Today was the renewal day for my Dish TV subscription. I went to Dish TV’s website www.dishtv.in to check on what plans and offers it is having currently.
Usually, most such Indian sites are dodgy and unprofessional compared to similar sites you find elsewhere. Giving your phone numbers and credit card details on such sites is not a good practice. But giving credit card number to a human over a telephone is a worst practice. So, I decided to renew the subscription online. My mistake.
I looked at various plans it offered and I chose to go for “Gold Saver” one which offered almost all channels of my current plan at a better rate. My existing plan was “Platinum”. Interesting fact about these Indian DTH companies that you can subscribe for on monthly basis. And one of their promos said that for Gold Saver, pay for five months and it would give six months of subscription period. Cool! Since I always pay for a full year of subscription, I tried to look how long the subscription time would be but the site did not mention that. I decided that I would call Dish TV and ask for it.
I logged on to my account and chose to renew my subscription. After going through some pages and choosing what subscription plan I want, I ended up to a final payment page.
This is very first time I came across a payment page so un-user-friendly. You can see that on “PAY MODE” option on lower left corner, third and fourth options are “Credit Card Payment Gateway 1” and “Credit Card Payment Gateway 2”. Will any non-IT person would understand anything what they mean? But lets leave it there. I wanted to pay through my Visa card of ICICI bank. I did not know which one to opt for – Gateway 1 or Gateway 2. I chose first option and ended up with a below screen…
Ooops… this is not my bank page…
So I came back to went backward to the original page…
This time it looked like this: 
Notice “Pending” status? Even though I had not entered any payment details, it showed my payment status as “Pending”!
Well, I chose second gateway and ended up to this page…
Yea, this was the page I was looking for.
I tried to enter details here and proceed for the payment but the page would not go through. So since my account already showed “pending” for a previous payment, I decided to call Dish TV and sort this mess out.
I called Dish TV’s toll free number 1800-180-3474 and I got busy tone! Wow! That was first time for me to get a busy tone on a company’s toll free line instead of an automated greeting/voice attendant. Even after dialing after few minutes, it was still busy. I kept on dialing it for 30 minutes and it remained busy all the time. I was frustrated but I cared more for my subscription and thus ended up calling its non-Toll free number for west region 022-60013474. I got some strange message in Marathi language that this service is not available. Another Wow! I tried its other toll free number 011-60013474 – meant for North region. After voice attendant, my call finally landed to some guy named “Mazrool”. I gave him all my account details and told him about the difficulties I was having in paying online. He checked my account and found that my card had been deactivated (though it was not supposed to be till tomorrow). After checking on it, we discovered that it was a wrong subscription we were working on. I gave him correct number and he checked the account. He then told me that he has rectified my account and I can choose the plan I would like to go for. I told him that I would like to go for Gold Saver plan and would like to pay for a yearly subscription totaling to Rs. 3240. I asked him how long would be subscription period I would get. He said that for this amount, I would get 16 months of subscription time! Great! Dish TV is the BEST! He further told me that he has set up my account accordingly and I can proceed for online payment. After hanging up his call, I went to Dish TV’s site and could pay through my bank’s gateway without the trouble I had before. Good!
I soon got a text message from Dish TV confirming this subscription but it said that my Platinum subscription is renewed. Huh? I opted for Gold Saver… and Mazrool had set my account for it as he said. I went online again and logged on to my account. My account showed that it still is platinum. So I again called Dish TV’s non-toll free number and ended up talking to a girl Shivangi. She said that the move from Platinum to Gold Saver is a downgrade and if I wanted to opt for. As Gold Saver was cost effective and I opted for it. She confirmed the change and I felt relieved. I thanked her before hanging up the line.
To confirm this change, I again logged on to my account and to my shock, I saw that though the account now reflected “Gold Saver”, the subscription period was not 16 month, not even 12 months but 10 days less than 365 days. I thought it could be some mistake and I third time called Dish TV’s non-toll free number. I was greeted by Sandip and I explained him my issue. He told me that downgrading costs Rs. 40 and thus your subscription charge is Rs. 3200 and that Rs. 40 reduced 10 days of my subscription period. Huh? Neither Mazrool nor Shivangi made me aware anything about the charge for the downgrading. But that downgrade charge of Rs. 40 should not bring my promised 16 months of subscription time to less than 12 months. I told that to Sandip and to my shock, Sandip told me that any downgrade is not eligible for any promotional offer for 30 days period from the date of downgrade….. WHAT??? Mazrool never mentioned this to me. If he did, then instead of opting for a full year of subscription, I would have opted for only a month of subscription and then after 30 days of period, I would have renewed my subscription for a full year getting 16 months of time. Sandip said that nothing could be done now. I asked him to speak to his senior. He transferred my line to his senior Margaret. While I was explaining my problem to Margaret, suddenly a male voice popped up from other end and he was Raphael. He did not have my information so I asked him to put me back to Margaret. After having me hold the line for few minutes, he popped in back and said that he could not locate Margaret but I could explain him what problem I had. Ooooo… I repeated the problem third time after confirming that he is a senior and would be in a position to commit or decide on this issue. He tried to protect his people by whatever possible ways he could. At one time, he even accused me that I am making a scene to cover up my mistake! Wow Wow!!! This happens only here… But it really pissed me off and lose all my politeness I was having throughout these calls. I raised my voice and made him realize that he had offended me by accusing me like that. After repeating the problem few more times and insisting upon to check my call recording wth Mazrool, he said that he would look into matter and revert in 24 hours…
Wow! This incident reconfirmed my belief that Indian companies do not respect customers nor the business they give to the company. Instead of rewarding loyal customers like me, it discourages them to give further business. Its too late for me to change a DTH company for a year at least (few days less in a year to be precise) but surely, I am not going to recommend Dish TV to anyone anymore. Its one of those pathetic companies which bring India shame from all directions.
Oh, a very interesting thing I forgot to mention earlier. On June 10th, I received a text message from Dish TV that one particular channel is no more available in my “SILVER” plan… Hola!!! My plan was “Platinum” at that time so I did not care for that message at that time. For next few days, I kept on getting such messages. So when I had logged on my account today, I checked what cell phone number my account was registered to. It was blank and thus, I tried to put my number there. The site reported that my number was already registered to some one else! HUH??? I told this to Mazrool and he gave me the name of the account to which this number was registered to. I verified that the number always belonged to me and should not have ever been tied to any other account. I got him change the number to my account.
My sampling of DISH TV from this experience suggests me followings:
1. Dish TV India is highly un-professional especially in customer care. (Toll free line, website experiences).
2. It’s call center agents failed to educate/make aware the customer about the consequences of the plan change (downgrading charge and promotional offers not available)
3. It has unsystematic customer call handling when asked to speak to the supervisor (Sandip to Margaret to Raphael to Margaret and then back to Raphael).
4. The supervisor made me repeat my case history three times and he worked with pre-determined action plan (accusation) that customer is WRONG.
5. Even though he realized that his staff made a mistake, he fell short in accepting it and kept on singing the same song all the time.
It is not fair to judge the company from a single sampling. Maybe it was my bad luck that I got incompetent operator and his senior. But I had a similar difficult time last year too when I renewed my current subscription. It gives me a feel that as Dish TV has the largest customer base, it has made it careless for them.
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