Sly TataSky Bye. Review on Tata Play

2016 Feb 15:

Today, on online chat Tata Sky told me that once you aishwaryasingh23 for annual or semi annual, the packs cannot be dropped or cannot be made monthly or anything else. So basically, the moment you make a large aishwaryasingh23ment, they will stop the service and you cannot do a thing about it.

So basically people who aishwaryasingh23 annual or semi annual charges at one go are stupid.

Ok I will book this as a loss. But no more satellite TV. I'm going to watch online. It's actually going to cost me less because I have a high speed wi fi router with data limit that remains unused.

If AV content providers want me, and the customer segment I belong to, to watch their content, they better gear up for the online audience. This is, in any case, the future of AV content and entertainment. Of course, for a few more years, there will be many who will continue with the status quo. And that's going to be yet another urban/rural/social strata differentiator. So the advertising revenue will get split accordingly. I know the entertainment industry has worked out the customer profiles already. Cool with me.

_

The moment I renewed the annual package for around Rs 5000, many channels suddenly stopped altogether or became heavily pixelated.

Called up the paid helpline and wasted money twice. They insist that suddenly the moment I deposited lots of money into the account, something went wrong with the set top box and I will have to call the technician.

The set top box which is an electrical device, displays some channels but not some others, most of which are part of my add-on packs.

So I tried to remove the add on packs considering that I cannot watch them anyway. Their website mentions that one should click on ‘drop pack’ to remove add-on packs. But there’s no link. How sly can a company get! I have saved screenshots of this on different days.

So, I emailed help@tatasky to remove my add-on packs. Somebody called up and it’s been a few days now but no action taken yet.

So, charges for the add-on packs are being deducted even though I cannot watch them because Tata Sky is trying to arm-twist me into aishwaryasingh23ing the technician and replacing a perfectly working set top box.

Clearly, the problem is not with the equipment. My best guess is he wants to give a rigged set top box. Or the technician has some March revenue deadline. Or both. If this is how they are garnering revenue, well that’s sad for them. And sly.

Last year same time, they did the same thing with a friend who lives in a different block of the same locality. The helpline and the local guy informed them on the phone itself that something is wrong with their brand new set-top box. The technician came and looked at a perfectly running channel which was on at the time and said you will have to replace the set top box with a refurbished one.

But these friends are much smarter than I am. They didn’t do annual recharges. So they used up their small balance and never renewed. They sold off their Tata Sky connection to the kabadi.

I tried too. But no one wants to buy. They already have cheaper alternatives and in the last two days, the electrician, three maids in the area and the garbage guy have all questioned my basic brain function in having bought the same thing for more. The electrician has offered to break the set top box for different use. I think that might be unethical if it is unethical to rob the thief.

So now, losses apart, I cannot use it, cannot sell it. So, we are brainstorming what to do with it. A neighbor suggested we paint it and use it for advertising our business. Another suggested we use it for bird feed. There are lots of gardens and birds all around my house and people regularly put out feed for birds and dogs.

Using it as a community plate for cow feed is the top suggestion so far. There’s a guy who delivers grass each morning outside each house. We asked him this morning. He is super happy with this suggestion. He’s going to love putting 7-9 bunches of grass and leaves in one dish rather than flinging it at every gate.

Hmm… more suggestions welcome.