MultiChoice Africa / DSTV
reviews and complaints

Maria Pelser
Dstv Ref number for complaint : [protected]/I11

September 2014 i cancelled my Dstv subscription due to the fact that i moved in with someone that had a Dstv and i did not need this anymore.
Spoke to Rebecca at Dstv 10/10/2014 she confirmed a credit was due for the amount R705.00, to me this contract ended as per my cancellation.
This morning 01 August 2016 i noted a deduction on my phone via notify me, for a deduction, amount R794.00 and by M-Choice, was not sure who this was, went to the bank they confirmed it was Multi- Choice to my shock,

Immediately phoned Multi-Choice, spoke to Moses Tjale, confirmed that my subscription had been reactivated, to my total shock as i know that my Dstv decoder had not been plugged in since September 2014, he stated that someone reactivated online, i can assure you it was not by me, i can be called in for a lie detector test as i am telling the truth my decoder and my Tv is still in a garage stored, they can trace where and by who the subscription was activated, i would like to get a full report from this as i had not done the reactivation request,

Moses stated but someone else could do this on my behalf, not true my account is linked to my decoder and my smart card nobody can do this as they will have no machine with this smart card to make use of the Dstv services, this is a inside doing at Dstv,

Today 01/08/2016 instructed my bank to stop this stop order with immediate effect, went to the Police Station made an affidavit that i had not since September 2014 made use of the Dstv service, i am requesting them to refund all monies due to me, if this matter is not solved, will make a case of theft against Multi-Choice, will take this matter to Court if you are unable to help resolve this matter.

Thank you for your assistance in this regard,

Maria Pelser
e-mail : [protected]@yahoo.com
cell : [protected]

I upgraded my account and paid upfront in May 2016, downgraded the account on the 25th May 2016 but they still debited the premium package amount. On the 28th June 2016 they allocated my debit order payment to the billing period 28th May - 27th June period but we all know DSTV is paid upfront, the whole month of June I had interrupted service and I had to call back almost every 2nd day to activate the service, many people could see the error of the billing but NOBODY could fix the problem, I was advised that the query has been escalated to the finance dept. But till this 29th July 2016 I still have a problem. On the 28th July 2016 my account was debited with R623.34 but when I call in they advise me there is a credit of R193.34 credit on my account. Now how dumb is the people working in your finance dept.! I am so frustrated and I want to cancel my debit order as well because I don't trust your staff to debit from my account. Nobody can do anything right at this place. I want to be reimbursed for all my calls I had to make whilst the problem was caused by your staff and "system" as everybody likes to say it.
I hate this service you guys provide and more so its frustrating dealing with a bunch of idiots whom all have different stories of how to fix the problem but nothing gets done correct.

Out of frustration and desperation I sent this email two days ago, to a supervisor (Mr Naiker) who was recommended to me. He was as my last hope in helping me fix a seven month issue, caused by you! However, not surprisingly, I was never contacted, never received a response, not even an acknowledgement of my email. Your services are shocking!

Dear Multichoice

Account number: 7003487
Case number: 7996803
Email: [protected]@gmail.com
Cell phone number: [protected]
ID number: [protected]

I had your DStv Premium package of R899p/m installed in January. Since that day I have had nothing but hassles!

I signed the contact stating I wanted my account debited on the 2nd of every month. What a pity this was never the case and what was agreed upon in our contract! I phoned in February to follow up (spoke to 3 different people over a week) as to why I was not debited. One lady eventually said they would do a double debit order in March, to which I agreed but that never happened either. Between February and June I have phoned, emailed and spoken to what must be close to 30 different people to help fix this error, YOUR ERROR!

In June I tried to open a new cell phone account as my phone, along with our car, was stolen. To my surprise MTN declined me because YOU have registered me as a BAD PAYER with the credit bureau! This is completely unethical and unwarranted.

