MultiChoice Africa / DSTV
Reviews and Complaints

I had paid my account and an authorized debit order was issued plus now I have to wait a total of 14 days to get my monies returned to me. Plus there is responsibility for this mess up being taken by dstv and their customer service . To them my financial situation is not a concern and they expect me to wait so long for a refund.

This is the content of the email that I had forwarded to dstv :

Good day

I'm a very unhappy client of dstv, whose payments has always been made on time by debit order on the 26th of every month . For some reason in September 2019 the debit did not go out and I contacted dstv and was informed that I was to be debit in the excess of R1400 which to me was not my installment and I told them I'll make my normal payment and was told to pay R904 which I did.

I phoned back informed them of my payment and was informed that no debit will be taken out until the 26th of October 2019.

On the 06/10/2019 and amount of 1384.16 was deducted from my account and I contacted dstv and was told I need to phone in 5 days for my monies which I find ridiculous because you'll are not entitled to that monies . I can easily go to the bank and reserve the payment but why should I effect my record rating.

I'll attached my correspondence with your company and the hassle of getting my money back.

Today I phoned the Durban contact center( ref [protected]-i127) and was informed that I must wait 7 working days from today (11/10/19) for my monies.

Firstly it was not my fault my debit did not go through and secondly why should I be informed that i shouldn't of made the payment of the debit order was going to come out either way.

I have been a staunch supporter of dstv when people are telling me to cancel my subscription and they way I have been treated it gives me food for thought that loyal customers are the ones who are getting screwed in the end whilst dstv takes no responsibility for their mess ups

Regards
Tyrone Naidoo
[protected]

I am very discussed with dstv and the call center. They are very quick to switch off your dish, but take very long to switch it back on. Calling them and down grading my package to R269 on the 30th September 2019 and on the same day make a payment. But on the 11th September they switched it off. Sending me a sms saying that I need to pay R314. Called the centre waiting very long, finely getting through to someone and the airtime runs out. Call again waiting long again on the line just to get through to someone that tells me her system is off and she can't help me. What do you do because dstv don't reimburse your money for the days that the dish is off. When they are at fault

I have made payment for Multichoice on the 01 October 2019 with EFT and my due date for payment is 02 October, and send a proof of payment same time after making that payment. On the 04 October i receive an SMS that says did not pay and after received that SMS i send a proof of payment to this mail address: proofofpayment@dstv.com

And the 05 October i received another SMS that i did not paid, i call customer care line and explain to the lady that was helping me, she give me this email address: Ludwe.sondara@multichoice.co.za to send proof of payment to that email. i did send. but nothing happened, my service is disconnected and today i call multichoice again and explain and the call centre agent ask me to send proof i did send and call back again and the other call centre agent ask me to send it again i did send, and nothing happened and call back again and same history.

Please assist cause i have made a payment of R570.
My Johannah Mabunda
reference: [protected]

can you please ask Ludwe Sondara to check my email that they ask me to send to that email address.

This year ive applied for price lock option for 499 a month which has been debiting fine until Sept. 28/9 Aug my services were disconnected due to unpaid however i pay via debit order and it had not debited yet. I then enquired and was told it was an error which will be rectified immediately. 1 Sep a debit order for r705 went off instead of r499 and when i enquired i was told a reversal will be done within 24 hours. It has been months now and im still not getting any resolution. I email and no response, i call and get told 48 hrs response or price lock dept is uncontactable or they just cut my call. All in all the list of excuses I get is endless. Till date i have not gotten any assistance whatsoeva. So my 2nd last resort is to lodge yet another complaint with the hope of getting feedback.

Good Day,

I am extremely frustrated with Multichoice/DStV. I am on the price lock plan which is R749 per month. The last 2 months they have charged me R899. I have called countless times and spent hours on the call, spoken to several different managers including a senior manager named Sanjay who promised to call me back and follow up on my query 27th September. Still I await any feedback and again 2 October they overcharged me. Everytime I call I'm told they can't do anything and have escalated my query to the finance team. Yet my query is not being resolved. This is really stressful. Dstv is in breach of the contractual agreement we had for the price lock plan. If I was the one paying less than I'm supposed to, they would switch off my dstv but now that they owe me I need to be patient and wait months for them to resolve a issue on their end!

I'm NOT okay with this. I want my money back! In addition the customer service is putrid!

