The Consumer Protection Council, CPC, has said that its aim of investigating activities and services of Digital Satellite Television, DSTV, was not to upturn the judgment of the court which ruled in favour of Multichoice Nigeria on the recent price increase saga, but to give attention to barrage of reports reaching its offices alleging unsatisfactory service offerings by the PayTv operator.
Dupe Atoki
Head of the CPC Lagos Office, Mr Tam Tamunokobia, in a telephone conversation with Hi-Tech on Monday, said that although the court had ruled that price hike was a contractual agreement between the operator and its subscribers which also gives the subscribers liberty to withdraw from using the services when the prices are not comfortable for them, the commission would however not dismiss the barrage of complaints pouring into its offices on daily basis alleging unsatisfactory service offerings by the operator.
“You may be aware that the court ruled in their favour on the price increase case but we will not throw the concerns and complaints of million Nigerians away. So we have decided to extend the investigation beyond the price increase. For instance there are allegations of poor decoder swap deals, constant loss of signals and undue disconnection before due date of subscription, among others. We will look into all these and what our investigations reveal, will determine the line of action we will take” Tamunokobia said.
Recall that Multichoice Nigeria had introduced a 20 per cent hike in the fees charged subscribers for using the DSTV service to take effect from April 1, 2015. However, two Lagos-based lawyers, Oluyinka Oyeniji and Osasuyi Adebayo, quickly initiated a class action on behalf of millions of Nigerians who criticised the new subscription rates as exploitative and insensitive.
The two lawyers had sought the order of the court to stop MultiChoice or its agents from implementing the price increase and also asked the court to compel the National Broadcasting Commission to take steps to monitor and regulate MultiChoice operations in Nigerian to ensure that it does not hike their fees arbitrarily.
The two applicants said they were expecting the NBC to ensure that they compel DSTV to deal with Nigerians the same way DSTV deals with other subscribers in other parts of the continent where MultiChoice operates, by ensuring that the pay-per-view scheme was introduced in the country. It was an arragement they argued, would ensure that Nigerian subscribers to DSTV would only pay for programmes actually watched, as is the case in South Africa.
Objecting to the application, counsel to MultiChoice, Moyosore Onigbanjo (SAN), urged the court to deny the plaintiffs their demands and discountenance their pleas, reminding the court that it did not have the legal authority to regulate what the company decides to charge its customers for its services. But despite getting judgment in her favour it appears Multichoice may still battle the dissatisfaction of many DSTV subscribers for a long time.
Many subscribers who are miffed over the increase still believe that the PayTV operator could still be in business if it reviews its prices a bit downwards. Some of them described the increase as lack of respect and regard for its Nigerian subscribers since according to them; it does not arbitrarily increase prices in South Africa. Tamunokobia revealed that the CPC has served Multichoice with a written notice of investigation and was waiting for the company’s reply.
Hi-Tech gathered that part of the notice, signed by the council’s Director General, Mrs. Dupe Atoki, spelt out that many subscribers had complained of “poor quality of service such as incessant disruption of service without compensation while subscription is current; wrongful abrupt disconnection of service during subsisting subscriptions; monthly subscriptions lasting less than 30 days; and poor redress mechanism and customer services.”
Others, it said, include “advertisements on customer care lines at the expense of consumers; poor implementation of decoder swap policy; and effecting price increase for subscriptions despite payment before due date of increase.”
- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/07/why-were-investigating-multichoice-cpc/#sthash.4qzwWz7J.dpuf
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