MultiChoice Africa / DSTV
Reviews and Complaints

On 4 December 2015, I phoned multichoice Amanzimtoti to enquire what time the maintenance fellows would be around (I had gone in personally to the shop early the morning and been told that they were busy but they would come and fix up the service)not once but multiple times, and was told by the person answering that they were going to come still, even at my last call at 4.45pm, I was given assurance that they were coming. It is now 7.40 pm and nothing - I am becoming disillusioned with Mutichoice and am going to take this to twitter and facebook so if possible, people can avoid that branch or make comments in the local newspaper. I ma under guarantee until the 9th of the month, and if they do not come in before then, I will take this to my legal fellow to sort if charged or such. In the meantime, I feel multichoice allows this bad service and turns a blind eye to it, as it has monopoly. This is bad bad bad, I would have switched long ago if I could.

I had an prepaid account for a PVR decoder and I switched to the promotional Explorer that you have for R849 on 14 September 2015. As stated by the terms I had to pay in advance before the decoder could be delivered. I did pay by debit order on 18 September 2015 but only received the decoder on 25 September 2015 as for some reason the courier company could not find my address. When I finally got my explorer I had to contact the call centre as the account was not changed. After several calls to the call centre since then, my account was suspended due to non payments and the fact that the account was never changed. The dates of all these calls I refer to was on 25/09, 30/09, 2/10, 7/10 and on 16/10, 28/10, 2/11, 4/11, 12/11 and 2/12. When I spoke to a supervisor that promised everything will be done. That never happened. I received a sms that states I need to pay more or less R700 so that my service would not be suspended and the debit order of R849 that was supposed to go off did not go off. After 3 attempts from multi choice to debit my account the only deducted R56, R58 and R56 which I had to pay fees for and I still had an outstanding balance on my account. After another call the call centre told me to pay the outstanding amount manually which I did. Surprise surprise the following month they debited my account but with the outstanding balance of the previous month. Now they tell me the refund will take 3 to 5 working days. I've been a loyal customer for a long time and I never in my life came across bad customer like this for 9 weeks straight nor can I understand why incompetent people are put in call centres to assist!

Ive been loyal subscriber for 18 years never having problems but switched to debit order august 2014 for the explora packet deal and coming september 2015 in the middle of the month I sent email upon email asking to change debit order date from 27th to 2nd of each month. Change of salary date was cause. Have been phoning two months and with being treated with uttermost lack of knowledge and rascism I am very upset. Ive cried, begged and even swore and threatend to no aveil. Its one lie upon the other. I spoke to a woman when I received sms stating my dstv was interupted, I immediatley phoned and was promised debit order will be back in place end october. All lies! Debit order was not, end october came with me endlessly phoning holding on and empty promises. I was told to pay seperate amounts so each can go to its relevant parties, then phoned twice more even speaking to a call centre manager on the 1st of november who promised to handle it himself and phone me on the 2. Still waiting. My dstv not installed as I am awaiting my house only moving in next week. But now receive sms stating I have to pay absurd amounts. I am fed up and the actions I receive. I was told that emails never gets checked so why bother sending any. Then I was told that there is no head office phone number to report this issue to. Now I ask what do I have to do? Wait till I get laywer letter and then go to court so the court can see I did my part. I have never seen such empty promises and bad service ever. And I have to pay for mistakes that wasnt mine to begin with. I wonder why I even bother posting here because as clearly as its stated over a million viewers why would they bother helping the few of us that battle.

Ok so I was disconnected and re-connected 3 days ago, my explore is working fine but the extra view according to multichoice has also been activated but is not working on my side, I have for the last 3 days been calling in to the call centre and was told yesterday the xtra was not connected at all, the nyc gentlemen so called connected me... I get home after 8pm last night and it still does not work, I call the call centre again from my cell speak to a lady and was told how to disconnect cables and move cables around at one stage I was talking to 2 different call centre agents at the same time, 30 mins later (From my cell) still the xtra view is not connected, i'm then told it is now been escalated to the technical dept and I should get a call in about an hours tym, 11 pm and still no call! I call in again today to the call centre and i'm told according to multichoice everything is working fine... Its not working... Im paying for it and its not working! I'm then told to take the decoder in for fixing... For crying out loud this decoder and set up has been working the same for the last 2 years nothing has changed. I just want it to work... Can someone anyone sort this out please!

