Digital Cable

Having been told by the drones at East Link, that

We went with Express Vu and love the service - except no BBC Kids for some reason (they say they are negotiating). [I will be over in my jammies to Peter’s house to watch Thunderbirds next Saturday.] The installation guy was wacked. Went into the basement and drilled a convenient hole for the cord - out 15 inches from the wall! when pointed out moved it 11 inches closer to wall and stapled the cord to the TV directly into my shelving without asking. A complaint to the Wacky ones was met with indifference. Has anyone used the high speed internet off the dish?

Peter, make sure you take full advantage of the 3 month free preview of all those digital channels. I loved TechTV and a number of the documentary and kids channels (and, oddly, the Gameshow network) but, with the free preview over, cannot bring myself to sign up for any of the extra packages at 6.95 each (3 packages for 14.95), nor 2.25 for any individual channels. I know that isn’t much more money, but to me, that extra money is the straw that breaks the camel’s bank. So enjoy the Freeview.

Well, as a long-time subscriber of StarChoice, I’m unhappy as well.

Of course, I expected that they would nibble away at what they originally promised in order to recoup their high initial investment; but, they really don’t have a clue about how to handle complaints.

Let me explain: when they first advertised the system, one of the selling points for me was that one could buy two dishes - one for home, one for cottage - and use the same account (of course, with additional receivers). One could also suspend the service at will and restart with no penalty. Great for vacations or frequent out-of-town visits. This was first thing to disappear - I think they allow one suspension and reconnect and then charge. Okay, I suppose that”s fairly reasonable, under the circumstances.
It does require someone from the call centre (assuming you’re willing to wait the usual twenty minutes or so) to process your request.

The latest change was a recent - and rather abrupt - missal announcing that there would be a new ‘multi-receiver’ charge of $4.99 to ‘better reflect the cost of providing additional support and programming to multiple receivers’. That’s, uh, $4.99 per extra receiver.

Great! They encourage us to buy them, telling us that there would be no extra charge, and then change the rules mid-stream.

The supposed carrot was a dangling of free lifetime warranty. Fantastic. This thing (the receiver) has no moving parts, basically sits there and will probably be obsolete by next week anyway. (Anybody that doesn’t put an industrial surge-protector unit between the receiver, television etc. is not getting any sympathy from me.)

There must have been quite a response to this particular gouge. I telephoned in my initial complaint was told I could forward a letter to the ‘Office of the President”. I did so. And then waited several weeks for a response which arrived in the form of a computer-generated, unsigned letter. There was an ever-so-teeny admission that ‘in hindsight, are [sic] communications about the introduction of this fee should have been made more understandable.’ Plus, the disclaimer that this new fee was never meant to be per additional receiver (hmmph!) but was $4.99 for all additional boxes over the initial one.

Plus the upper-level programming levels - they’ve had to move past ‘gold’ to ‘titanium’, ‘platinum’ and ‘ultimate’ (doesn’t leave much room for anything better, does it?) - will not have to pay the new fee.

At any rate, I’m unhappy that this response letter couldn’t even have a signature - even fictitious - of someone up there. Someone has to be responsible for such lowsy customer relations, you’d think.

As I said in my letter, I moved to StarChoice because I was unhappy with the way Rogers Cable arbitrarily changed their billing practices. Now, where do I go? ExpressVu?

Well, I suppose I should be slightly mollified that this rather anonymous response letter concluded with ‘Again, thank you for your feedback. We assure you that your comments are important to us, and are respectfully accepted.” I should be mollified, right?

The volume on the Quebec stations is very very week

Had express vu 3 months. Rain fade & tree spring summer leave growth problems during wind conditions. Signal breaks up & pixelates. Some channels available on Rogers not available. HELP system not responsive to complaints. Said I signed after installation (before trees had leaves) Good thing I only went with one receiver and kept Rogers Cable. As lousy as Rogers is, at least their customer response seems to try to help. They rebuilt the cable network in our district and it now works 99% of the time. Once my Express VU contract is over - who wants a dish. Maybe I can get it to work up in Muskoka. What is it with the request for a telephone line to be connected. I do not order any PAY PER VU so I do not see why unless they want to verify that there is a billing for the house telephone number against the satellite. Also - have sympatico high speed and land line and mobility. Still no bundle discounts after 3 to 4 months of ONE BILL. I think Sabia needs to fire a whole lot of Bell people to shake em up.

We’re not so happy with the Bell Expressvu Receiver. We have to keep replacing them as they as they break down. Current one was purchased April 2003, so less than a year and a half out of it, but off warranty. The previous one lasted 2 years. Apparently this is par for the course.

Also, we have an old channel package which Bell Expressvu people are constantly trying to get us to “upgrade.” Yeah, right, the “upgrade” will cost us more and give us a lot more channels we don’t want in order to get the ones we have now. Beware those packaging questions they ask you on the phone and don’t make any switches before checking out the actual price and channel package on line.

Expressvu does not stand up to thunderstorms and the signal is usually lost just when there is nothing else you can do at home, because your power is out. There is no cable service of any kind where we live (for real, for real, none of the neighbours have cable) so we are stuck with satellite or antenna on a tower, which only got us two stations.

I’ve had an Expressvu receiver for a number of years, with no problems. I agree with N. Cleary that the original channel package is a much better deal than the current ones, and you should not “upgrade”. I also concur with the thunderstorm problem. However, for the 99 percent of the time that the dish is working, the picture is much clearer than that of “digital” cable, there are more channels (I particularly like the ability to watch the central and west ooast feeds, in case I miss a favorite program). I pay $48.77 a month, not including any purchased movies, and find it to be a good deal.

In early summer I contracted to have Bell ExpressVu installed in my home. There was a promotion which included two receivers. They system had to be installed before August 8/04 in order to receive the promotional price. I had heard that the promotion overwhelming their installation department. (Translation - not prepared.) As I was 5 hours from home, I called for assurances that the installation would take place on Friday, August 6, 2004. I was told that they had problems at the beginning of their promotions but everything was on time now. I drove back to Toronto. You guessed it - at 4:50 on Thursday, message was left that they were rescheduling my appointment to August 17, 2004.

I could not sepak to a manager or anyone else in authority today. What a frustration.

Has anyone else experience this. What can one do?

We are frustrated with our Express Vu dish. Whenever it rains or snows (wet snow) we have no reception. These are the times when we want to watch some TV. Are there solutions to the problem? Frustrated! Help!

From ExpressVu’s invester news as of the last quarter of 1994:

Earlier in the quarter, Bell ExpressVu also initiated service on Nimiq 3,
a high-powered direct broadcast satellite leased from DirecTV and operated by
Telesat Canada, to boost capacity, further enhance signal quality solving the
majority of rain fade issues, and to add more unique interactive television
(iTV) services.

Seems like no matter where you are people have trouble with cable installations - one day they will figure it out, hopefully.