The Consumer Protection Council has commended MultiChoice Nigeria for complying with all the council’s orders issued after the conclusion of investigations into the abuse of subscribers rights by the multinational company’s Digital Satellite Television.
The CPC Director-General, Mrs. Dupe Atoki said that the intervention of the council in any business transaction was not only to ensure consumer satisfaction, but also to engender the long-term effect of instilling consumer confidence in products and services as well as making genuine businesses more profitable.
The CPC had last year commenced an investigative hearing into the operations of MultiChoice Nigeria, the franchise owners of DStv, following the Council’s receipt of consumer complaints, which included decoder swap irregularities, unsatisfactory customer service, incessant disruption of service without compensation, lack of timely information to consumers and wrongful disconnection of service during subsisting subscriptions.
Speaking on MultiChoice’s compliance status with the Council’s orders, Atoki pointed out that the company had introduced a new initiative of resending reconnection messages at five minutes interval to ensure that a subscriber is immediately reconnected whenever subscription payment is received by the company’s systems.
The CPC boss added that MultiChoice had complied with the council’s directive to provide a window for subscribers wishing to suspend service to their decoders while away.
“In line with the order, it launched the suspension of DStv accounts service for subscribers on May 12, 2016, thereby providing the opportunity for any subscriber wishing to suspend his/her account to do so for a fixed period of between 7-14 days twice yearly,” she said.
On the order for the payment of compensation to subscribers across board, Atoki stated that the company had, between April 4 and 30, 2016, run a campaign during which it gave out 1000 Explora decoders to subscribers.
She added that the company also gave all subscribers below the Premium Bouquet one week free access to premium bouquet channels from April 14 to 21 this year.
Atoki further said that from May 13, 2016, Multichoice introduced four toll-free lines through the country’s four leading networks with multi-capacity facilities, capable of taking 30 calls at a time and expanded its call centre operating hours from 9am to 9pm on Saturdays and public holidays and 10am to 5pm on Sundays.
She also said that the company had developed and submitted a customer care manual to the Council.
The Managing Director, Multichoice Nigeria, Mr. John Ugbe, lauded the council’s efforts at assisting his company to improve on its services.
Ugbe said, in line with the Council’s directives, Multichoice had introduced two new sports channels (Super Sports Channels 11 and 12) to enable its Compact Bouquet subscribers to have access to live English Premier League, La Liga and Euro matches.
He disclosed that the company had, through CPC’s intervention, been able to provide employment for 900 youths under its training programmes for professional installers, adding that consumers would begin to experience additional and improved services within the next six months.
