Some background
I have been of the opinion that services like Multichoice’s DSTv, are probably unnecessary in this day and age when some of us have access to “high speed” home internet. The pricing is rather ridiculous and the content is, well, meh. That was my opinion last year (there is a Twitter thread that I need to disown like a Kenyan politician) and years before and it still remains my opinion today.
However, one cannot simply wish away the convenience that satellite TV brings with it. In the case of DSTv and myself, our paths only converge when it comes to my favourite pastime, football. Multichoice has the rights to show the English Premier League, the UEFA Champions League and others that I follow closely week in week out. That means, when I am not in my house trying to find a reliable stream to watch the Red Devils play, I am at some joint watching the game or following it from my phone (the beauty of Android).
Since my obsession, besides football, of course, is Android, I made a point to get a DSTv subscription a while back when their (Multichoice) South African office got in touch with me last year introducing the DSTv Now app that I had previously subtly highlighted in the run-up to the World Cup. Since I couldn’t get them to facilitate me getting access to the entire kit to make that possible, I slotted it in my “to-do” list and sure enough, a few months before the turn of 2018, I got a good deal and decided, why not?
DSTv Now woes
As expected, my experience there has been good and that app review has been coming for a while. Save that there’s a problem. Actually two problems. The pricing, as you all know, is still at the roof and I am having a hard time justifying paying for it and keeping my home internet subscription where it is. Then there’s the app that made me wade into those waters in the first place.
For the former, after the kind of unpredictable internet I have had over the last 2 months of 2018 (and it’s carried over into 2019, sadly), it’s probably a good idea to keep a reliable means of watching my favourite football team since the internet at my place has been misbehaving of late and it remains a “wait and see” situation.
For the latter problem, the reason for this article, I am still recovering from the response I have received from DSTv since initiating contact with their support team.
Here’s what happened: I travelled for the holidays and besides binging on some few shows on Showmax, I couldn’t afford to miss a piece of the footballing action while away from my city hideout. I found it much cheaper to get a Giga bundle (reliability) and stream matches using the DSTv Now app on my phone than going to the den where we all usually gather to watch football at a small fee at home. That was fine until, just after renewing my subscription one night, moments before a big game – Liverpool v those noisy neighbours, I realized that I didn’t have any live channels in my DSTv Now account.
Of course, I did what everyone else usually does: contacted the support team. Some guy named Eric was quite resourceful and pointed me to the live chat option on the DSTv Now website after a lot of wasted time of logging out and logging in, clearing cache, uninstalling the app, reinstalling it, rebooting the device and what not, advice that I took. That’s where it got interesting since the response below is what I got after explaining my issue and the service rep on the other end checking up my account:
Sorry. We are experiencing technical issues and our systems are offline, our technical team is currently working on getting the systems up and running ASAP, apologies for the inconveniences caused. We do not have the turnaround time yet for when the services will be back on.
Long story short, it’s been a week since this happened (maybe longer by the time you get to read this) and, like the service rep noted, it doesn’t look like the end is nigh.
What gives?
Are you experiencing issues with DSTv Now, now?
UPDATE
The issue has since been fixed.