On the 15th June I went into your offices hoping that someone would finally sort out this problem. I was referred to Tebogo Pooe. She said I needed to pay the outstanding balance on my account (R2943) before she could fix anything. I am a teacher and I do not have that sort of money lying around, however, I paid the full amount due. Since June I have now aggressively been trying to, again, FIX YOUR ERROR and do your job for you! On the 29 June I received an email from Tebogo Pooe saying they would inform Transunion that my account is now up-to-date. Yesterday (19 July) after spending a further R80 (for the second time) to download my credit record, Transunion has still not fixed it. They asked me to get the email address that Multichoice had sent the letter to so that they could trace the email and follow-up. I sent Tebogo four emails yesterday asking for her assistance but I got no response. After 7 MONTHS I have wasted my time, airtime and lots of money trying to sort this out. I am now absolutely fed up!

Between Multichoice and Transunion I want this sorted out TODAY. If my credit record is not fixed by 8am Friday morning, I will contact the National Credit Regulator and get my attorney to contact you.

Regards
Kirsten Pugh

I purchased the Explora Price plan on the R549 deal in June 2016 for which I was debitted R149 (29/06/2016)for decoder delivery and told that the money would be taken as part of my first debit order. I Try to get an installer come install the explora with out some one coming. I the Self service center several times and everytime the say they woud call me back. And now i sit with a explora with no service and every month the payment is deducted from my bank account. I want when are you going to send me an installer to install this dame explora.

I am a premium package subscriber and my services were disconnected with messag stating I am owing an Amount of R844 when I sent an email to find out, The responses were not satisfactory. As I was making a payment today am told via the I use that I have an overdue balance of R415, which m just told it has been long overdue, I don't know what is it for and how come it only emerges today, I have never received any statement or messages informing about it. I am disappointed

Catch up updates are inconsistent and some episodes are often skipped, e.g. going from episode 8 straight to episode 10. This service has been rendered completely unreliable and has actually lost its value. Kindly address this as this is a service that we are paying for.

I phone the call centre to find out if I'm able to use my fathers decoder as he gave it to me. I wanted to have the dual service and I explained that my decoder is on my husbands name and he is away working. The agent told it's no problem, I can still go in to multichoice just taking my husbands identity document as well as my fathers identity document and mine and I could do this. Then I got to multichoice N1 city and it was a different story. I drove all the way for nothing. I phoned the call centre to get the correct information so that I do not drive all the way for nothing. Yet that is exactly what happend.

Pathetic service.

In December we tried to rent movies. We send through the code reflecting on the screen via sms.
We could not watch the movies and kept on saying there is an error.
We tried contacting Multichoice but you hold on for hours at my cost. Multichoice deducted the movies from our bank account. We still cannot watch any movies and do not want to take a chance. I have send through an email to Multichoice and 6 months later no response, no reply! I have paid for movies that we did not even get to view. We have been clients with Multichoice for more than 15 years.

Why is it that when one wants to upgrade it can be done at any part of the day or night and any day of the month, but when one wants to downgrade you can only do it on the day of your debit order and you have to make the full payment even though you are downgrading for the new month. I had the a terrible experience with Siboniso from DSTV Durban call centre. He was very unprofessional and was not helpful at all. As a manager in the retail sector, I thrive on customer service and safisfaction. I was not given any solutions to my problems all I was told is that I cannot help you. I even told him that I will pay the pro-rata amount all I want to do is downgrade as I am goin through some financial difficulties at the moment. But no I was shot down immediately. I am never late with my payments and pay my installment on a monthly basis and yet I don't sit at home on a daily basis to watch this DSTV which continuously repeats programs. But the one time I call in with a problem I am not assisted. Is this he kind of service I get for being a loyal customer?

