MultiChoice Africa / DSTV
reviews and complaints

My pvr fell and the hard drive was hurt in the process, causing it not to work. It worked out too much to have it repaired and I didnt have finances to fix it at that time. I called in to have it cancelled and was told that the linked walka would cost me r49 per month. My mother then bought a new machine and registered it on her name. Last week the walka all of a sudden was suspended, when I called in, I was told the account is outstanding with r386.27 which was due 1 sept 2015. I cannot understand the amount as r199 + r49 does not give aforementioned amount. Even after paying the walka (R49) every month after the pvr was cancelled in august. Now I am expected to pay the r386.27 for what, I dont know as that machine was cancelled due to the fact that its broken. I was also told I am a premium customer but yet I have the family package. What am I to do now!

I have the same problem every month with DSTV and the useless staff working in the call centre. Every month I must pay a reconnection fee on my 3 accounts with DSTV because "someone" in your accounts dept. doesn't have a clue how debits and credits work. Once again I phoned on the 3rd of Nov 2015 to fight/ask/beg/ for my dstv to be shorted as the debit order DSTV tried to deduct was for the amount of R2 530.18 I spoke to Sipho Kazie and she told me her manager is busy with my account he will phone me back before the end of the day. Its now the 6th November still waiting! And now my DSTV has been disconnected. Once again I phoned the useless call center only to be told the manager will phone me back once again he is in a meeting. And that I must go after work to PnP or Spar to settle my account. Really? In my family time I must go and pay for something that's not my fault and still pay a reconnection fee. What a joke. My ref number for today 4732677/I194. I'm seriously fed up with DSTV and all the useless staff. I will be sending this mail to every single news paper as I am sure I'm not the only one who's battling with DSTV non customer services.

my name is frans, i have purchased an dstv explora wit multichoice on the 27 November 2015 and only received confirmation on the 30 that the decoder will be dispatched to me on the next 2 to 3 days, i then contacted their customer service which was not helpful at all and they lacked knowledge and procedures for their own product and the decoder was delivered on the 04 November 2015, i have called them the hole day to day and was sent from pillar to post, called every multichoice around akasia and soshanguve and still no held, i then called the adviser and i was asked if i had the installation voucher in the package that was deliver and i answered no and the said they will escalate the matter, can please the installation dept contact me on [protected], this is irritating and frustrating

Original complaint http://hellopeter.com/multichoice/complaints/still-waiting-for-my-call-1847441 Second complaint http://hellopeter.com/multichoice/complaints/i-got-help-but-no-one-knows-what-to-do-1869830 Facebook https://www.facebook.com/DStvSouthAfrica/posts/10153050410186114?comment_id=10153050416611114¬if_t=share_comment In a nutshell after my initial complaint the decoder was loaded under my wife's name. i then received the change of ownership documents from the original owner. I then submitted these and opened a new account with DSTV. Now they are finding it extremely confusing that the change of ownership doesnt match up because the DSTV themselves loaded the decoder under my wifes account (which she closed due to poor service). I eventually made head way and the supervisor assisting me this week got a response from change of ownership today (31 Oct 2015). See below. ______________ Enquiry Reference Number: 7105522 Dear Crecentia Please note that the following decoder does not belong to Mrs van Niekerk it belongs to Miss D Bain therefore the change of ownership cannot be processed: U900022141 - [protected] Kind regards Abigail Ruiters _______________ As you can see after sending them the links to hellopeter and Facebook this is the response i get back. This is totally unacceptable. I will go all out here to get this sorted out.

