Lately Neos Kosmos has received several phone calls from members of the community who are complaining about reception problems for Greek TV channels transmitted through the broadcasting platform of Tv Plus.
Tv Plus launched its package of Greek TV channels about 8 months ago, entering the Greek TV channels market when the then UBI declared bankruptcy. Tv Plus was already in the business since 2004, giving access to Balkan channels to the Serbian, Croatian and Russian communities of Australia. Their Greek TV channels ‘proposal’ to customers consisted of the transmission of channels from Greece and Cyprus like Alpha, Mega Cosmos, Star, ΡΙΚ and others.
While many of the community took advantage of this new deal, and teething problems go in some instances hand in hand with new products, six months down the track, a number of customers seem to face a number of issues with their Greek TV channels viewing platform of choice. The problems they have encountered, while common for most of them, are not only related to the poor reception of the channels.
In a rather furious state, those who picked up the phone to report their experience to Neos Kosmos went as far as blaming the company for “poor customer service”, as even when they tried to resolve the reception issues they had, via a phone call to the company, this became almost impossible for them as the dedicated line for this service, provided by the company, was either engaged, or was not being answered. But even for those who managed eventually to get through and receive technical advice, which in most cases was for them to change the codes on the decoder (box) they received when they subscribed to Tv Plus, did not prove to be the solution.
One caller voiced their concern over mounting costs to fix an issue that the company should rightfully be paying for.
“Since I was losing the signal at least once a week and I was calling them all the time, they realized that this cannot be fixed over the phone and they referred me to an authorised technician,” one of our callers said.
“I called the technician and I was informed I will be hit with a $75 charge for him to visit my premises,” one of the disgruntled customers told Neos Kosmos. His argument for not wanting to pay the $75 fee was based on the premise that he had recently subscribed to the service (six months) and the company should cover this cost, since their commitment to the customer when he signed his contract was for him to be able to watch Greek channels, which he could not do on a regular basis.
Neos Kosmos contacted the company in an effort to clarify these issues and seek their side of the story.
“We took over what was the business of UBI and we had our own broadcaster transmission infrastructure. We did deliver the set top box to customers’ houses but what we are finding is that many customers’ old dishes are not compatible with our digital transmission,” John Jeremic, chief technical officer of Tv Plus said to Neos Kosmos.
“Many customers have had their dishes installed to watch ERT and those dishes may not be 100 per cent compatible with everything and the transmission. But because they were a cheap, free to air install, then they won’t have to be the highest spec, whereas our service requires a bit more finesse from the installation perspective,” he added.
As indicated by Mr Jeremic, UBI was using the MPEG2 decoding format, while Tv Plus is using the latest MPEG4 system. That system gives better picture quality for customers.
“Once we send the equipment to the customers’ place, quite often they need the technician to visit,” John Jeremic admitted, but the customers don’t want to pay for the technician as a number of our readers categorically stated to us.
“We are not offering the component of servicing or improving the dish installed on the customer’s premise, we are only responsible for the box that we deliver to the customer. So then the customer has to pay a bit more money to get that done,” he added.
Mr Jeremic said that 9-10 per cent of Tv Plus’s customers have already faced this kind of issue and in 9 ½ out of 10 times the faults had been rectified by a technician going to the customer’s place and tweaking their dish or explaining to them more correctly how to use the receiver, because in some cases even the customers seem to be unaware of the new technology.
We asked Mr Jeremic if the use of the MPEG4 system and its incompatibility will go further than a $75 visit from a technician and will eventually require the replacement of the dish which is a much more costly exercise.
“In 40 per cent of cases the customer’s existing dish and infrastructure can be used. In a majority of instances the LNB, which is the white adaptor on the dish arm, needs to be replaced. The reason for this is nearly all dishes were installed more than 3 years ago, the LNB is not 100 per cent comparable 100 with our newer format of MPEG 4 transmission, that is why some customers have a good picture and others don’t.”
The decoder comes with a 12 month warranty from Tv Plus and will be replaced free-of-charge if the unit is faulty. Tv Plus says customers should be patient when calling, as the lines are very busy at the moment.