Last month I received a bill that was not the norm, after contacting the call center I was advised there was a pvr service active, I only have 2 explorers at the moment.
They said the service was activated at a store and it was a decoder I sold 6 months ago.
I asked the call center if it is legal that they they activate services on a clients account without the clients consent and they said no it is not legal!
They amended the account and I paid the normal fee last month.
Again this month I got an inflated bill and called again they again said the walk in center would have needed my contact details / address / id number etc to activate the service, I gave no one these details and none consent to activate the services on my account.
Call center passed a journal for the extra costs and it was declined, they simply said I must pay the other persons account.
If this is not fixed within this week I will contact my lawyer and look further into the process of activation without account holders consent / signature and dstv will be held liable for this, let alone for disclosing confidential information to the person who bought the decoder.

I recently had my credit rating done and it was to my utter disgust that the payment status for Multichoice has been in arrears for 30 days periods during the course of 2015. I did in October last year encounter problems whereby the debits order was reflecting a short paid amount. I immediately followed up with Multichoice and was advised by the manager:Given Maseko and Adam Tswai that the matter was known to them and that there was a system glitch in their side which was not debiting the correct amounts from the customers. They did assure that the matter was under investigation and that I should make the payment of R363.67 was outstanding which would then bring my account up to date. Weeks passed and we started encountering problems whereby the services would be suspended and I had spent days on the phone trying to resolve the matter. I was finally advised that the matter was resolved, but i am very dissatisfied that i now reflect as a poor payer for a period of more than 30 days. WHY DOES MY CREDIT RECORD HAVE TO BE AFFECTED BECAUSE OF THEIR INCOMPETENCE? I want this to be fixed immediately.

Managers details:Adam.[protected]@multichoice.co.za ; Given.[protected]@multichoice.co.za

Regards
Mrs Mahomed
[protected]
email: [protected]@yahoo.com
my account number:[protected]

Dear DSTV,
Being a South African and an expat working in Cameroon I have always subscribed to your premium package - for years now and paying in excess of $100 subscription monthly. Anyhow I by accident damaged my card and requested one from the local DSTV branch. I was surprised when the lady told me they can not help me as I need to purchase a new decoder with a preprogram card. They can not only supply me wit a "card".

Subsequently I do not need another decoder and refuse to buy one again and I will cancel my loyal subscription today.

Imagine having a car..you need to replace the battery...and they tell you sorry you need to by a new car...this marketing strategy will kill your existence ...sorry it is my opinion.

I have two decoders and this month i couldnt afford to pay so i called on the 31may to ask them not to debit, the lady promised that they wont. On the 2nd of june i get a message from my bank saying that multichoice returned fees, meaning they took money but because there was notwin the bank the money was reversed, the also charged me 136 rands per decoder for recieving channels from the two to ten june, i never authorized that. Now they say i owe them r1400 for what they are not sure worst of all when i complaint the guy dropped the phone in my ears when i asked what hes name was. Now i owe the bank for something that i tried to stop.

I have been having endless problemsnsince May 2016. My debit order wasn't processed as instructed. An error message since 4 June 2016 with No service, they keep on escallating the problem but not resolved to date. Inhave a primary and secondary decoder. The one was working on 5.06.16 and not the other, after lots of calls and according to them, the problem will be resolved, they caused a problem with my other decoder too, then 07.06.2016 only the one was and is working. The one hasn'nt been playing since Monday after I was guaranteed everything will be sorted out. I have been dealing with Noxolo, JNR Malinga, Precious, Busisiwe, Nokuthula, Kelebogile and the supervisor took longer than 15 min to get to the phone so my call was cut. I was asked for my smartcard number 5x already, does no one record the information
I EXPECT 5 DAYS VIEWING TO BE DEDUCTED FROM MY ACCOUNT!
ERROR E143 STILL ON SMARTCARD [protected]?
DONT SEND ME CUSTOMER FEEDBACK EMAILS WHEN YOU ARE NOT DELIVERING WHAT I PAY FOR!