Hi Austin and the rest of the Multichoice team Since my last correspondence to you on 14 September 2015 I have had no response from you or any body else at Multichoice to my request for a refund of R 400 plus R 20 = R 420 as detailed on the below e-mails. It seems to me that Multichoice's modus operandi for dealing with cases like this is to completely ignore it in the belief that the customer will eventually forget about it as it is too small an amount to follow up on. I can assure you that is not the case. I respectfully ask that this matter be escalated to a higher level if you are not able to resolve the matter. ----- Forwarded by Ian GRAHAM/ACTOM on 2015/10/30 10:54 AM ----- From: Ian GRAHAM/ACTOM To: Austin Mathebula Cc: Seipei Rahube, Thabang Shayi Date: 2015/09/14 02:30 PM Subject: RE: Explora Hi Austin Many thanks for your reply. However the fault was not relating to the installer. When he was activating the Explora decoder unit after installation he spent a very long time trying to get it to work. It was eventually discovered that the fault was on Multichoice side whereby, due to an error by a Multichoice employee, the number of my decoder had been logged by Multichoice in error to another person. The only way that the problem could be solved was for me to take the original decoder back to Makro and exchange it for another unit (and thus have another number). This was reported telephonically by the Blingstallation technician, Gugu (Phone [protected]) to Multichoice who instructed that the change of the Explora unit should be made at Makro Germiston.. Therefore the installer spent one hour longer than necessary trying to solve a problem on Multichoice's part and not due to any fault by the installer or myself. We were instructed by your employee, Nomathamsanqa to do this change to solve the problem and the reference number she gave was 1616229-i6. All of this occurred on 28/08/15 at 13h16 I feel aggrieved that due to no fault of my own or that of the installer, I had to pay the additional amount of R 400 because it took more than an additional hour to get the unit operational by the installer. I respectfully ask you to reconsider your summary dismissal of my request for Multichoice to refund the cost of R 400 for the wasted hour of labour. This can be done by way of a credit to my account and adjustment on the next EFT payment run. Additionally... Please also note that the first off cash payment was made at Checkers. A sum of R 799, 00 was paid in error by us. It should have been R 779, 00 (i.e. R 699, 00 + R 80, 00= R 779, 00). Therefore we have made an overpayment to Multichoice on the first months subscription of R20, 00 which should also be taken into account on next months EFT payment run. See attached proof of payment Kind regards Ian Graham Regional Projects Manager Boiler & Environmental Division POWER John Thompson A Division of ACTOM (Pty) Ltd 42 Diesel Rd, Isando, 1609 P. O. Box 8382, Edenglen, 1613 South Africa Cell: +[protected] Direct Line: +[protected] Fax: +[protected]

on 30/09/2015 I paid R354.80 ref number [protected] to switch dstv on. this is for dstv Family R199. on the 26th they deducted 338.47. when I asked for a refund they told me 40 days. this according to Me are illegal to deduct money which I did not sign for

Good day, my debit order did not go off my bank on the 1st of october, I called in to query and was told that they received the payment, maybe my bank is slow, 8 days later got disconnected, after calls with sinah and the team leader had to send proof that there was money in acc on the 1st, I dont have a unpaid on my side, they still to date did not reverse my r50.00 - that is my hard earned money after all, poor service and yet we as subscribers must just fork out. - good luck with your daylight robbery

I would like to thank multichoice sa for their poor /pathetic service! payments made for services and not getting anywhere with their self service nor contacting their call centres. looks like there are not communication nor admittance to systems when speaking to their so called consultants. one thing for certain is that they lost another customer who paid for their services and never received it!

In spite of repeatedly emailing proof of payments to various Multichoice departments, my account has not been brought up to date and my services are suspended.Every time I call your Customer Care centre, the person (after a long story) promises to escalate the matter so that it is finally solved, but nothing happens! My services are suspended and my airtime is wasted making long, unnecessary calls. After I was reconnected on Saturday 17/10/2015, my reception on the dual view decoder (Smartcard # [protected]) was continuously interrupted by an E32-4 message (Viewing is temporarily blocked). I made 4 or 5 more calls to deal with this, but the solution only lasted for about 15 minutes each time before I was forced to call in again! This situation has persisted right up until I left for work this morning. I was supposed to entertain guests this weekend with the rugby but this was totally ruined by the interrupted service from Multichoice / DSTV! I am very unhappy with the treatment I have received over this matter which has lasted since MAY! I intend taking my complaints further – including consumer action sites and Facebook, Twitter, etc. I don’t see why MY viewing and entertainment should become such an unpleasant experience because of the attitudes / incompetence of DSTV employees.

I have made numerous attempts to have my dstv account sorted out to no avail. I am tired of speaker to one operator to the next who always assure me that this account has been sorted. I dstv was cut off this morning once again due to the inability of dstv to sort our account out! - we disconnected dstv in april - there was a credit on our statement of r800 in may which magically disappeared - they went onto a new system and automatically reconnected us on 27 july. We only phoned in on the 21st aug to reconnect which my husband queried……nothing was ever done about his query. - we have also been charged for 2 decoders? Why? I want proof of phone calls to connect both. Reference number [protected]-i50 (Spoke to narrato who reassured me the journals would be passed to correct this)/[protected]-i51 and I have a few more. Customer [protected].