Very unhappy with the service I receive from multichoice. They disconnected my dish and it was due to them not debiting my account. I have been calling them and they put me on hold for over 15min then drop the phone. They promise to call me back but it never happens. They don't send me my statements when I request it and do as they please on my account. Very unhappy with the service I receive

My cycle is the 21th of every month and I had paid you my money but now you choose to disconnect my account. Why? Because you are highly unscrupulous with highly incompetent employees who are highly trained liars. They can see what is happening in my account but they simply tell me that they offline and if you phone again the next person answering the phone will not conform that story. They see that I am not supposed to be disconnected but because your doggy system had decided what it had decided and they cannot assist me so they must keep lying to me about their system being offline.

One lady confirm that my account is not supposed to be blocked and said she will escalate the matter to her supervisor of which I doubt they is such a person in that call centre. You are doing this to me because you know very well that I don't have the financial back up to take you to Court.

Your manipulative system will win because I am the Son of the Gardner. Just open my account. That all am asking for which is so difficult because you know that a Black man does have the financial muscle to take you to Court.

Good Day,

I have been experiencing issues with DSTV since the 19th Aug 2019. First i had an outstanding amount of money due to Multichoice, i was advised to pay R700 for my service to be connected again which i did and still it wasn't. I then called in and was advised to pay R100 for my service to be reconnected which i did and then nothing was done until i called in again. I was then advised to make the following payments as per below which i did (see attached image)

After making all these payments i was still experiencing and E102-29 error that not a single person could assist with as they advised that i need to pay R128 because the previous agent i spoke to didn't activate my PVR Service (which was utter rubbish because i was using my PVR Functionality). Today i spoke to Thobisile Nyawo at 13:13pm until 14:08pm and after she "cleared" the E102-29 error i got an E48-32 error.

I am so tired of having to call DSTV every other day with errors I'm experiencing, having my issues escalated and absolutely NOTHING is being done about this no matter how many times I escalate an issue. When you ask to speak to a Team Leader, Supervisor or Manager they are always in meeting and one cant be assisted.

I am honestly thinking very strongly of cancelling the poor service as this is totally unacceptable and unprofessional.

I HAVE HAD ENOUGH!

Good Day, This is my complaint.
i want to stand by my statement above, unless you prove me wrong. My latest ref no is.. [protected]- i245... this is the 3rd reference number i have received from you. Your staff is either incompetent or clueless. i was promised a discounted package but it never materialize. I was told on one occasion that the matter is resolved and the account will be adjusted accordingly but nothing happened.

On 2019-10-08 i did speak to one of your supervisors namely Sudhir, during our conversation the call was cut off. if he was really keen on resolving my issue he would have reverted back to me.

my full story and history of my complaint is on your system, ref no above. it will also be appreciated if you can provide me with an email address of your CEO

ID [protected] Cell [protected]/ [protected]

I paid my Monthly subscription, 2 days later got disconnected. In 2 weeks i had to call the call centre 6 times to be reconnected. I am using DSTV Compact plus monthly R385 in these 2 weeks my account was suddenly in arrears with R465. Yet I paid. Now its the 6 time they cant reconnect me anymore nor explain whats is happening on my account. Clear rip off cause I already see in a month my balance will be R1000 yet I am only on Compact plus. They cant even explain how this got here. Now i cant get reconnected. very unprofessional staff, hang up on me and dont want to solve the problem.

Oct 2018 I instructed dstv to activate services for 1 month. The calls as recorded and instruction was given to cancel in Nov 2018 on billing date. Not done. Now, DSTV want to hold me responsible for their mistake made (all calls recorded, asked for recordings, dstv not prepared to forward to me). Instructed then in Nov again to cancel. Again not done. Had to cancel debietorder manually. Now, no one take responsibility and 1 person transfer to the next. No department want to help. Was on 1 call of over 30 minutes. Told call billing. They do not answer their phone.

My information and dstv guide wasn't working so I searched on the internet and the only solution given was to reset to default settings and reboot and so I did. So as I was trying to reset my decorder, it couldn't go beyond step 4 of 5. It keeps saying the signal is weak and poor and I've tried everything for almost an hour now and nothing is working.🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

My name is Theo Heerman ID [protected].
I live in Durban and I have a holiday home in Cape Town. I had a DSTV service that I used when in Cape Town.
On the 5/08/19 I contacted your Pinetown Office and asked the lady named Precious (I believe) to disconnect the Cape Town service. She gave me a reference number I 110. From my bank statements, I see on the same day that you deducted an amount of R1903.00 for both my Durban home and the Cape Town service.
On the 4th of September 2019 you deducted another R 1903.00
This is either really poor service or plain unlawful enrichment; claiming it was a system error.
Please refund me immediately the money you owe to me and call me when it is executed. My name is Theo Heerman and my mobile no is [protected]