We have had the dstv SD pvr for years now which has 2 channels, so last week we decided to add a 3rd channel of which i know plenty people have it set up like that. I called to ask what decoder to get and was assisted, i then also read on dstv website about which decoders are compatible and how much it costs for extra view i.e. R80. I then brought a dstv explorer for R1800 and a smart switch for another R450 to be able to use the explorer. I then also paid the technician another R1200 to install last week Thursday 19/11/2015. It worked for a few minutes and went off. Was told my the terrible call centre there is a technical problem on dstv side. I called again on friday and was told extra view was never added and tried again with no luck. I then did the same Saturday and Sunday, where Thabo told me to get the technician out again to sort out the error E32-4. He then came here and called on the 24th and eventually was told by Thabane she doesn't know what's wrong on the account and needs her supervisor to do it who was in a meeting, i asked that her supervisor Antonio Nuku sort it out and let me know when done. This wasnt done. I called back and spoke to Kabelo who couldn't assist either saying that its fine on his side but could see it was escalated to the supervisors he will personally go check with his supervisor Valentine but nothing was fixed and not feedback wad given. So today the 26/11/2015 it still wasnt done as i was told by some consultants in the call centre that it was the decoder (but worked fine until i activated extraview) so decided to take it to a dstv agent in Greenstone called Aerial & Satellite excellence. The african guy plugged everything in and said its all fine, but when asked about the 2nd channel on the standard pvr was disabled he couldn't tell me why. So another guy there explained that this has been discontinued and cant use the extra channel, meaning 2 channels maximum. So buying anothet dstv decoder with the labour and everything was a complete waste, not one person in the call centre mentioned this and was either not notified by their superiors at dstv or they completely trying to get away with this by playing dumb. The independent dstv technician also did not know about the discontinuation of the 2nd channel. Dstv has by far the worst call centre i have ever dealt with, not sure if its because they are uneducated or not trained before they go on the phones but its a complete joke. Whats worse is that we pay so much for premium packages but will increase annually and now take channels aways from you, how can you have this advertised on your website as possible for R80 extra but its not? After spending all the money on installing and the new decoder?

Very unhappy with a certain Supervisor I spoke to on the 16/11/2015 can't recall her name but I'm sure my phone calls can be checked up! I phoned multi choice in the beginning of Nov stating that I wanted to down grade as I'm in financial difficulties. I spoke to a Posha who assisted me and gave me an amount to pay of R297.00 if I'm correct. Just a week there after my dstv was switched off. I phoned again spoke to another lady (also don't have her name now with me) and she went and listed to my conversation I had with Posha. She then phoned me back and told me Posha gave me the wrong information and that she will activate my account again due to what Posha said to me. She told me that I just wont be able to use Box office and that my account will stay active until the next pay day which is 25/11/2015. Unfortunately my account was deactivated on the 16/11/2015. So I phoned again spoke to a Sandile if I'm correct ... I told her the whole story and she then directed me to her SUPERVISOR (also cant remember the name) I explained once more my situation and told her it's not my fault that the call center gave me the wrong information and made me pay an amount. I asked the so called Supervisor to go and listen to the 2 conversations I had with the Posha and the other lady and get back to me with an answer as this was NOT MY FAULT they gave me the wrong information. Till today 24/11/2015 the so called SUPERVISOR phoned me back! Really disappointed!

