Returned to DSTV after a few year, and worse than ever! 🤦

I cancelled my DSTV subscription a few years ago because it was just way too expensive, and I could basically get as much value with Netflix, Prime, Disney and then some.

I recently decided to resubscribe, grudgingly, because my wife passed away and, well, DSTV still holds the monopoly on sports, and I am finding the Springoks and the F1 help me a bit with my loneliness. I chose to go the DSTV Stream route, which is a lot cheaper than the ridiculous decoder sub, and, well, who in this century wants to use a complicated piece of tin and antennae when we have this thing called the internet? I figured cool, I'll get the rugby and the F1, but maybe things are looking up on the content programming as well, so bonus. But nope, my word, it is way worse than before, and seriously, you run on programmed schedules still? Y'all need to catch a wakeup man, it's no wonder you're going out of business. I hope the French people slap some sense into your executives.

But, the main reason I'm writing this is because your advertising is inaccurate and misleading. There might be an occasional show I might want to watch, but most of the time, I'm at work, or the show is at 2am. But no worries, because there's a November 2024 article which says that DSTV Stream has recording features here (https://www.dstv.com/en-za/news/117255/dstv-stream-new-features/). And to be honest, the AI chats all say the same, so I'm guessing you have quite a lot of material confirming this that is being ingested. Annoyingly, these features do not um, feature, on the Android app, the Smart TV App, or the web page, and your human support agent (who was very helpful by the way, probably the only decent part of this experience), kindly apologised for the inaccurate information and told me that recording was only available on the Decoder subscription. An additional R250 for what? That's like 2 Netflix subscriptions guys, your product team is clearly in Lala land?

I'm really really annoyed at this, because I thought hey, let me support local again, and with the understanding above I took the hit, on a 12-month contract nogal. There is almost nothing interesting for me in your content if I can't watch it when I want to, other than the rugby and F1, and you can imagine that it does sting a little when I have to pay R700 a month, for maybe two grand prix events, and a couple of hours of rugby. I could literally pay $9 a month to watch F1TV, and there are cheaper ways of watching a lot more global rugby which, yes, are a little naughty, in your archaic world of licenses and such, but I fully understand why people would revert to doing stuff like this when they are hamstrung by your appallingly misaligned product strategy.

Here's my suggestion. I think, because your marketing is inaccurate, you should either offer me and others who have been mislead the Decoder subscription at the same price as the Stream subscription, because it's your false marketing, or you should fix the Stream service and add the PVR thing to it pronto, which I expect most people would prefer, or you should let people like myself who have been falsely informed out of our contracts so we aren't penalised because of your poorly executed strategy.