MultiChoice Africa / DSTV
Reviews and Complaints

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

I have taken a dpp contract with an explorer now for two months from day one I have received problems, when I called multichoice they advised that the installer must come sort it out. The installer is an acreditable installer sent by multichoice to install. I called again two weeks back as all my hd channels are scrambling I have been promised since two weeks that installer will come sort it out, my original installer came out and said its was ok not even 2 hours passed and I am having the same problem I called again 5 times after that they promised to send another installer until now no one came an I am paying full amount and receiving no channels for that

I am really not sure if DStv puts there customers first! Apparently not! I have, since December 2015 amended my payment dates with you guys from the 26th to the 30th of each month. It was agreed and sorted...or so I thought! Every time on the 26th since December last year, my viewing is cut off! WHY?! Many subscribers would agree that Multichoice's customer services ranks among the worst in its class! I think they 'bit off more than they could chew'...meaning, they have reached their target viewership but simply cannot render the service required from their customers. I try in vain to reach a consultant, to help telephonically, but very seldom succeed. Only to be left frustrated and with a hefty phone bill. I seem to have received quicker replies on their Facebook page that says "Typically replies within an hour". This should actually read as "Typically replies within a day or so." I am still left with no viewing already paid for.

On 29/03/2016 I paid R29 to multi choice Newcastle kzn, Cashier Nondumiso Thobile Receipt no:[protected] to keep my Dstv on line as I moving to another house in Newcastle. When setting up my Tv and dish in the new home it didn't work, giving a E19-4 error and not connecting.
I called out a Tv technician to rectify this problem costing me R200. The technician told me my Dstv has been cut off and I must call the centre for assistance. Sifhiso helped me to get the Tv back on line informing me that I have to pay a additional R109 and the reconnection fee was removed. The phone call cost me another R30 .I want to know why must I pay this R230 cost because some person didn't do his work.

I did the explora upgrade and it was instaled on thursday the 20/04/2016 ande when i got home the chanel bocet was not at all what i understood i thought it was the bocet just under premuim. Now to fix it i was just told it can take more than a month and that after i made ñumeros calls to them just to be told it can take more than a month. I also read the therms and cond of the explora upgrade and there now where stands it cant be upgraded to premuim. I am very upset about theire quality of service after many years of being a client.
I am going to post this compliant on every site i can find.
Tiaan Pretorius [protected]

I am currently a DSTV Premium subscriber with extra view which amounts to R844 p/m. My customer number is [protected]. I enquired about the price lock option plan of R899 p/m whereby one receives a DSTV Explora, Premium package and extra view/access fee inclusive. I explicitly asked the consultant from DPP department (as per the recorded telephonic call), namely Devan, whether I would be charged for any charges as I currently have a HD PVR as my primary and a SD decoder as the secondary, therefore the extra view is set up. I referenced and asked the consultant several times what the installation entails and he said that the HD PVR needs to be moved from the primary to the secondary and the DSTV Explora would take the place of the primary. I enquired all of this before I took up the deal making sure that there would be no additional charges incurred to me. He said that there would be no costs incurred to me only if I wanted an additional TV linked. They said that they would inform me once they deliver the decoder then Multichoice starts charging), but I .e once they deliver the decoder then the Multichoice starts charging), but I received no notification. The decoder arrived on 31 March 2016. The installer came 2 days later (02 April 2016) and said that he would charge me R750 for the set-up of Extra view. I was not given that information that they would charge me as the DPP consultant assured me that there would be no additional costs incurred to me with regard to installation. I phoned Multichoice as the installer was there and the woman told me that the installer is correct in charging me for extra view set up as the package only includes the installation of the DSTV explora. I cancelled the contract and they gave me an escalation number 7706880 and said that DPP would phone me back. I asked the consultant if it is possible to cancel and she said yes since I only have the decoder 2 days in my possession. On 06 April 2016, I phoned Multichoice again for a follow up and they sent me from post to pillar spending more than 45 minutes on the phone. The consultant sent me a decoder payment plan: Settlement quotation amounting to R2883.41. Then I explained to the consultant that I want to cancel the contract as they gave me the incorrect information in order to sell the product and service. The consultant gave me another escalation number: [protected] - I23. Another point, the consultant said that Multichoice would charge me only when installation occurs.
My dilemma is that I am currently paying R844 and R899 per month. I cannot cancel my current subscription of R844 as there would be nothing to watch on TV. So I'm stuck with paying for a service R899 which is not in use. I want a cancellation done from the date the incident was lodged with Multichoice.

