Opinion: Dear Multichoice, why can’t we pay only for what we watch?

Multichoice

by Niran Adedokun

Multichoice DSTVIn a free market economy like ours, companies like Multichoice would exploit every opportunity to maximise their gains but the National Broadcasting Commission and the Consumer Protection Council owe Nigerians the duty of getting them not just the best bargains but also the best possible treatment from companies which provide services for them.

Beyond the endless increase in tariffs, I think that Multichoice, operators of the Digital Satellite TV in Nigeria take their numerous customers for granted in a few other ways.

Hear the following true narrative. The monthly subscription of a customer was due to run out on Friday, April 10, 2015. Sometime before noon on that day, the customer recalled that the customer service unit of Multichoice would not open on Saturday because of the elections. Not wanting anything to stop him from being able to follow events as they break on election day, he paid through an online portal and promptly got an alert for a successful transaction.

Due to the urgency of his situation, and the fact that he did not want the service to be deactivated, he chose to try the short code service of the DSTV although it had never really worked for him. So, he sent his smartcard number to 30333 by text as the company counsels. Again, within seconds, he got a reply that his request was being processed. However, a few minutes later, his service was interrupted with an E-16-4 message appearing on the screen.

Then, he knew he had to call customer service. After trying to connect to the 01-270-3232 customer service number for about 30 minutes without success, he left it for a while. Shortly after 2pm, he got through and the automatic prompt directed him, first to press 1 and then press 0 if he wished to speak with a customer service officer. That done, the customer hung on to the phone as he was repeatedly assured that he would soon be attended to.

Like a character in Samuel Becket’s existentialist play, “Waiting for Godot”, he waited over 12 minutes listening to melodious nothings from DSTV’s customer service without no personnel picking the phone.

When it became obvious that he could wait forever without receiving help, he hung up, tried again and was on the phone for six minutes. He assumed that there might have been some temporary problem with the customer service unit and decided to come back to it later.

This customer would try this procedure intermittently for the next three hours during which he sought the intervention of a DSTV dealer with whom he was familiar. In those three hours, neither his repeated calls nor those of the dealer who assured him that he had sent a message to a customer service personnel whom he knew yielded results.

Then, he called again a few minutes past 5pm and was shocked to get the following response: “Welcome to Multichoice contact centre; thank you for calling our centre. Unfortunately, we are closed for the day. Please, continue to hold to make use of our self-service options. Our contact centres are open from 8am-9pm on weekdays, 9am-6pm on Saturdays and 10am-6pm on Sundays except on environmental Saturdays when we are open from 12noon to 6pm…”

Of course, the customer hung up in frustrating anger realising that he would not be able to use the DSTV service (which he renewed before the official expiration of his subscription) throughout the weekend, the reason for which he hurriedly paid in the first instance.

Now, there are four things fundamentally wrong with the situation that I just presented above. The first is that the service code for the DSTV hardly works, the second is that the customer service centre was out for several hours, days in fact; the third is that instead of its advertised close hour of 9pm on weekdays, the DSTV decided to close shop much earlier that Friday and lastly, although this customer renewed his subscription on Friday, April 10, but could not use the same until late on Monday, April 13, his 30-day subscription would expire on May 10!

Now, the first three infractions that I enumerated above are excusable given the infallibility of human beings and machines. But any civil organisation with any iota of respect for its teeming customers would communicate the problems either in the pendency or after such challenges would have been overcome. Such explanations would also be accompanied by an unreserved apology for the inconveniences that must have been visited on customers by the failure of the organisations.

Taking particular notice that the early close of work by the customer service personnel on that Friday was a result of the general frenzy for the safety of people on the eve of the governorship election, Multichoice has no excuse for the failure to alert its customers to the fact that it would close earlier than usual like it notified customers that it would not open on Election Day.

Associated to the above is the fact that service providers in most other countries have one or two toll free lines but not here in Nigeria. In spite of this, Multichoice customer service personnel would hold a customer on the telephone asking endless repeated questions , introducing new products and offers every time a customer calls in about his subscription. All on the customer’s bill!

More painful in the circumstance that I have described above is the double jeopardy that the customer suffers this month. The first being his inability to make use of his device as he would love during election weekend and the second being the expiration of his subscription three days before he would have actually have had. And this happens without even as much as an apology from the service providers.

People have argued on behalf of Multichoice about the impossibility of having pay-as-you-go options in Nigeria but is it fair for customers to lose at both ends? In any case, we heard these same arguments about how certain things were not possible in the telecoms sector until Globacom, a GSM operator, came with customer friendly options in the country years ago. I cannot fathom any reason for which Multichoice, which has been in Nigeria since 1994 with the effect that it has a near monopoly, cannot give the best to its customers after 20 years.

I consider it the height of corporate deceit to charge tariff per month in an economy where the average middle class person does not have the luxury of time to watch television until late in the night or at weekends when a lot of our people do not even have power until they possibly turn on their generators at night. Multichoice like all, corporate organisations, is here to make money, but why on earth would the company not structure its tariff in such a way that a customer would pay for only what he watches?

Good enough the issue of the recently hiked tariffs is before the courts but without prejudice to how that goes, I find it exploitative that subscribers whose services have temporarily expired are unable to watch any of the local channels like NTA, STV, MITV and Channels as you have in the United Kingdom for example. This is totally inconceivable.

However, it would be unfair to put all the blame on the company since it is established with the intention to make profit. This is why we have a regulatory body set up to protect the interest of the people and ensure fair competition.

In a free market economy like ours, companies like Multichoice would exploit every opportunity to maximise their gains but the National Broadcasting Commission and the Consumer Protection Council owe Nigerians the duty of getting them not just the best bargains but also the best possible treatment from companies which provide services for them.

Regulatory authorities in Nigeria need to rise up to the challenge that more than merely issuing, withdrawing and renewing licences; they should work for Nigerians to stop the arrogance of companies that take our people for granted.

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Niran Adedokun tweets from @niranadedokun

 
Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

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