I purchased the Explora on the R899 deal in April for which I was debitted R149 (29/03/2016)for decoder delivery and told that the money would be taken as part of my first debit order. On 29th March 2016 I also paid R873.50 for my April usage. By now I had slightly overpaid. Then on 3rd May Multichoice debits my bank account with R1375.00. So now Ive overpaid by even more. In fact, by R599.50. After calling in several times to their call centre and being told by Tendresse, their call centre agent, that she is trying her best but the department she's passing on my complaint to won't reverse my money and will continue to charge an additional R149 per month for the decoder until my 24month contract expires. I strongly requested a copy of my contract to which she replied, they dont supply copies to clients.
I mentioned that it is my consumer right to have a copy of the agreement I was paying for and Tendresse insisted that it was not possible. This must surely be illegal and against the Consumer Protection Act. I am disgusted with Multichoice and their acts should be made public.

I have 2 tv's. Dec the 1 was of basically the whole month. I make eft payments every month. End of January we phoned and asked how does the explora deal work that they have. They wanted to know everything about us. Then we bought one at a shop the same day. The next day the lady phoned and said we qualify. We told her we allready bought one. She was upset and put the phone down on us. Then Feb I made the eft. The 15th of feb they ran a dt order. March I made an eft. The 15th they ran a dt order. I asked them to stop it. April it happened again. Now they tell me the eft of feb was reversed. It doesnt show on my bank statements. So a cording to me the payment is fine. An eft can only be made with money in your account. And why on earth will i reverse it... to make problems for myself? I doubt it. I have to send statements back and forth. Then they disconnected the 1 tv.. telling me to send the statements again. Can they PLEASE get competant people to work there. I mean 2 payments for february 2 payments for march and then the rubbish story of an Eft that was reversed. Maybe they should train their people better.

It has come to my attention that the word "God" and the name "Jesus" has been muted out of all satellite channels except for the Christian channels. I also do not have the power to unmute these words in the parental control function. My question is: when did Jesus become such a dirty word that I don't even have the choice of whethe I want to hear it or not. Why am I paying you; subscribing to your services for over twenty years to be slapped in the face with this development which you haven't even bothered to inform me of?

I need to know what the thinking is on this. There are hundreds of millions of Christians in Africa who think Jesus is the greatest name of all eternity. Why have you muted Him out? You must explain this please. Or my money will be going to Western-owned Netflix in the future. You are taking the mick in royal fashion here. Not amused.

In March 2016, I paid my annual DSTV fees, around R8500 for the subscription.

In April I bought a new Explora and Smart LNB from GAME, and traded my SD PVR in. It was installed and the installer left. I noticed Box Office was "not available in my region", but I didn't want it, so left it thinking I can call DSTV later to set it up.

In May, without any notice, DSTV took around R680 from my bank account. It later transpired that they had taken a monthly subscription charge due to a back office error. To get this money refunded took 4 days, numerous calls at my own expense and a lot of call centre red tape. I took the opportunity of also raising the Box Office problem, and also told them that Catch Up did not seems to be listing everything as it should. Over a couple of days, the DSTV Call centre had me check the Explora settings, and then do a factory reset, wait for 2 days - all to no avail. I was then advised that the Explora must be disconnected and taken to DIgicom, a local DSTV agent, for them to format the hard disk and update the software. I told the agent I would return the Explora to GAME as what they had sold me did not work! GAME replaced the decoder and I took it home and connected it up. The DSTV call Centre helped me to update the settings and then I waited for 2 days for Box Office and Catch Up to down load. In the meantime, the TV picture came through intermittent, the satellite signal kept dropping to 0%. I knew some settings had not been set correctly, but the DSTV call centre refused to accept that and told me I must get an installer out at my own expense. I did, he arrived, turned the TV on, asked me to give him the Smart LNB settings from the box in which it came, and he input those settings into the decoder - and the picture began to come through and the signal was good. However, I still do not have Catch Up and Box Office. The 2nd Explora was as bad as the 1st! The installer said that I must take it for the hard disk and software as DSTV sells old Explora's that don't work properly! I guess it is like buying a computer with Windows XP when we are in a Windows 10 word!
24 hours later, I bring the Explora back home, re-connect it once again, wait 48 hours for the movies, Catch Up etc to download...and finally, it all works like it should have done, when I bought the 1st Explora back in April.

