The Consumer Protection Council on Tuesday patted MultiChoice Nigeria on the back for the company’s compliance with all its orders given after the conclusion of its investigation into the activities of the multinational Digital Satellite Television.
The Council also declared that its intervention into the activities of businesses through its sectoral investigation was to engender consumer confidence and to make genuine businesses more profitable.
The Council’s Director-General, Dupe Atoki, made the disclosure at a press conference jointly addressed by the Council and MultiChoice Nigeria in Lagos.
Atoki asserted that Tuesday’s news conference “is a clear indication that if businesses will play by the rules and render satisfactory services to consumers, they will be validated by the CPC”.
Atoki, while describing the pay-television company’s compliance as “a model”, emphasised that “the intervention of CPC in any business is not only to ensure consumer satisfaction by engendering value for money, but also has the long-term effect of instilling consumer confidence in products and services and making genuine businesses more profitable”.
While commenting on the action on MultiChoice, she referred to a self-imposed maxim of “regulating without strangulating business”, submitting that “the investigation of MultiChoice Nigeria embodies the win-win outcome that this maxim represents, as it gives consumers value for money and henceforth, projects the services of MultiChoice Nigeria in a better light”.
On the compliance status of the Council’s orders, she pointed out that the company, in line with CPC’s directive that billing must be contemporaneous with service provision, had introduced a new initiative of resending reconnection messages at five minutes interval to ensure that a subscriber is immediately reconnected whenever subscription payment is received by the company’s systems.
On CPC’s directive that MultiChoice should provide a window for subscribers wishing to suspend service to their decoders while away, Atoki stated that the company, in line with the order, launched the suspension of DStv accounts service for subscribers on May 12, 2016, thereby providing the opportunity for any subscriber wishing to suspend his/her account to do so for a fixed period of between seven to 14 days twice yearly.
On the Order for compensation to subscribers across board, Atoki asserted that the company had between April 4 and 30 2016 run a campaign whereby it gave out 1,000 Explora decoders to subscribers and as well gave all subscribers below the Premium Bouquet one week free access to premium bouquet channels from April 14 to 21, 2016.
The CPC boss also disclosed that for directives bordering on customer care infrastructure such as the provision of local toll-free lines, change in call centre operating hours and the provision of a customer care manual, the pay-television organization has complied.
According to her, MultiChoice from May 13, 2016 introduced four toll-free lines through the country’s four leading networks with multi-capacity facilities, which are capable of taking 30 calls at a time; expanded its call centre operating hours from 9am to 6pm to 8am to 9pm on Saturdays and public holidays, and 10am to 5pm on Sundays; while the company has developed and submitted a customer care manual to the Council.
On the free-to-air channels, she stated that the company has since May 9, 2016 made the Nigerian Television Authority Channel available to subscribers, who do not have subsisting subscription.
MultiChoice, Atoki added, had also embedded in its compensation policy the provision of adequate compensation for subscribers who experience loss of signal as a result of unprofessional installation.
The Managing Director of Multichoice, John Ugbeh, thanked the CPC for its time with Multichoice, which had helped the company to improve tremendously on its services.
Ugbeh said in line with the Council’s directives, Multichoice had introduced two new sports channels – Super Sports Channels 11 and 12 – for its Compact Bouquet subscribers to have access to live English Premier League, La Liga and Euro matches.
Ugbeh added that the pay tv company had, through CPC’s intervention, been able to provide employment for 900 youths under its training programmes for professional installers, adding that consumers would begin to see additional and improved services within the next six months.
It will be recalled that CPC commenced investigative hearing into the operations of MultiChoice Nigeria, the franchise owners of DStv, on July 31, 2015, following the Council’s receipt of myriads of consumer complaints, which included decoder swap irregularities, unsatisfactory customer service, incessant disruption of service without compensation, lack of timely information to consumers and wrongful disconnection of service during subsisting subscriptions.
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