Big TV Reaches 5 lakh Subscribers, Targets 5 Million

Just days after slashing prices of Big TV service, the company announced that it has touched five lakh subscribers within two months of its launch. South India has proved to be a major market for Big TV, with nearly 50% subscribers accounting from that market.

Reliance ADAG expects to touch the five million mark in the first year of its operations, and is geared to to add over 400,000 subscribers every month with an on-ground infrastructure spanning 6500 towns.

But with exceeding amount of consumer complaints which we have received on this blog, about the installation, after-sales service etc. of Big TV, we really doubt if these figures are for real or just a marketing strategy to nail the competitors.

According to Arun Kapoor, president, Reliance BIG TV, Big TV’s half-million subscriber base is equivalent to 40% of the industry’s gross additions during the last two months.

Big TV sure has big plans in the offing. It already offers the most number of channels as compared to any other DTH player, and by next year it plans to double its channels bouquet to 400. Reliance has also tied up with LG to offer its DTH service at Rs 700, instead of Rs 1490, for those customers who buy 29-inch television sets. The offer is valid till end of this month.

Also in the pipeline is Big TV's digital video recorder (DVR) by end of this year, and interactive cricket and news service within two months in association with a leading sports broadcaster and two news channels.

Read more » Big TV Reaches 5 lakh Subscribers, Targets 5 Million

Big TV Facing Big Problems? - Part 2

In Big TV Facing Big Problems? - Part 1 we looked at the Big TV Installation and the problems Big TV users are facing, lets now take a look at the other facts that are possibly stalling the Big TV Launch.

Big TV Customer Service:

It understandable that the customer service at this point of time is not living up to the expectations since its a fairly new service and the customer service executives are learning the ropes. But heres an experience of a Big TV customer,

I called up to lodge a complaint for STB getting hanged. That was a just a simple complaint i was trying to lodge and guess what?

A hell lot of hassles I have gone through.

[1] Rep talked to me for over 20 minutes!!!
[2] He was keep asking me (or may be confirming) every single things for 4-5 times what i was telling him (That was really annoying)
[3] After telling him every single thing - he was putting me on hold for 1-2 minutes saying that "i am going to gather more knowledge and will give you a solution, please wait"
[4] In between, he also played a trick - "Sir, are you in front of your TV? is that problem happening right now? If not, please call back when it happens so that we can guide you thoroughly"

I am a bit smart too. I said "hang on --- see, it happens now. tell me what shall i do now?" and he said "try to do something with remote", "try from STB" and even he said some foolish things "check the batteries in your remote"

Finally, he took a complaint after 20 minutes of discussion and when i asked for a complaint number, he said "i will have to put you on hold for sometimes, it will take time" - i asked "how long" and he said "2-3 minutes"

That was completely waste of time. He actually took 2-3 minutes just to raise a complaint!!!!!!!! Imagine, they haven't launched commercially and they are taking 2-3 minutes just to raise a complaint. What will happen after a launch? He finally gave me an 8 digit complaint number which starts from "7358----"

Big TV Complains:

One customer placed two complains within 24 hours of time, on the 11th of August 2008 hr placed a complain for the STB that was slow and kept hanging, the complain number was 7379**** and on 12th August 2008 another complain fro the "Smart Card Error" and received complain number 7384****. Now if you see that the complain numbers 50,000 complain numbers are being generated on a daily basis. This is really something that will create issues, especially with the launch of Big TV yesterday lets see if these problems are rectified.

Big TV Solutions:

So far the Customer Service nor the Engineers have been able to fix the STB problems, the only solution they have provided is stating that once the service launches they would be able to fix or replace the STB.

The other solution they have provided is to keep the customers phone number stating they will contact them when a new version of the STB is out. So this could mean tha the company is trying to get the STBs replaced for a newer stable version.

A special thanks to the members of the Broadband forum for keeping us updated with the problems they face.

Read more » Big TV Facing Big Problems? - Part 2