Why I would never recommend anyone to go for Videocon D2H

[jaipandya]

I got a Videocon D2H 1000GB HD DVR connection installed at my home in Delhi on 7th of June assuming the value for money it provided. I bought their most expensive box, still after 14 days today the recording facility is dis-functional, the reception is extremely bad and I cant watch anything.

The connection worked fine only for the initial 1 hour (I could see something, no recording) after the installation but soon after that it started showing a blank screen with an error message. I couldnt lodge a complaint at that time as I had to leave for a trip outside Delhi. I lodged a complaint on 12th June, upon which Videocon D2H engineer came to pay a visit on the next day. He got the connection working and I could see some channels but recording was still a fail.

The Videocon D2H service engineer told me that my STB needed to be changed for recording to work. This would need another complaint to be filed. I did that but to my surprise only after some hours I got a message back from Videocon D2H on my phone that my complaint had been resolved without them taking any action. Surprise 1!

I called Videocons service centre next day (14th June) and I was promised that my complaint would be resolved by next day but nobody called / arrived after that. I made another call to Videocon D2H service centre next day to know the status and I was told that there was no complaint from my side and all the complaints had already been resolved. Surprise 2!

After getting pissed off again, I requested the customer care guy to get both the problems resolved. He filed another complaint. Next, I waited for two more days and nobody appeared, received no calls. On June 18th evening I contacted the customer care to know the status of complaint, and the Videocon D2H service centre person told me that he was filing a complaint for the engineer again and he would visit my place the next day.

By then I was enough frustrated that I wanted to get the connection closed so I asked him to just do that. I was told that I would get a call back from Videocon D2Hs backend team in 7 days that would tell me the procedure. Next day, on 19th I called their customer care again to know the status of their action, I got to know that there was no request registered for getting the connection closed. Surprise 3!

In the evening yesterday I got a call from Videocon D2Hs service engineer who wanted to visit my place to fix the STB. I asked him to come between 6-7 pm. He didnt turn up and told me that he would be late. I told him to come the next day. After about 15 minutes I received a message that my complaint was resolved and obviously there was no progress. Surprise 4!

Now, I just want to close my connection and get my full refund (about 7k) that I paid via Videocons eChannel. After experiencing such a great service from Videocon D2Hs end, I would also advice all my friends to stay away from them.

In case if a Videocon D2H representative / manager is reading this post and still wants to make things fine, please be good by taking your things back and refunding me full money and please do it ASAP. My customer ID is 122086970.

Update 0??20 June 2014:
After writing this blog post and some more social network share, I received two calls in the evening from Videocon D2H.

In the first call Ms. Karishma from Videocon D2H tried her best to convince me to keep this connection and try it for one more month. But when I told her that I wasnt interested in continuing with the service anymore and I just wanted a quick closure of the connection and my full refund back, she had no clue about the later part.

Second call was made by the area supervisor Mr. Manish Sharma who also just repeated what Ms Karishma had spoken in the previous conversation, but for the same result.

Meanwhile the service engineer who was supposed to come the previous day arrived at my home to check the connection. I had asked him to come with a new set top box previously because this box wasnt recording anything. But he arrived with none. As we didnt have our roof tops keys handy for a connection checkup, we asked him to just get the STB replaced with a working one, he denied saying he couldnt do anything untill an access to the rooftop was provided. When we talked to his area manager, he responded very arrogantly arriving at no solution.

I would still want to request if any Videocon D2H reps are reading this post, that I want to close the connection and get my full refund back. I dont want anything fixed now. Please dont make this process an more difficult for me.

 

[Bharath2481]

I am very concerned reading the detailed account of your experience with D2h , I am a D2h HD subscriber too ...
My suggestions would be to ask for a refund if you are not happy with the service , I will suggest you to go for Tatasky or Airtel Digital TV if you are looking for a DVR , D2h DVR is of very bad quality and their Software is buggy or you may ask for a HD STB instead which is better with the latest STB's they have launched.
D2h service is not the best , HW quality is dodgy and to extract the best service & assistance from them you will have to write a detailed email to the nodal officer who can only help you.
Nodal officer Delhi email id : [email protected]

 

[lake1988]

I think your escalation procedure is not correct.

Once the customer care idiots can't give you a solutions you need to escalate it to the nodal officer of your region then next the circle office and so on.
Contact Us - D2H Corporate Office - Videocon d2h

If this is not resolving you issue you need to send mail to TRAI and all this escaltion process should be done via email and keep the normal customer care email in cc.

I am using d2h for more than 2 years now and if you want your issue resolved you need to take these steps.
Once I was not satisfied by the HD pic quality I escalated to TRAI and make them give me a much larger dish which let me say is very effective during rainy season.

 

[deep_g]

Your frustration with the customer care and service guys are genuine. But going back to them again and again would not help.

I would suggest you take this up at the social media, the D2H facebook page could do with a detail complaint from you - https://www.facebook.com/videocond2h?filter=2

 

[ranjeetrain]

I have had a very good experience with Videocon. I have only had some trouble with the connection recharge. Once when we were moving and decided not to recharge further the reception stopped two days ahead of my calculated date. I logged a complaint and it was attended without any fuss. They were courteous enough to acknowledge the mistake as well as add two days to my next recharge.

