Amid reports that DStv has sliced it’s subscription prices for other African countries, South Africans are clearly very annoyed that they haven’t been included in the slashes. With hundreds of people battling to make ends meet, anger towards the admittedly expensive service is seemingly spreading in the thousands.
Despite all the goodwill it has tried to offer up in the form of free channels for lower-tier subscribers, DStv is clearly still everyone’s favourite company to hate on. Following the service provider slashing prices in other African countries towards the end of last year, people have been up in arms that South Africa’s not been given the same treatment. Sifiso Gwala took action and started an online petition, stating “DStv drops prices for the rest of Africa except South Africa and now this. We’re being taken for granted here #DstvMustFall”. The petition was launched just a day after DStv announced that local soapies such as Isibaya and Gomora were postponed due to a lack of new content. Whether the petition was spurred on by this announcement is unknown but we like to think it certainly contributed. We South Africans love our soapies.
While the petition is certainly not only about soapies, it would seem that was the tipping point for many people. The actual purpose of the online call-to-arms is for DStv to reduce South African prices amidst the ongoing pandemic that has seen thousands of jobs lost and even more salaries cut. The 100,000 benchmark was reached within 5 days of the petition going live and the current number stands at just a few thousand short of 150,000 signatures.
Of course, this is just a Change.org online petition, something which is incredibly easy to start and notoriously ineffective at actually achieving anything. Still, one has to believe that at least one person in a suit at DStv saw those numbers and blinked in a rather concerned fashion. It’s not a number that can be easily scoffed at but whether or nothing anything will come of it has yet to be seen, but we’ll remain at least a little doubtful.
DStv has yet to respond to the petition but on the off chance that they do, we’ll keep you updated.
22 Comments
Dstv must cut the prices indeed. We are in Lockdown and most of its programs are repeats. There is nothing new coming our way and of course we are not getting incomes due to this situation.
Myne complain us similar toe most comments I have read
I feel DSTV is in all honesty is exsployting their viewers.by charging exorbitant prices for not just continue repeating programmes over and over.and in many cases airing constant that very old.
On Saturday I checked my balance after my debit had bounced and wanted to pay manually, they sent me a balance of R439 which Is due on the 28th of May. Today I wake up to a disconnected dstv,another statement was sent and I need to pay R489 by 29 04 2020??????WTF
Hi I’m not happy about the dstv service or to say multichoice to be precise. to me I agree they are not consistent with pricing because for the same product that I’ve been paying on my debit orders I get charged different prices every month but one other hand why should we continue paying for the repeat even our local contents are not playing because of the lockdown and other shows as well including soccer but we continue to pay the normal rate I fully support the statement price reduction on our subscription
I asked that my premiums. Dstv account t be disconnected as due to Covid19 I have not received a salary. Was told that since my payments come off 2nd of every month it would be disconnected then. This, of course, was not done due to their incompetence. They only did so on 16 April and now they have debited my account with almost R300. I HAVE NOT MISSED THEIR CRAP AT ALL
I called them and ask to change my date from the 2 to the 7 of May due the the allpay dates that have change coz I pay with my kids allpay my monthly is 418 so they told me that I have to pay 485 for changing my dates an extra fee… And we always watch the same thing over over but we have to pay alot of money… U even have to pay for watching new movies why but we pay already alote of Money to them…
Wht I did to save myself on this lockdown period, I have changed my package to the lowest so that i can watch the news otherwise for me this time dstv is robbing us ,how can we pay a lot of money while they do show us some repeated programs?
#DSTVmustfall…. DSTV is not bringing up anything new except repeats am still crossed because I was nt home in February and March then I decided not to pay without no one going to watch TV then they charged me connection fee of February and March not once off that was a daylight robbery.
It’s a result of shortage of competition that’s why dstv is always taking us for a rough ride
Who is doing movies on they are movie channels pls put variety of old movies stop giving us same movies all the time
DStv compact subscribers have been given channels same as DStv compact plus subscribers at no cost. Now I would like to know why haven’t we’ve been upgraded to premuim as compact plus subscribers???
That I’ll like to know too cause they robbing us for sure,I’m a compact plus customer but now we watching same thing with compact with no extra charges for free,So we need an upgrade to premium as well during this lockdown!!!
Well my take in this is that we should all downgrade to R29 just to watch SABC. In other words we only rent their aerial, instead of their multiple repeats in every channels, for four months in a row. And see if they will not hear our call and succeed in paying their stuff and big bonuses to their CEO’s period…
Brilliant idea. I will be doing this
Very good idea
Myne complain us similar toe most comments I have read
I feel DSTV is in all honesty is exsployting their viewers.by charging exorbitant prices for not just continue repeating programmes over and over.and in many cases airing constant that very old.
Dstv must fall they are taking us for a ride.All the time is old movies, they can repeat a movie more than 10 times but yet we pay for premium. We must go downgrade to Sabc channels. No soapies because of lockdown. What are we pay for? I like we are donating so that they can make money while we struggle with salary cuts. Why did they reduce subs in other countries and nothing was done for Mzansi.They should take everything and relocate to those countries because they only listen to them.
Hai tired of repeats pls cut fees it’s too much;It’s even worse during this lockdown we shouldn’t be paying @ all more repeats again 😔😔buya Jeso🙌 they robbing us day light…DSTV MUST FALL DOWN WITH FEES!!!!!!
DSTV must fall for sure!!!
Multichoice takes subscribers for fool. They have increased sport channels to appease subscribers while there is no live sport. I am not impressed. Surely DSTV MUST FALL.
They are playing power season 6 on 1 magic…..like seriously?? We have long watched power from Netflix in 2019🤣 Netflix is the if and very affordable, dstv is crap…repeating the same movies all the time
I don’t get this. Everybody is complaining. But they continue paying their subs. I’ve canceled my subs. For the sports fans there are numerous services available online to watch all 380 EPL matches live and in 4K HD. And it costs . It’s much cheaper to install a Fibre internet line and watch alsmot all content that DSTV has for free. And almost any movie can be downloaded. There are legal premium sites that the latest movies can be downloaded from. Amazon Prime Video has 100x better content than DSTV. And it costs less than R100 pm. All that’s need for SA viewing is a good VPN service at a cost of around R1400 per year.
So if you add up these costs. At say R400 for a Fibre line. Plus the cost for the other services. You have better content viewing. At far less than a Premium DSTV subscription. It’s not rocket science. I’ve done it. And my Fibre line has so much more additional benefits than just watching TV. So cancel your DSTV and save your money. And open your world to so much better than what those thieves at MultiChoice provide.