Advice to DTH players and TRAI

This article was written by Prasad Madhira. In this article, Prasad gave many suggestions to DTH players and TRAI to improve service standards.

As an user/consumer of Reliance big TV DTH services at home bearing Smart card no. 200511906888 (Another DTH service SUN Direct installed on second TV with Smart card no. 41055115301 which is better only in relative terms) and based on my unpleasant personal experiences for a long time and unilateral and unfair trade practices indulged by the operators like Reliance, I find serious deficiencies in the following areas which the service providers are not interested to address in first place, essentially due to lack of proper regulation by the Government and absence of established service standards and grievance addressing mechanisms.

Additionally there are several issues and practices which are unfair to the consumers, which should be put to public debate by TRAI on their website (similar to the practices of other regulators like SEBI) prior to framing a regulation for government approval which is BIG NEED OF THE HOUR IN VIEW OF EXPLOSIVE UNREGULATED GROWTH IN THIS AREA putting consumers to a great hardship and unfair disadvantage.

Advice (REQUEST) to DTH players and TRAI:

1. Absence of Accountability in service:

This is evidenced by their total disregard to customer complaints made even by e-mails. Even Call centres are ineffective in resolving basic issues and indulge in buying just more time, refuse to provide tracking complaint number on several types of common grievances quoting their company policy and believe in verbal assurances which do not offer any kind of traceability & accountability to the consumers. The strategy is ‘Indifference & inaction is the best medicine for handling grievances’ as the consumers are bound to be fed up and lose interest in settling issues due to lack of time & resources . In fact most of the DTH providers push the customers to their Call centres (many of them are not even toll free) which in many cases take more than 5-10 minutes for initiation of conversation with call handlers & serves as a best medium lacking transparency as compared to e-mails & IVR channel offered by some players. Lack of documentation on website on complete fine print, terms and conditions on pack or channel offers is another big issue.

2. Arbitrary deduction of Voucher balances & lack of Post-Paid plans with billing systems:

The deductions in voucher credit balances are many times made without proper authorisation and consent and the helpless consumers cannot even keep a track of the deductions and the reasons for such deductions as no written statements are issued periodically at least by the cheapest option of e-mails or even as a Statement pull option from their websites against customer logins are not made available which. The unfair practices like continued debit of charges for packages beyond the opted / requested no. of months, for convenient reasons like absence of negative consent etc which is highly illogical. The Post Paid plan options with Monthly detailed bill along with prepaid plans with online bill pullout facility or monthly e-mail bills should be made mandatory to address this. The Telecom sector is the role model to follow at least in case of Post Paid plans

3. Al a carte offering of channels in addition to the bouquet offerings:

There should be a clear regulation in this regard to spell out individual channel prices as an additional option apart from the usual packages of the operator to bring the benefits of addressable systems down to the consumers, though a minimum monthly cash outgo to the operators can be prescribed provided the subscription for any given month has been requested for by the consumer based on ones convenience/priority.

4. Lack of interoperability of Set top boxes to switch between operators as per choice:

Keeping the technical feasibilities aside, the issue was already designed by the operators in their favour due to Lack of regulation and also by designing terms and conditions unilaterally in their favour by offering STBs not on ownership basis in spite of charging good amount of money as initial cost which making a subscription, which needs to be address at least now by the regulator protecting the consumer interests. The bare minimum cost of Sim Card already brought consumer revolution in the telecom industry where operators are switched as per suitability of the terms to different classes of consumers. The issue of technical feasibility through ISI needs to be expedited to frame a regulation in this regard.

5. Lack of Norms in hardware replacement/relocation/repair charges:

The issue needs a closer look in view of booming DTH industry to maintain some uniformity.

This is high time, both TRAI and the Government provide an affective regulation to protect all the stakeholders suitably.

Thanks to Prasad for giving good suggestions to improve DTH sector in India which will attract more customers to opt for DTH services.

Note: Please mail your detailed reviews, advice and complaints on Dish TV, Tata Sky, Big TV, Airtel Digital TV and Sun Direct DTH services to me. I will publish them in this blog which will be beneficial for new subscribers in taking better decisions.