hj2k_x

As the only satellite TV provider in SA for many years now, DSTV has entrenched their monopoly position, raising prices, ignoring what customers want, and generally becoming universally hated, and justifiably so.

What has got us all so angry you ask?

I shall break it down for you. Let me start with the positives, as there are so very few, of having DSTV (note: in general I shall be referring to the 'Premium' option as the various watered down ones are just ridiculous)

1) The sports coverage.
Generally agreed to be unrivaled. The Premier League coverage is better than you would be able to get if you actually were in England, which is great.

Cricket, rugby, tennis, golf - you name it, they have it.

2) It is better than SABC and E.
It is not worth watching the local channels most of the time. ETv has made some decent inroads into providing some decent local content, however, in general, it is hardly worth getting a TV if you are only going to have SABC and E.



The bad

1) The Price

In a country where the average wage struggle to get above R2000/month and with 40% unemployment, it seems almost sick that there are more than half a million people paying close to R500/month just for this 'service'.

On numerous occasions people have commented that they do not watch most of the channels that DSTV offers, only a select few and that they would be happy to pay individually for these channels. But do Multichoice care? Do they bollocks.

2) The lack of variety

There are a lot of channels, that is for sure. But how many of them are actually decent, with great content that you really want to watch all the time? Not very many I am guessing. The movie channels are decent but they repeat movies like it's going out of fashion. The height of this must surely be when the same movie is on on two channels at the same time! Pathetic really.

3) The billing system

I think they should be damn happy whenever anyone coughs up the small fortune it costs to have DTSV for a month, yet their billing system seems to have been designed in the 1980s. For one, they bill in advance, which means that at the start of January you already owe them February's premium. This makes no sense to me at all. Other companies, bigger than DSTC, like Vodacom, manage quite well billing in arrears, which seems the sensible thing to do, yet Multichoice cannot get this right.

Then, invariably, they cut you off. If you have underpaid your bill by R2 because you were unaware of some or other price increase, the y cut you off. Just like that. No matter how regularly you have been paying in the past or how small the amount is that you owe. Then they manage to send you an sms saying that they have cut you off and that it will cost R50 to reconnect you. What exactly is this reconnection fee based on? It clearly does not cost them any money to reconnect you so why on earth should we be made to pay for this privilege?

Why can they not send the sms prior to disconnection? Then you actually have a chance to rectify their mistake before they cut you off. But that would clearly be in the customer's best interests and we can't have that.

4) The lack of focus on customer's needs

They know that their service is not what customers want but they know they can abuse their monopoly position and do whatever they want to because there will be enough people who subscribe to their service no matter what, simply because we have no other alternative.

Customers want choice. They don't want to be stuck with 100+ channels of which they will watch maybe five or ten. They want to be able to choose which ones they want and then pay only for those. Quite why DSTV does not address this I do not know.

All in all, as is ever the case in South Africa, roll on the day when competition finally arises and we can finally rid ourselves of the devil that is Multichoice and DSTV.

On that day, I will happily take my DSTV decoder (which works only on and off), take it out to my garden and beat the thing to death with a baseball bat.

Until then, we will have to keep sucking on the crusty useless DSTV teat, and, as always just grin and bear it.