This horrific customer experience all happened because DSTV are selling Explora's that don't work and not telling customers! Isn't that contravening the Consumer Protection Act - I think so! And to take money from a clients account without permission is tantamount the theft - a criminal offence.

Try getting any sympathy or compensation for costs, time and inconvenience from their Call Centre staff! I don't think they understand what a customer is, their rights and how they should be treated.

Hi, I am greatly disappointed with the level of service from Multi-choice. I have been paying my monthly subscription via different payouts due to the incompetent staff that cant freaking do their jobs, each time I must fork out monies for them! What the hell are they doing, they dont put their customers first and i as an individual is a new subscriber. I did change of ownership, followed their process and still they cut the services. they send me sms to pay in so much of monies and no one till date can provide me with a statement that was requested prior to ownership being done and monies transferred?!

Go and check your calls and see how many of times I call in and each time that is wasting my time and my money to call in. Now my husband calls in and spoke to Collette Zulu and the reference number is: [protected]-I421, they have re-activated the viewing. I received sms to say that I must pay R432.01 where it includes recoonection, my husband recalled them and spoke to Gugu Ndlovu and the reference number is: [protected]-I 43, now I must wait for my credit to be done to me because of their incompetance. what the hell is going on and where is my statement?!

Someone needs to take ownership for the extra monies paid in and pay me back due to people in the debit order and change of ownership division not doing their jobs! Else keep your damn subscription and il go else where to get better services.

Lastnight I was advised by my husband that Gugu Ndlovu said to him that im not a subscriber, I pay month to month. Luckily I forwarded him the email with my subscription form which I had sent to ownership division.Corlett and Gugu said that the reversal for my monies will come in but they still debited my account for R432.01.

I would like to bring to their attention, that I want my monies back and they can keep their ### subscription, I will give business to another service provider. This is unacceptable that each time its not my fault for them not doing their job and i must pay in advance!

On the 28th of March 2016 we had a call out with DSTV Supreme Signal to come and fix our signal since some channels were not caught and DSTV told us to get DSTV technicians to fix it. A call out was made to Chris [protected] for the job. The gentlemen by the name of Michael and Brandon came on behalf of Chris, later confirmed as his workers to assist. They inspected and said we had to replace the TWIN LNB since it was not working and had to be replaced which they did but unfortunately we never inspected it to confirm if it was brand new, we took their word.

On completion, they confirmed the guarantee on the TWIN LNB was 6 months and we should call them if anything should occur before then, which in most cases is unlikely to happen since it last years, that was their words. Satisfied at that present moment that the signal was back on all the channels that were not available. We settled the bill but we had a dispute on the call out fee that doubled on arrival from R200 to R400, needless to say we paid it and the R550 for the TWIN LNB which is not working now from 23th of April 2016.

We thus called Chris on the 24th of April and told us we should call Brandon since he had fixed it but we questioned, how they had his receipt details, which they had billed us on. His reply was they had used his bakkie without his consent(which we discovered was a lie, since his wife confirmed that Michael and Brandon do work together sometimes for Chris). We thus called Brandon and he kept lying to us saying his coming, up until we had the last called on 2nd May 2016 after numerous calls. Our complaint is Chris is not honest about outsourcing of work to Brandon and not wanting to take accountability for the unsatisfied poor service and the defective new TWIN LNB that is no longer working after being replaced.

Our request please, is the replacement of a new TWIN LNB has said that is was working and more so the guarantee has not expired.

Trusting our complaint is heard and as we await your reply.

Business details of Chris:
DSTV SUPREME SIGNALS
t/a Brown Bridge IT Solutions Pty (Ltd)
Reg.no.[protected]/07
(Jhb) [protected]
(Pta) [protected]
Cell: [protected]
Email: [protected]@dstvsupremesignal.co.za
Website: www.dstvsupremesignal.co.za