The TV and broadband company has said that it will be crediting customers’ accounts after they weren’t notified of price increases
Young man holding television remote control(Image: Getty Images)
Thousands of Irish households are set to receive refunds from Sky after the company discovered a small number of broadband customers had been overcharged. The overcharges affect both broadband-only and bundled TV and broadband customers, some of whom were paying a higher rate for more than a year.
The overcharges occurred when the company increased prices on some bills in error without notifying customers. Sky has an estimated 260,000 broadband customers nationwide and double that number in TV customers. According to reports from the Irish Independent, less than 1% have been affected by these overcharges.
The company has confirmed that credit will be applied to customer accounts to match the unnotified price increases. However, affected customers have been informed that the price of their packages will increase starting from January 2026.
A spokesperson for Sky Ireland said that the average overcharging amount was €50. A spokesperson said the error was discovered when it conducted a review of its contract-change notifications “from the last couple of years” and found that “a small number of customers did not receive the required contract-change notification” when their service price was increased.
“As part of our quality-control checks, we discovered that a small number of our customers received a price increase without the required notification,” Sky said in a statement to customers this week.
“To put this right, we have applied a credit to your account to refund the difference between the amount you were charged and the amount you should have paid.”
The Sky spokesperson said that if a customer had since changed providers, it would automatically issue a refund to the payment method it had on file on the customer’s account. If that payment method was no longer valid, the company said it would issue a cheque “to ensure the refund reaches them”.
A ComReg spokesperson has said that a telecoms service provider “must notify affected customers of any changes to a contract [covering] both the price plan and terms and conditions. They must do this by giving at least one month’s notice of the change and must inform the customer, where applicable, about their right to terminate a contract without penalty.”
