DStv arrogance leads to 10000 subscribers leaving every month

Open letter to DStv:

It is with a great sense of satisfaction, driven by a sense of extreme betrayal and disappointment, that I hereby inform you that I wish to cancel my subscription. I don't know where to start to share with you numerous examples of your arrogance and ineffectiveness that has led to my decision.

Numerous technical issues that you have ignored, (e.g. Curiosity Stream sound problems, a decoder that needs rebooting every day because some channels mysteriously disappear without reason,) unilateral decisions made "rules" changes without consulting your customers, childish mistakes and errors in your information, programmes starting at the wrong time, (e.g. missing the first ten minutes of Dr. Pol,) and twice making your problem with pirate viewers my problem by forcing me to go to your offices to swap cards, mistakes with invoicing errors that led to one free month of subscription, and so on, and so on.

And on top of that, even though I have changed my settings for family language, you are unable to do a simple thing, like screening a 13 LV series - Riviera - without the worst swear words which my 11-year old child has to endure, much to my embarrassment. For example, in series 2 episode 9 there were four "f*$#ks" in the first three minutes. Go ahead - check it.

With all these mistakes, one starts to wonder: “Do these people actually know what they are doing, are they cynically making poor decisions, or are they just completely ***********?”

But three things have happened recently that have caused me to make my decision after more than thirty years of customer loyalty that you have never given me any evidence that you have appreciated nor acknowledged.

First, since fewer and fewer companies want to advertise with you, you have taken to playing endless boring repeats of your own tedious promotional material, with many promos being repeated twice in one break, and seven or eight times in one episode of a programme. And as for the completely narcissistic segments about how you have created jobs and changed a few individuals’ lives - I want to vomit when I see your boastfulness. Do you think we are stupid? How many times have you aired the promo for that convicted ********, Martha Stewart, now being a judge on Chopped in the past month? It must be a few hundred times at least.

What about the implicit promise made right at the beginning of your history that you would never interrupt programming with ads? I’m sure you will be sitting there thinking, “Well we said we wouldn’t interrupt movies.” Whatever.

The second crisis is that of endless repeats of everything from movies, series, documentaries, and everything else. It's not good enough to label it "catch up." I don't need to catch up, I need something new and entertaining. How many times do I need to see the same episodes of "Diners, Drive-in and Dives" or "Chopped" or "Come Dine with Me"? There are some specific episodes that I've seen at least 8 times in a handful of years. We won't even talk about all the various CSIs and NCISs. Same old programmes, over and over again.

But the final straw came recently when once again you (unilaterally) cancelled the various BBC and ITV channels, as well as anything vaguely intellectual, such as various documentary channels. You have dumped good quality channels to support locally produced ****, (to be blunt,) and think you can save money by buying the cheapest international drivel. This includes the translated Brazilian soapies, as well as utter ******* like the Bold and the Beautiful. What the hell do we need two fashion channels for? Who/how many of your SA subscribers are interested in Big Brother Naija? Anything vaguely intellectual has gone down the drain.

I won't even go down the road of sports channels - mainly because I'm not a sports *****. But even if I was a sports fan, why are there 18 channels? No wonder you are losing in excess of 10000 subscribers every month.

It is not possible to detest a company like yours more for the daily frustrations I have tolerated. Just in case you misunderstand, I place you in the same category as those other *****s at Eskom, the shoddy SABC, and the worst businesses like SAA and Enterprise.

Enough is enough. Perhaps you haven't realized that for most of your history you had no credible competition, but now I have choices. Even the most expensive offer in Netflix is less than a third of what you ****** from me every month. And now that I have a small black box kindly installed for me by one of my sons, I pay precisely nothing for the quality I seek from overseas.

I'm outta here, and I'll be happier.