In July 2019 I requested a downgrade and was assured that all was in order and the downgrade would be actioned. This did not happed. On 06 September 2019, I called the call centre, spoke to Sipiso who again reassured me that I will be downgraded. I was given reference number [protected]-I42 and told DSTV would investigate and someone will call me back. Again my request was not actioned. On 08 October I called to spoke to Ayanda, who advised me to call on the date of my debit to request a downgrade. I found this strange as this was in no way mentioned to me before and tried explaining this to her but she got herself into a snit and I was more shocked by her attitude that I asked to speak to her Supervisor. After holding on for 10 minutes a gentleman, Vinod came onto the phone but spoke so fast that I had to ask him to repeat himself. I explained about my downgrade request and felt that DSTV was unreasonable because I had to make myself available on the first of the month to call for my downgrade. What if I was hospitalized or travelling, how do I get DSTV to do a simple downgrade? I have done it in the past and never had so much fustration. The customer service is sadly lacking. The customer is not always right, but simple courtesy, having a good tone, not raising your voice and simply speaking a bit slower shows the customer that the agent is in control and it is just professional. I would cancel this contract in a heartbeat and dont need DSTV, your agents have to realise that DSTV is not a must to have in the household. Now fingers crossed I would not have to make umpteen calls for my refund

On the 28th of September 2019 DSTV deducted R2070.00 instead of R768.00. I immediately contacted them because that extra deduction had me left with no money. I was apologized to and told that it was an error and my money would be refunded within 5 to 7 working days. I told them I could not wait that long. On the 30th of September I contacted their call centre because I wanted to escalate the matter, as soon as I asked for the ombudsman procedure or contact details, the call centre agent dropped the call in my ear. Fast forward to today 7 days later, I at least expected my refund to be in and still nothing. So I proceeded to call their call centre only for the robot thing to tell me that I need to pay R1482.93 today, I waited for it to put me through to the agent but the number kept dropping. I decided to chat to them on their Facebook messenger page explaining what happened, I get a response that I was told that the refund takes 7 - 14 working days. I responded to them that they are lying and I have proof from our previous messages that I was told of 5 to 7 working days not 14. The agent then just replies with an apology stating that it was an error and that it takes 7 to 14 working days.

I already have an account with multichoice and wanted to upgrade and do a pricelock, so they took all my details and also said i need to do a debit order option so i agreed and gave them all my details, they delivered the new decoder and said i should wait for the installer which will come within 7 working days. 2 weeks passed and i called multichoice and the gave me a few numbers of installers that i need to call. Non of them agreed to come install because it was a voucher. Its now been 3 months and i still haven't installed my new decoder. I don't know what to do or report to in order to get this sorted. I have recordings of all my phone calls with multichoice agents and their names. I'm even thinking of writing to Peter Giles (HelloPeter)

I payed before my debit order went off and it also went off i reversed the debit oder and i appeared loke i never paid while i have sent the proof of payment and the re connection and a disconnection the happened every week after that i had to keep re calling and nothing was bbeing updated on multichoices side i sent 2 proof of payments they kept asking me for pfoof of payment everytime i called..i am beyond not happy wih this product now and im very tired of it

From: Wendy & James van Zyl [mailto:[protected]@oldoaks.co.za]
Sent: 07 October 2019 09:48 AM
To: 'proofofpayment@dstv.com'
Subject: DISGUSTING SERVICE OF DSTV - PROOF OF PAYMENT J VAN ZYL [protected]

Good day

I am disgusted in the service of DSTV as my account has been stopped for the 2nd time this month even though I have paid and one of your creditors confirmed payment was received.

Saturday : 28 Sep - Paid amount of R 480 via FNB EFT
Wednesday : 3rd Oct - SMS received that our DSTV has been stopped due to none payment
Wednesday : 3rd Oct - Phoned in and sent lady proof of payment so that she can investigate came back stating proof of payment received and I was reconnected.

Monday : 7th Oct - SMS received our DST stopped due to none payment

We've stopped your DStv as you've not paid. To reconnect, pay R582.98 using ref no.[protected]. Once paid, we'll reconnect you. To pay: payat.io/dstv/[protected].

I am extremely disappointed with Multichoice's level of service. I recently changed ownership of a couple of decoders to my own account, and I indicated that the credit available should be transferred from the old account to the new account. After the transfer was complete this company suspended both decoders regardless of the fact that I made a payment of a R1000 on the 28.09.2019 for these decoders. They claim I owe them R542, furthermore they disconnected my PVR services which have been paid for. I wasted a couple of hours plus a couple of hundred rands in call time trying to explain myself to the call centre consultants who all seemed equally clueless. After all they are not going to repay me the amount I lost by being disconnected neither the time and money wasted trying to reconnect without any success. You should try and improve your service otherwise I now understand why people are looking for alternatives.