Apr 05, 2011 10:49 PM
1839 Views
(Updated Jul 19, 2011 10:24 PM)
I had purchased Airtel Dth a few months back and am regretting my decision now. Worst part is that I had made my colleague also buy it saying it is an Airtel product and will have the best service.
Now he is cursing me ! I never imagined an Airtel product would turn out like this. Let me share some details of my experience.
Why I decided Airtel DTH:
I live in Bangalore and wanted to buy a DTH connection. I already have a DishTv DTH connection at my hometown (a small town in Karnataka). However I was not happy with the customer service of Dish. One of my friends has a reliance big tv connection and was not happy with that either. Videocon and Sun were relatively new to the segment and had very small market share, so dint want to take risks with them. Some of my colleagues and friends had suggested Tata sky saying the customer service was very good. However after a quick research realized TataSky was the most expensive of the lot.
Airtel is one of my most favourite brands as I feel that they have one of the best customer service (at least in broadband and mobile network segments). I have airtel broadband for the past 3 years and haven't had a single unpleasant experience ever.
Just within a couple of days of wishing to have a DTH connection I decided on Airtel and did not have a second thought as I was very confident of Airtel's customer service.
1. Initial setting up:
So I called the customer care requesting for a new DTH connection. Believe it or not they installed the setup in just in 2 days and 1 phone call. But it took 100 calls from me to get the connection activated !! I had got the HD setup box installed. The techincians who had come to set it up did not do a good job of the wiring. They even shamelessly asked me for tips at the end (i paid Rs 100 as tips). I had paid some money as advance for 7 months of NGC HD and Cine plus package.
The troubles started after the technicians left my house. for 2 whole days the channels did not get activated. I had to make repeated calls to the designanted executive. Eventually after a lot of struggle I could get the channels. Also out of the adavnce money that I had given the executive had credited some lesser amount to my DTH account. Daylight robbery !
2. Getting a new HD channel:
I came to know that 'Movies Now HD' channel was recently added to the HD channels list and I badly wanted it. So I tried to get it activated by logging in to my online account. But the site had some problems always and it was not possible to get it activated that way. So I tried the customer care number. Here is the worst part. If you select the 'new connection request' option in the IVR then you get connected to a customer care executive immediately. However if you are an existing customer your call just gets cut abruptly !! Again after trying 20-25 times I could finally talk to a executive and asked the person to activate the channel. The request was taken and I was told an engineer would come to my house the very next day to align the dish to the right satellite for this. Its been 2 weeks now and no news from any engineer ! I have already given fresh request 2 more times (after calling the customer care 20-30 times till I could talk to any executive). Also the customer care executives were not exactly polite while talking.
Also Airtel seems to be taking a long time to bring in new HD channels. They just have 3 HD channels now compared to the multitude of channels offered by other vendors like TataSky and DishTv.
I have stopped recommending airtel DTH to anybody anymore !
Update:
Its been more than 3 weeks now and no technician from airtel has come to my house yet to set up the Movies now HD channel. I have spoken to the customer care around 15-20 times already !
I should never have put my trust in Airtel.
Update:
I got busy with work so could not update this review earlier.
Finally Airtel sent some engineer to my place and got the problem fixed, around 2 months back.
It seems Airtel has changed the satellites through which they were transmitting the channels. So they had to turn the dish to the new satellite's direction. Also now they have enabled Movies now HD for my connection. However I see that the quality of the other channels, like star plus and some regional channels, is very bad.
A few days back due to some problem we were not able to see any of the channels. An engineer was sent immediately to our place to fix this. Seems like the customer care has improved.
However I am not totally happy about this DTH connection.
Thanks
Ashish