IMHO, no service provider in our country is absolutely honest. Reliance are biggest thieves for example. But IMHO, they can be dealt with with the right approach. It might take a bit of patience, and in some cases more patience.

I am not an expert on this issue, but the whole problem here could be that your installation is not perfect. Reasons once again can be n number of things, including incorrect installation or lack of LoS. I repeat I am not an expert in this area but it is very much possible that in the root of both your problems could be incorrect installation.

When a new connection is installed, it is installer's responsibility to make sure a strong enough signal is received and the connection is working as expected. As you mention it worked well when it was installed, and it's not working now. It is pretty logical that the problem started after the installation. (Some neighborhoods are not friendly. People love fingering each other. Pull others' cable for instance.) And to check it rooftop access is absolutely needed, regardless of the provider. Even if it was Airtel, Tata, Reliance or any other, they will offer you the same solution. Your inability to provide them rooftop access will definitely go against you, as you are not allowing them an appropriate opportunity to work on the issue.

Coordinating with the technicians can take a few attempts in bad examples. In good examples you just set a time, they come, work the issue and leave. One must understand the fact that technicians have field-work. They are always on-move and always on-call. They get a list of customers to attend in a sequence from their supervisor. Some of them who are smart work their way in a manner that they can optimize their work to reduce time and effort on commutation and increase time they will get to serve customers. But most of them just go by a list of customers to attend.

What further complicates their work is that they need to deal with all sort of people on a daily basis, some of them reasonable, some not so reasonable; some punctual, some not so punctual. It is absolutely out of their control to estimate precisely what time exactly can they reach a certain customer. They give a rough estimate, and when ever they give an estimate, take it up to +2 hours from that time. Some times traffic can also throw their estimate out of gear.

Given the situations they work in, and the number of variables they deal with, I am always sympathetic to delivery boys, technicians on move etc. Everyone should be.

It also appears that the case needs more time than you have given it. On 12th you logged your first incident and within a week you are all over social media. This is putting undue pressure on them. IMHO, this is not how it should be done. IMHO, social media route should be taken only after you have used all the usual channels and they have failed to work. You have taken to social media in a huff, and such cases will only dilute the importance of social media, which as of now is a very strong influence.

All my personal opinion based on your post. I sympathize with you for the inconvenience you are going through, at the same time I do feel you needed to be a bit more patient with this. I do hope the problem is resolved soon. All the best.

 

[sandeepmohan]

Getting a refund to the amount you have spent looks difficult.

Had a bad experience with service about ten days ago.

It started off with my second tv connection going blank. This happened when I was watching tv. The primary was fine. I tried some diy which was unsuccessful. Logged a complaint.

The chaps turn up after a day of filing the complaint. Their attire alone made me wonder if they were really from Videocon. Anyways; they checked and found one of the outlets on the lnb that had failed. As usual, they were not carrying a spare and said they need to go back to their office to get one and it can't happen the same evening. They showed the failed lnb which had some kind of fluid spilling out of it. A short while later, one of the chaps took a lnb from his bag and went up to the terrace again. It did not look like a new lnb. Reception was fixed. I was charged Rs. 650 (lnb)+ Rs. 150 (service charges). I used to be a Tata Sky customer and as you all know, there is no cash transaction of any kind with Sky. With Videocon, its an all cash thing and a retarded process which I will get to in a bit. With reception now fixed, the ticket was closed.

A few days later, I happened to go up on the terrace and find the lnb missing on my Tata Sky dish. Agreed its now retired but the dish belongs to me. I find the Tata Sky lnb fixed on my Videocon dish. Tata Sky lnb looks totally different and of much better quality. Its a Sharp lnb. God knows what Videocon use. I was royally ripped off. This was the limit. I logged a complaint on the phone, emailed and posted the entire incident on their FB page. It was a little difficult to make the call center chaps understand what had happened. In a couple of days I had also come to know from the Videocon local office that I was over charged for the so called new lnb. It costs Rs. 550. Getting back to the service charges, Videocon has a stupid system of deducting the amount from your account plus you pay for the engineer visit. The engineer further recharges your account for Rs. 150. After a week of Videocon investigating the issue, they sent a engineer and replaced the lnb with a new one, returned my Tata Sky lnb and I was refunded the full cost of the lnb and service charges to my Videocon account. It was a frustrating experience.

I have no other complaint with the rest of the service. Its only when you face a technical glitch and need a site engineer that there is a problem. With regard to broadcast quality, there has been no issue. I find the HD box slow to respond and thats it.

If you have a problem with Videocon, you have to escalate as high as you can and make yourself heard, else nothing is going to happen.

There is a difference of Rs. 1000 between Tata Sky and Videocon, if you take the most expensive annual HD package. Videocon also throws in 40 days extra on a annual recharge. Question is, do I switch back considering I have faced one serious problem and I got a full refund.