I have called the call centre numerous times and posted on Hello Peter whereby Multichoice says that they would contact me directly, but to no avail has that been progressive. A few of the consultants said that they would have to go through the call recording before a decision could be reached (the call recording is attached to this complaint). With regard to my cancellation of the price lock deal - Is DPP department short staffed or what? This problem has been escalated since 02 April 2016 and numerous times thereafter (kindly refer to your records). The debit order is expected to go off on the 28 of this month for a service that is not installed or in use. I do not want consultants to phone me and Multichoice to just respond just for the sake of responding. I would actually like Multichoice to take action! I do not want consultants to phone me and say that they will get back to me since only their superiors can make a decision or phone me back just for the sake of responding and telling me that they will get back to me by a certain date and never return the phone call ever. Are there any superiors or managers that can actually assist in resolving this matter? Another thing the consultant’s phones to my home number during working hours and not on my cell phone (FYI I am not unemployed or work from home).

We have been experiencing problems with our explorers (we have 2) we have phoned numerous times with the staff "taking us through the procedures" to no avail. They said we must take the explorers in to be tested, this resulted in the explorers being tested and then we were advised to give in those two and swop them for reconed machines to the cost of R800 each. My husband then explained why would he do that if our explorers are new and working, why would we want to swop them for recons AND then pay for it? The lady just said that is a option. Another DSTV installer then said our problem is that we need the "new eye" This is a closed unit and my husband bought it for R750. They said installation is very easy and he got home installed it and still nothing worked. Out of pure frustration he then phoned a "accredited installer" which came to install the new eye. After installation and no luck yet the installer said we need new cabling and this exercise then cost us a additional R1500. This installer also explained to us that DSTV at times send out a virus to their hardware to make extra money (which I now completely believe). Once again we phoned DSTV. I spoke to a very nice lady, she wanted to go threw the whole procedure again and I begged her to please go our history and check how many times we have tried to get this fixed. After waiting about 5 min she said she can see we have had this problem a while and she gave our complaint through to her supervisor. I asked her if I can please have her supervisors nr and she refused. I explained to her that I am a client and I think it is my right to have the supervisors nr. She said sorry she cannot! I do not understand this! I am a paying client! How can service like this be tolerated? In the call centre 90% of the staff does not even understand what we are explaining. I am frustrated and ready to call it quits, I know my loss of R900 will not break DSTV or make them provide better service but by the looks of all the complaints I think they are in for a rude awakening. I just need help! And all avenues are leading to dead ends. If Hello Peter could help...high 5 to you.

We bought a pvr, loaded box office and waited for 48hrs to activate. After 48hrs we couldn't view a rented movie, although the rental fee was deducted from the box office account. After countless phone calls to the call centre we were advised to go to our local walk in centre. We took the PVR there for testing and they told us it was fine. We went home and again struggled for 5 more days and more phone calls and airtime wasters on the other side of the line. We then went back to the walk in centre and five minutes before closing time, the sales lady slammed the door right in our faces refusing to assist us. I then went back home, called the customer care and insisted on speaking to a supervisor. The supervisor told me that she would phone me back at 17h20, but not surprisingly did not. I then phoned back at 17h40 and spoke to another supervisor who said that she would phone me back at 19h00, but also didn't comply with her statement... Witbank walk in centre has got the most incompetent, under trained and most unprofessional customer relations service i have ever come across. If somebody does not sort out witbank branch, i will personally make sure that everybody in every town knows how incompetent MULTI CHOICE STAFF are!

We exchanged our "old PVR decoder" for the explora at Ariel and satellite Pretoria in August 2015 to use as the primary decoder, this was done on my Mothers account (Yvette v Rijswijk). We then wanted to connect our HD PVR decoder as the secondary decoder so we got a DSTV accredited installer to do the set up for us. The installer could not do the installation and said the HD PVR decoder was faulty and we should take the decoder in to Ariel and Satellite; they confirmed the decoder was faulty. They explained that they don't make the HD PVR decoders anymore so we could get a refurbished one or we need to get another explora as these were our only options.

 

In February I (Kaylee Jooste) took out the deal of R899 x24 months with the explora. My mother and I went to the Ariel and Satellite on 26th February to cancel my mothers subscription and do a change of ownership (the explora bought in August) to my name. We completed all the paperwork there and provided all supporting documents. They could not link the two explora decoders yet because the "explora on the deal" was not activated by that time. 