I took out an Explora contract with Multi choice in Aug. Subsequently i had to make a payment of R849 before the decoder was dispatched. The pmt was made on 21 Aug and i received the decoder on the 24th. Then multi choice deducted the following amounts R908.50 on 28/08, R1657.50 on 28/09 and again R1657.50 on28/10. On Tuesday 3 November i called Multi choice to inquire about the double debit orders that have been deducted from my account and i was told that the matter will be escalated to the DPP department and i will receive feedback within 24hrs, I called back twice within that week but no one could assist me because the DPP department had a backlog that they were dealing with. Eventually I got a call one week later. I explained my situation and was then told I would get feedback within 48 hrs. I also explained to the lady who called me on 10 Nov that the initial lady I spoke to told me that once I have had my explora installed I should call multi choice and have it activated. This was never done because too date the explora is not being used but in the meantime I am being billed for it.. I do understand that I have a contractual agreement with Multi choice to pay the explora but to be billed for 2 premium subscriptions? This does not make logical sense. I was then told that the conversations will be listened too and I will get feedback from them. It is now exactly 2 weeks later and still I have not received any feedback from Multi choice nor my money back. The conclusion I have made is that I have been billed twice for the same product which is the premium subscription. To date I have not installed the Explora but I am being billed for it whilst I am paying the exact premium on my PVR. Can Multi Choice please rectify this mistake before you take another R1657.50 from my account this month. How long does it take you to resolve one simple query? Or should I rather ask how long does it take you to listen to a few conversations I had with multi choice over the past few weeks?

We have watched numerous live shows on DSTV channels and especially the Mnet programs such as carte Blanche and SA Idols as well as other live programs and the background music is so loud that you cannot hear what is being said. The same is happening on the adverts . Most of Carte Blanche on 15 th November was like this and one could not hear what was going on or being said. What is the point of having a program where you cannot hear what is going on. Please fix this ! It is the most irritating thing.

Multichoice and dstv service is crap! I recently moved my dstv from sa to botswana, don't believe that multichoice can assist! If you want the saucy details, continue reading! This is not ending with this message, all calls have been recorded and will be posted on you tube so keep a lookout! I spent the last three days trying to configure the dstv with the outcome being simple... Buy a new decoder! The simple process is to de-activate the service in sa and to re-create the service in the "africa" call center, sa number [protected] and africa [protected], don't seem to be far apart? The sa branch need to cancel the service and put the smartcard and decoder into "secondhand status" before the africa call center can activate the service in africa. The end result is typical non-existent south african service! The following "agents wasted my money on endless calls from botswana to sa and still no joy, the process just keeps on changing and the service just gets worst: sa branch: linda msibi and kelebogile, both extremely arrogant and have no regard for client service. Africa branch: celeste gusmao (Four calls answered) and jose kubuya (Three calls answered) none of the people above has the skill to assist with the change. The story started with sa instructing to phone africa. Africa referred me back to the sa call-center; after much convincing they"cancelled"the service. Initially they wanted to"schedule"the cancellation as it is paid in advance. After cancellation I suddenly owed them approximately r250, figure that! Phoning africa again they confirmed the service is not cancelled, here the"procedure"changed as I now had to send them an e-mail. After preparing my laptop, I phoned the sa branch with my notebook, pen, voice recorder and notebook ready for action, I had to make all the calls and send the e-mails as they do not have the facilities. The second"procedure"now is to download a"change of ownership"and sent this completed form to them (With no e-mail supplied) together with a certified copy of id or passport. Numerous calls and arguments followed with the end result now from our dear"qualified" call center agent kgomotso telling me to just buy a new decoder and smartcard as it can be activated immediately. To date still no service so I am entertaining myself by writing this notice! Multichoie and dstv, you suig!

HI I logged a call on the 6th November 2015 and requested to get the package that Multichoice offer - an DSTV explora decoder and installation which is paid over 24 months. I was told to send an SMS to a number and someone will contact me. I did have a call on the 7th by I had a problem with my cell phone. I have since called the call centre twice to follow up and also gave them alternative contact numbers to contact me. No one has contacted me as yet. I feel this is very poor service. I was told that I can not contact the people directly about this and just have to wait for their call. I was also told their is a back log. This is not my problem. Don't offer a service if you can not cope with the demand. My contact details are - phone [protected] or [protected] - My name is Cilla

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].