Yesterday I had a young Eastern European chap from Sky turn up at the door to try to sell me their wares.

At first he told me that others in the area had had trouble with Freeview reception so Sky were doing a promotion. Well I don’t have any trouble with Freeview. “Perhaps they haven’t retuned or they have old aerials”, I told him. I tried my best to look uninterested in his products. I don’t buy from door-to-door salesmen as a principle, so perhaps I should have told him that instead.

Having no luck with the Freeview reception, he instead went for the “HD TV is great” tactic but as I don’t yet have an HD telly it would be pointless to get an HD box. “But the box still works on an old TV and when you upgrade you’ll already have HD”, he countered. But when I upgrade my TV it’s going to have a Freeview HD tuner and I won’t need an HD box.

“Do you watch lots of TV?” he asked.
“No, not really”.
He agreed… “Not much on, is there?” He was trying to sell me a TV product, wasn’t he? He then went for the Sky box will record the stuff you like while you’re out, but once again we already have a PVR that does that.

So, then he asked how much I pay for internet and who I’m with, trying to sell me Sky Broadband instead. You have to give him his due; he was trying hard.

I recently moved to Zen Internet. They’re slightly more expensive than regular ISPs but they have no traffic shaping at their ISP and provide you with the fastest internet you can get for the price. They also have a 25Gb download limit with a pretty decent monitoring application from which I found I’m using around 18Gb a month, so Mr.Sky Broadband’s 10Gb limit wouldn’t be enough. I told him this. “Well, we can give you the unlimited package and for just £39 a month you get TV, telephone and broadband… just £7 more than you’re paying to BT and Zen.” Ooh, just £7 for Sky TV! But hold on, I don’t want Sky TV!!

I sent him away without a sale. Fail.