When I phoned the franchise in Amanzimtoti, at the Toti mall, and asked for a copy of the document that they keep, when receiving money on callouts and such, I was told that they couldn't find the document. what type of business runs on this irregular methods? if I was the Multichoice parent, I would be very worried about this, especially as money could be siphoned without them being aware. in addition, this type of feedback by the lady answering the phone, might end up having SARS also looking in. Multichoice - are you ok with this sort of behaviour?

This is the third month that Multichoice is abusing my Debitorder. As a single parent working 2 jobs Multichoice just flagged me as risky client at my bank. I have to pay an excess fee everyday because of the abuse of my debitorder at Multichoice. I want my money back. Lerato has contact me multiple times and still money is been stolen from my account. I want this to be sorted out. 3 Months ago I signed up for the DSTV explorer which according to the sales girl R849 for 24 months, no increase in that time. R1928, 00 was deducted - which after many weeks the difference was paid back into my account. The in the second month R1628.00 was deducted. This time I was promised that the 3rd month they will only deduct R70. They deducted R820. Multichoice is abusing the access to their clients debitorder status. They are legally stealing from us.

For the last 4 months I had to call Dstv on average 10 times because they have disconnected my service for no reason. After calling and speaking to numerous agents all with different skills. I eventually am able to watch. The problem then is that I cannot access other products such as Dstv catch up, etc and then I need to call again. My phone bill is so high I am going to have to cancel my Dstv just to pay my phone bill. In addition I requested an investigation and feedback which never materialised. I did on one occasion get confirmation that because Dstv upgraded their system it has affect services. I am happy when people have smarter ways of doing things but not when I am inconvenienced.

My DSTV account number [protected] - In July 2015 I applied to upgrade to the DSTV Explorer package that DSTV was offering, my initial application was declined, but in August I was called again and submitted my information and that application was approved, being approved has turned into an absolute circus. I was asked to give a debit order date which I did 25th August 2015, I then received two sms from DSTV advising that my decoder would be delivered in two to three days and advising that my Explorer Smart Card had been successfully activated. I called DSTV to advise that my debit order did not go off as per the date I supplied only to be told that the sms I received was not for me but was someone elses order but not to worry they would escalate this matter and someone from DPP would call me in 48hours ( early September), I ended up calling back and told that an adhoc debit was allocated for 14th September 2015, when this did not go off I called back only to be told this would be escalated to the payments department because they can only see the initial declined application but I would be called back. It is now the 30th September and I have heard nothing. I am extremely disappointed and frustrated that a company the size of Multichoice can be so inefficient in sorting out clients problems, and what annoys me the most is we will call you back and they never do. I want this matter resolved either give me the Explorer or stop wasting my time with empty promises.

Account number 6823742
I upgraded my contract +/- 3months ago, and MultiChoice allocated an installer by the name of ATV Services to do all connections which were to connect 2 explores as dual view. We have 3 tvs' in the house and we want to be able to view either explora from any tv in the house just as we did previously with the Dualview. ATV has been to my house 4 times and the problem has still not been resolved. Firstly they put both decoders next to one another and we were able to watch both decoders from any tv on different channels, then something happened and the decoders froze and no one could watch tv, a gentleman from DSTV instructed my husband to split the decoders because they could not be next to one another, ATV changed the connections, split the decoders, and now we cannot view dual channels from all the tvs in the house. Atv no longer has solutions or the desire to come and resolve the problem and this is causing conflict in my house. I would like some one that knows how to resolve this problem to come and fix/resolve this issue so that peace can be restored in my house.

My service have been disconnected twice in one month for errors made by multichoice staff. Today I asked for a supervisor's assistance since the lady who answered me was not helpful but the glorified supervisor was apparently busy with more important things than me, their client! Pathetic! The consultant started by making weird assumptions about me, then gave wrong information as if that was not enough then lied... thought they will offer me something to make up for all the paid service I did not receive, no! They think it is enough just to reconnect my service that was not supposed to be disconnected in the first place! If it was the other way round I would have paid a re-connection fee but now it is their fault and they cant do anything about it... the cost of calling them to fix their own errors can actually amount to a monthly subscription...

Hi,
- case number: 6841842
Please help... I have been struggling to get a payment allocated to my account since around 24 july 2015.
My dstv keeps getting cut off and it is now 23 september 2015 and its been cut again.
I have been sending the proof of payment through to the call centre since july, supervisors keep asking me for it and forwarding it to the billings team and I have sent it directly to the billing team (please see email below with my case number) but no one has assisted to fix the problem.

