AverageTV - with sub-par customer support. Review on Big TV

Well – I was NOT entirely unhappy with BigTV - till the time it worked. This, truly is not consumers’ delight like AirTel – when I got this for me, it was the latest entrant in the market – of course, with the, then lowest entry prices.

Why I chose this:

At that time I did do some little(re)search on existing DTH service providers in Delhi – the DD Direct Plus(the free one, but no extra channels), MTNL IPTV(.duh!), TataSkyand and then, DishTV –

Did consider seriously the last two – saw some complaints and then some happy faces too.probably the whole DTH industry in India is at this below-the-average, non-service level in this field, and therefore they too are not providing anything different - just give the customer old-cable-type service - who won't complaint as they don't know what to expect!

If I’ve to buy another one, since I’m not a much fussy TV viewer(i.e. HBO= Star Movies; no-saas-bahu, but yes two-to-four channels together), I’d recommend to go for the one which is cheapest with some reasonably good channel combination, because BigTV does NOT have anything really recommendable about it – is it SunDTH nowadays.?

OR.I(if prices are NOT that different), probably, will go for AirTel – as I’m impressed with their phone-n-broaband service.

Reception quality:Wow - excellent( on my 29” SamsungEasyView) – million times better than what our cable-guys used to give us.

Channels range:Average or OK types – still unable to figure out where’s HBO gone.or is colors there…these guys keep on updating the channels in existing bouquets, but then they don’t give the newly added channels to their old customers.

Hardware quality: Set top box is OK-types as it has not given us any trouble, but this one is a simple one – with nothing fancy like the TataSky advertises nowadays.

Their on screen display/software is, e-x-t-r-e-m-e-l-y slow. Sometimes it even freezes to death – needs restarting. Slow remote means that you can’t view seven-movies-a-time(or can’t flip the channel the moment you hear your parents/kids footsteps;))

Also, UNLIKE my old cable TV it doesn’t change the channel immediately – shows blue screen for some, around half a second – in short, good for mom-n-dad, but NOT suitable for serious channel-zippers.

Monthly subscription / product bouquet:Complex - to be at the best – not understandable to even their own customer service representatives. E.g. starter-pack-3 for this month is different than the starter-pack-3 of last month, so if you’re subscribing to s-p-3 of last month you won’t get some channels – but if you request the idiot-on-the-phone to change it – he can’t understand-n-update the “logic” of replacing s-p-3 with s-p-3….#!$%. Not enough information on their website.

Recharge facility: I pay online – but there is no way you can know your account information online – you just have to call them.

Account information facility:As I said above, just call them – they do claim about some view-on-screen, but NOTHING works. Tried the SMS route also(from all the 3 different phones we’ve at home), but after deducting 2 Rs from phone balance, ALWAYS an “invalid request” response popped back.huh!

Initial installation:Good – professional wiring, and installation staff - it started well within 24 hours of the moment I paid the dough to get it.

Customer support– Very poor, currently having some trouble from past two days, each time I call them a new reference number and a limit of four hours is given, and till this time, I've got SEVEN different call-reference numbers. Most of the call centre executives are time-pass-types, as they don't give correct information - most of the times they too don't know it.

Irritating truths:

Apart from slugs in customer-care who keep on apologising or anything and everything, others are:

1. The BigTV logo on the top left.

   
   




2. and then, they, sometimes they keep on flashing some serial-code on the screen or some messages etc.

   
   

3.To mop the number up, they include all the FTA channels – some twenty DD’s, all the regional channels, religious channels etc, so if they say 91 channels, there’re probably just 23 watch-able ones.

1. Some FTA channels are NOT available.

Can we discontinue it?

BigTV's customer care and trouble-shooting is pathetic.each time you call them you'll end up dooing set-top box reset, and yes - a new complaint reference number(in last 4 days, I've got 7!) - their Engineers are hopeless - they call customer care themselves. I have been strongly thinking of discontinuing BigTV. Found this news item on net where TRAI has directed DTH companies to refundcustomer the Antenna and Set top box costs in case customer chooses todiscontinue the service:

https://business-standard.com/india/storypage.php?tp=on&autono=27139