Shah Rukh Khan says “Wish Karo, Dish Karo” but there’s nothing to ‘wish’ or ‘dish’ when its rainy/ stormy/ windy. On top of it, now the control hub at Dish TV Center works on priority only for those who gave in to Dish TV’s tactics of Annual Maintenance Service Charges of Rs.400/.
If someone wants to make a complaint, at first, all the 4 customer care numbers (chargeable or toll-free) are engaged almost all the time, however, by chance if it gets connected, the voice at the other end says “you are our priority customer, our staff will attend you in a short moment” and there “short moment” is as long as 15 minutes onwards! Sometimes the call disconnects because of holding for so long and tiring your ears by hearing ad campaigns, other times, that is when its your lucky day, you get to hear somebody asking your VC No. and Name.
Again after 3-4 minutes the person would say “this is technical problem, its better for you to have Annual Maintenance Contract (AMC) to get rid of all the problems”. If you dare to ask for an explanation like, ‘how come all of a sudden we are facing this problem of “signal not found” so frequently?’, you may be responded saying “madam, your dish antenna may need realignment, so if you want we can send our person”. Now, this service is chargeable with a fee of Rs. 150 + taxes for every visit and with no guarantee! Yes, that is what happened with a close friend of mine as the technical person who visited her house to rectify the problem said, “If you call me tomorrow, you will have to pay again.” She knew that it’s cheating but she did not have any other option than to pay and have AMC to save herself and her family from getting crazy! Now in our case, our TV was working perfect since 2006 before this scheme of AMC came up. In January 2008 we paid for one year subscription for Dish TV thinking its better than renewing every month or every 3 months. To our astonishment, Dish TV stopped connection 10 days before our subscription due date and reconnected 12 days later and that too after our several phone calls. Since that time onwards, we find “no signal” on and off! In between, we do get to see some programs with the hazy and mutilated picture but, its at the sole discretion of Dish TV team.
In April 2008, we paid for realignment of our dish antenna as per the excuse given by customer care for “no signal”. Now again since past 2 weeks we have “no signal”. We tried calling customer care but to no avail. On the other hand, our immediate neighbors who have AMC face no such problem! Friends, we don’t know about our fate with Dish but my only request to you guys is that its better not to buy Dish TV Antenna and set top box as you have 100% chances of being deceived and harassed if you don’t take AMC. Also, Dish TV withdrew many channels in the recent months and plans to recall some major channels from their network service soon. For SRK I have just one thing to say: ‘being a good human, why pal around with the liar and be its brand ambassador?’