{"id":461080,"date":"2022-09-19T13:12:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-19T11:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=461080"},"modified":"2022-09-25T16:14:18","modified_gmt":"2022-09-25T14:14:18","slug":"dstv-adding-disney-to-subscriber-bills-without-permission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadcasting\/461080-dstv-adding-disney-to-subscriber-bills-without-permission.html","title":{"rendered":"DStv adding Disney+ to subscriber bills without permission"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several DStv customers have complained that the pay-TV service has added Disney+ subscriptions to their accounts without permission.<\/p>\n

DStv parent company MultiChoice partnered with Disney+<\/strong><\/a> at its launch in South Africa in May 2022, offering Premium subscribers three months of the streaming service at no charge.<\/p>\n

Customers can also bundle a Disney+ subscription with their DStv package and add it to their bill.<\/p>\n

That provides a R49 discount on the overall monthly fee<\/strong><\/a> for Premium, Compact Plus, and Compact customers.<\/p>\n

In addition, Disney+ has launched an app on the DStv Explora Ultra decoder.<\/p>\n

The subscription is supposed to be completely optional and requires customers to opt-in by manually adding their cellphone numbers to link their DStv account and Disney+ sub.<\/p>\n

However, in the past few weeks, several DStv customers complained on the MyBroadband Forum<\/strong><\/a> and Twitter of subscriptions being added to their bill without any input or consent from them.<\/p>\n

The complaints surged on Monday, 19 September 2022, with MyBroadband receiving several emails from irritated customers by noon.<\/p>\n

Below is a screenshot of the email and SMS notifications DStv sent to the affected customers, informing them of a Disney+ subscription being added to their accounts.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A quick search for “DStv Disney+” on Twitter<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0showed myriad users complaining about the same issue.<\/p>\n

“DStv, why are you adding products to my billing without my permission? I did not activate this but woke up to email and SMS notifications that I added <\/span>Disney<\/span>+ to my billing. What the hell is this?” one user said<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“Just had <\/span>Disney<\/span>+ added to my account with no authority to do so. Email actually says I added it! What a nerve!” another said<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“What is happening here? Why am I getting messages thanking me for subscribing to <\/span>Disney<\/span>+ when I did not do such a thing? If this appears on my bill there is going to be a problem,” a third stated<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One user had tried to remove<\/strong><\/a> the incorrectly-added subscription from their account, but a DStv agent told them they could only unlink their subscription, and the customer had to cancel it directly with Disney+.<\/p>\n

After querying it with Disney+ South Africa’s online support team, they were told that DStv had to action the cancellation.<\/p>\n

Another customer said<\/strong><\/a> their attempts to remove the subscription from their bill through DStv’s customer centre had been unsuccessful, even after Disney confirmed they had cancelled it.<\/p>\n

Several impacted customers said they took up the special Disney+ early registration offer<\/strong><\/a> that gave users a significant discount on an annual subscription.<\/p>\n

That was offered directly through Disney+ and not as an add-on to the DStv subscription.<\/p>\n

No response from MultiChoice<\/h3>\n

MyBroadband asked MultiChoice and Walt Disney Africa for comment on the apparent incorrect add-ons, but neither were able to provide feedback by the time of publication.<\/p>\n

DStv’s support teams on Twitter asked the complaining customers to send them their personal details to follow up on the issue.<\/p>\n

DStv is no stranger to billing problems, with the\u00a0company’s Hellopeter page<\/strong><\/a> filled with claims of incorrect charges on customer accounts almost daily.<\/p>\n

A MyBroadband employee recently got first-hand experience of this<\/strong><\/a> when his old EasyView package, cancelled three years ago, was reactivated and money deducted from his bank account.<\/p>\n

In that instance, the company blamed the issue on a “defect” in its system.<\/p>\n

Several former DStv customers have since come forward and related similar experiences in response to MyBroadband’s article.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/strong> MultiChoice has explained that it automatically gave DStv Rewards members three free months of Disney+<\/a><\/strong>. It assured subscribers would not be billed after the free period ends.<\/p>\n

\n

Now read: DStv Premium and Compact bleeds subscribers as MultiChoice hikes prices every year<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Complaints surged on Twitter on Monday, 19 September, with MyBroadband also receiving several emails from irritated customers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":444362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[12857,85,35,475],"class_list":["post-461080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadcasting","tag-disney","tag-dstv","tag-headline","tag-multichoice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461080"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461080"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":461098,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461080\/revisions\/461098"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}