and urge you to do the same.

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