 

The Installers from Ariel and Satellite Pretoria came out and did the installation as part of the deal on the 27th February 2016. This was when this new explora was opened and activated for the 1st time by the installers. The Sunday evening the account was suspended due to no payment received (my debit order date is the 28th and because it was on a Sunday it was only going to go off on the Monday) so we did not have DSTV for a day. After the payment went off the DSTV was connected and working. The Wednesday evening we started getting the E48-32 error (There is no signal. This may be due to bad weather or a faulty connection in the installation). We spent hours on the phone with DSTV to try and fix the problem and escalated the problem to a supervisor, they informed us the explora decoder is faulty and we need to take it in to get a new one.

 

The following Saturday the 5th March we had to go back in to Ariel and Satellite with the brand new explora that was a week to get it exchanged it for a new one. We got home and connected the explora and it was working. A week later the same E48-32 error came up. We called DSTV again and they did the reset to factory default and it would still not work, they said again the explora decoder is faulty and we have to exchange it. I explained that we did it a week ago and the guy I spoke with said it might be that they gave us a refurbished explora where the hard drive was not set up correctly or done at all.

 

I called Ariel and Satellite Pretoria and spoke to the Manager at Multichoice I think his name was Reinhardt. I told him what DSTV call centre told us and I wanted to know how can they exchange my brand new explora that was a week old for a refurbished one? He said if is was a week old the system will not allow a consultant to give us a refurbished one. I said that I will not for a 2nd time go in to exchange this explora. He said he can see the installers will go out to us again tomorrow to check the installation and then if the decoder is faulty they will take the decoder and bring us a new one.

 

Saturday 26th March the installers were there and they said it is not the decoder the Smart LNB was faulty so they gave us a new one. The DSTV worked for about a week again and then the same E48-32 error was there again. Again I called DSTV call centre and they did all the reset to factory and still it was not working. Again we had to get the installers to come out.

 

The Installers came out again 9th April and the Smart LNB faulty, the installers did not have a Smart LNB so they took one we had at home and connected same, they are supposed to bring us one to replace ours tomorrow. The secondary decoder was working but the Primary decoder that's already been exchanged was faulty and we need to get is exchanged. I asked the installer if they can take the decoder and bring a new one and he said no we have to go in to Ariel and Satellite.

 

On Sunday evening we got once again the same E48-32 error to date the error is still there. Under Central information is shows the signal 80% and quality 100% and then is changed both to 0%. So we keep losing signal for some reason. We will be watching a channel and then all of a sudden the E48-32 error will be there then is stays there for a while and then it goes away.This is how it has been going on since the 1st installation 27th February.

 

I am quite fed up to say the least!

 

In between all of this we had problems with x-tra view, box office and catch up.

 

The strangest part off everything is that we stay in a complex and our neighbours right next doors dish is next to our and they have no problems.

 

I want someone to come out and test every DSTV connection we have set up and if they have to re-install everything that is what I expect!

 

I will not go to Ariel and Satellite one more time to "exchange a faulty explora", they can collect my "faulty explora" and bring a new one! Does DSTV not do quality checks on the decoders? This is not normal for a brand new decoder x3 times to be faulty.

 

I have waisted hours on the phone with the DSTV call centre on my own bill as they apparently can not call their Client's back!

 

I will NOT pay for this R899 deal for x24 months if this is the service and POOR quality of devices you provide! I will take this as far as court if I have to. I have been paying for something that has not been working as it should be working!

 

I would like a senior manager or even better the CEO of Multichoice to review my whole profile at Multichoice/DSTV, so that they can see all the calls made to the call centre and all the error's and issues I had to deal with.

 

Please also take note that there were problems and wrongly set up with my subscription on the Call centre side and the wrong debit order was deducted, I spent again an hour on the phone with them where they told me they will refund my money to date I have not received ANY refund!

 

I would suggest that you train your employees properly so that they don't make mistakes on customers profiles and mess with their money and debit orders.

 

My ID number is: [protected]

 

I would expect a call from a manager today.

 

My mobile is [protected]

I am complaining about Multichoice who has disconnected my account 4 times this month. I have made payment via EFT on the due date, that was the Saterday over the Easter Weekend. The Tuesday my account was disconnected saying that I owe them. After explaining myself, the service was reconnected. The Saterday, it happend again. Saying I owe them R100 odd to reactive it and late fee. After again I explained myself, the service was activated. No longer than a week, it happend again, complaing on Hello Peter and on Facebook. The service was reactivated, saying I must forward the proof of payment as the funds reflected late. (That was not true) due to insolvent funds, I was not able to retrieve a statement. Until today, my services again was disconnected. I compaint again (as I have paid) on Facebook. No answers, only a automated reply. Via emails as well, I have send them proof. No one is taking responsibility and everytime a new consultant is attending. Explaining that the payment has been made on time, and that it was not my error it reflected late. My service is still off, wasting my time and money. I demand free connection for a month, I am angry and discused.