Letter: First Media's service

Wed, 10/08/2008 10:26 AM  |  Reader's Forum

I have been a customer of First Media (KabelVision) for the last few years using their Cable TV services and I have been quite satisfied with their services till the recent past.

On Aug. 6, their technicians fixed a decoder after they digitalized the transmission. All this they did without giving any advance notification or call. From that day, all of our TV channels except Local channels were scrambled. I reported this to customer service and they asked me to re-install the settings etc.

However, this did not work. I kept calling them every day, more than two or three times (no exaggeration), and only after I insisted that they should send a technician to come and check the decoder, they fixed this problem on Aug. 10.

The technician who came informed that there were some setting faults in the decoder, which he fixed, and this was five full days after my complaint.

I also use their Internet services (Fastnet 768) and from mid-August, the Internet speed became very slow. I called customer service on Aug. 19 and reported the issue. Customer Service informed me that they would report this to their technical department.

However, this has not been fixed. I have been calling customer service asking for the status. Their prompt answer has been, "We have reported the problem to the technical department." They did not show any concern or seriousness for fixing the problem.

To prove the slow speed of Internet connection, I sent the speed check report via e-mail to First Media which showed less than 100 kbps. For Fastnet 768 kbps, I should get a minimum speed of 500 kbps, which was confirmed by customer service.

He promised to send the technician on Aug. 30. So I called him to get the reconfirmation. He would not answer his mobile and also did not respond to my SMS. Instead he sent a simple e-mail saying "Sorry sir I forgot confirm with you and I can't send the engineer today because I already talked to our maintenance about the problem with our system".

I wrote back to him informing that I was quite frustrated and disappointed the way First Media was responding to customer complaints. I wanted to report this problem directly to their senior executives. But they are always "in a meeting" or "not in the room" and what not.

This only shows "the don't care attitude" of First Media. Isn't it amazing that a service provider is providing such callous services?

RAMESH
Jakarta

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