 

[bbr_shr]

Coordinating with the technicians can take a few attempts in bad examples. In good examples you just set a time, they come, work the issue and leave. One must understand the fact that technicians have field-work. They are always on-move and always on-call. They get a list of customers to attend in a sequence from their supervisor. Some of them who are smart work their way in a manner that they can optimize their work to reduce time and effort on commutation and increase time they will get to serve customers. But most of them just go by a list of customers to attend.

What further complicates their work is that they need to deal with all sort of people on a daily basis, some of them reasonable, some not so reasonable; some punctual, some not so punctual. It is absolutely out of their control to estimate precisely what time exactly can they reach a certain customer. They give a rough estimate, and when ever they give an estimate, take it up to +2 hours from that time. Some times traffic can also throw their estimate out of gear.

Given the situations they work in, and the number of variables they deal with, I am always sympathetic to delivery boys, technicians on move etc. Everyone should be.

It seems in this case the technician(s) closed the case as resolved. Now that should be unacceptable by even the lowest customer care standards.

 

[jaipandya]

It also appears that the case needs more time than you have given it. On 12th you logged your first incident and within a week you are all over social media. This is putting undue pressure on them. IMHO, this is not how it should be done. IMHO, social media route should be taken only after you have used all the usual channels and they have failed to work. You have taken to social media in a huff, and such cases will only dilute the importance of social media, which as of now is a very strong influence.

All my personal opinion based on your post. I sympathize with you for the inconvenience you are going through, at the same time I do feel you needed to be a bit more patient with this. I do hope the problem is resolved soon. All the best.

I definitely gave it more time than required. But when it was happening everyday I thought this would be the last day of my suffering. As suggested in other threads also, I should have escalated the issue to nodal officers while what all I was doing was to escalate the issue inside the call centre itself (asked the guy to transfer the call to his manager and followed the hierarchy)

While I know how to get the problem resolved if I am in such a problem again. But now, I am at a state where I was am so fed up with these guys that I just want this connection closed. The refund bit is what keeps me worried. I've spent about 7k+ Rs. on this already.

While speaking about going social media route, the company took 2 days even after that. Their twitter account / facebook account is active, but they also just promise and don't take an action. I'm going to put the updates till now in my next reply.

 

[jaipandya]

Getting a refund to the amount you have spent looks difficult.

If you have a problem with Videocon, you have to escalate as high as you can and make yourself heard, else nothing is going to happen.

I would love to pay more to get better service than to go through all this. Before making up my mind for Videocon, I'd have to go through so many things for getting only one basic installation done perfectly.

 

[jaipandya]

Update 1??21 June 2014: (Issue incorrectly reported resolved again):
Received two messages today that my complaint number 232305961 has been resolved successfully. Now, even I am wondering which complaint has resolved in this time frame, as I cant notice any action from their end. I should probably forget counting, but this would be surprise 5.
There is still no attempt from Videocons end to close the connection and refund my money back. It has been 3 days since I requested the same.

Update 2??22 June 2014: (Tata sky and internal wiring)
As Videocon D2H has been unresponsive and incompetent service provider so far, Ive got Tata Sky installed at my place. Their services proved to be much delight to use. Also, I was shocked to know a few things:

As you can see in the image above, how badly the holes on the right side wall were done (that is Videocon D2H). Holes in the left side wall were done by Tata Sky guys, which looks very clean.

Extra cable: Our house already has internal wiring for satellite TV. At the time of installation when I told the Videocon D2H guy that he could our internal wiring. He told me that because D2H DVR required two cables he would need to take the two cables all the way from the roof top to our TV set. The tata sky guys told me that internal wiring could be easily used with a splitter / filter. Well, that could have saved a lot of effort and ugly wires on the wall. Later I realized that because of this reason I ended up paying about 1000 Rupees for the extra 60+60 meters. Either the installation guys were not skilled enough or they were interested in this extra amount for these cables.

Update 3??23 June 2014 (Call from eBay)
With all of this the only good thing is that I bought the connection from an eBay seller. eBay has a policy of 30 days money back guarantee if the product is not shipped or a defective. Two days back I filed a dispute on eBay that the shipped items were defective and I wanted a refund back.

Today morning I got a call from eBay saying that when they contacted the seller about it, he informed them that all the complaints I filed have been resolved so the dispute is invalid. While from the text above, you know that how they solve a complaint. (They just mark it resolved).
I informed the eBay person about exact situation. Now lets wait and watch what happens next.

Made a blog post here: https://medium.com/@jaipandya/why-i...nd-anyone-to-go-for-videocon-d2h-fbe4611f5c42
I would still want to request if any Videocon D2H reps are reading this post, that I want to close the connection and get my full refund back. I dont want anything fixed now. Please dont make this process difficult for me.

 

[Rockfella]

OP you should rant here and lodge a complaint with Videocon or take them to the court but noone here will change their opinion based on your sob story.

 

[kneo]

Thanks for sharing your experience. Even though I am not changing my DTH connection as of now, it's good to know that there's at least one service off my list where I am assured of experiences like these