I have spent over r1100.00 on cell phone bill just on calling the call centre begging them to fix this, I do not feel this is fair and needs to be seen to by multichoice.

My debit order has now also been stopped and I didn't want it to be stopped, I am beyond frustrated and in disbelief that multichoice/dstv has dropped to such terrible levels of customer service.

Please can I get some feedback and some help, I also feel someone senior needs to please contact me to discuss this and the solution. I do not want to deal with the call centre again (+[protected]), please.

Please see below...

Dear dstv customer,

Case number: 6841842

Thank you for contacting the dstv billing and collections team.
Please do not reply to this automatic response.
Your query will be attended to by one of our representative and you will be notified once complete. kindly note that our turn - around time for all queries is 3 days.

Best wishes

The dstv billing and collections team

With shock I phoned the Call centre spoke to a Musa he said their will be a penalty of R108.00 because I want to move my debit order on with 3 day's, he could not explain why there are any penalty or why the amount is so high, I asked to speak to a manager, a so called line manager by Tshepang Melk tried to entertain me with his so called position, the moment I asked him to look and see how long have I been a client with DSTV and if I every had a non payment he immediately said he cannot help me, BUT he call himself a line manager, he was like a clown trying to entertain me, not once he asked what was my query or how he can help me, he just wanted to argue with me and not helping me, he does not deserve to be on a position a as line manager, my argument is, this is not an HP account that I need to pay interest rate, this is an entertainment for us, so why do I need to pay an penalty to change an debit order date, I'm taking this to Hello Peter and the Consumer Council, I cannot see that DSTV is allowed to do this.I asked Tshepang to asked his manager to contact me, so now I will see if DSTV is going to make an effort of getting back to me, and please not the clown Tshepang again, I DO NOT want to speak to a clown who think he can entertain a client who pays his salary, and who cannot answer a question asked by a client.
Mrs S van Niekerk
[protected]
21/09/2015

I paid as I have for more than a year the dstv subscription of r440 per month before the increase it was 399 rand a month and I have a date of 15th of the month though I usually pay on the 14th when buying groceries at pick n pay white River and there has been no problem until I was suddenly cut with an error code E16-4, on Sunday so I tried self service to no avail I couldn't register my smart stupid.? Card so I used sms function to check balances it showed an amount of 53.03 owing so I went and paid then after awhile I noticed it wasn't working so I queried the sms balance again and I owed o.03 cents so back to pick and pay and added 23 rand for good measure . I got home and did another sms balance check and got an all up to date til next month I tried to activate and got an sms all my services were active . Well great how Cani see them I can't phone the Call centers because I am deaf and was alone. So later that evening I had someone call the Pretoria center and it transpires that my pick and pay payment of 440 was not reflecting and i needed to send proof of payment to well the operator said Google the net for unallocated payments at multi choice for a number well jeez thanks very much but I threw away the slip as in the past all went through and this months payment had the correct details so back to pick and pay and I show them the payment date and time 15 th sept 18 38 and they tell me to come back this morning but the invoice does not say who they allocated the money to but there is the 440 rand all code but my groceries are recorded so the manger says she ll call their bank for proof of payment and sms me then since I can't find a number in multi choice accounts I ll have to drive 29 km to the nearest agency so they can record it on their computer. So the 53 .03 rand was a mystery as it brought me into overpayments and multi choice claim pick n pay did not send the money r440 on the 15th so to add insult to the injury they want me to pay a r381.26 rand reconnection fee because I paid on my day not Before i.e I paid on or before the 15th of the month and I must prove it .well if there's a lesson keep your slips from pick n pay as proof of payment and file them for 100 years just in case they come looking for an extra five cents in ten years. This is shocking unbelievably incompetent accounting
It was mentioned that multi choice should send you an sms on receipt of payment with pick n pay its instant but if multi choice got up and sent thank you for your payment of xxxxx then there would be no problems as if you didn't get the sms you know they didn't
So instead of spending millions on advertising they should invest in customer accounting and customer I T portal experience to make self service a pleasure not a nightmare

I have been trying since the beginning of August, 2015 to sort out a downgrade of a package and have now spent most likely 30-40 hours on the phone to your staff!

They are absolutely unqualified to be in a call centre and do not add value to your company. They let you hold on and and you can hear them talk in the background. It is as if they want to keep you on the phone for as long as possible and then not even help you in the end?

You seriously need to get training done and get your staff up to a call centre standard

I expect someone competent to call me and help me sort out the mess that your staff created and rectify my account