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M-Net[ M-Net's Website ] Let me start off by saying that most of my contact with M-Net has always been very professional. I think that they have a great program selection and they cater for their subscribers interests. The time I was with them I thoroughly enjoyed the service they gave. Today I am doing business with two of their subsidiary companies and am very happy with them. M-Net is a TV pay channel company that sends out an encrypted signal to your decoder. They are well known for their great movies that they show. What happened here was just a personal experience that again highlighted the odd business sense we have in South Africa. I sincerely hope that this type of logic is no longer applied. It was in the early 90's that I became an M-Net subscriber. Well I cannot remember the exact date without going to dig out the contract, but it was near when M-Net started out in South Africa. I was a very happy subscriber for a few years. In about 1993 or so I moved to a new flat in Tamboerskloof, Cape Town. I had a lovely view, but not a very good signal to receive M-Net with. After buying two different antennae's and still not having any luck I called M-Net's technical support. They gave me excellent help over the phone and tried all sorts of things, but still no luck. Here comes the business sense part: They then suggested that they send out a technical team to come adjust and analyze my antennae setup, but it would cost me R100. What is interesting is that I paid about R75 a month or so to receive M-Net. I pointed out that if they did not send someone out for free then they will lose my business. Yes, you guessed it!!! They offered to disconnect me for free if I did not want to subscribe any longer. I said they were going to lose R1000's over the next few years just because they would not cover the cost of the technical team. Well, anyway to keep it short, that did not wash and since then I still have my decoder but I stopped being a subscriber. To date, because of that "solid" business decision M-Net has lost about R3800 or more. Our problem in South Africa is that our consumers all act independently and have no real clout when it comes to dealing with large corporations. And guess who loses out in the long run?? No, not the consumer, actually it is the company!!! On a more positive footnote: I recently
wanted to reconnect to M-Net and to my surprise when I called they still had my
account on record and reconnected me within minutes. I have been
subscribing for the last few months and have received very good service. None of these opinions in any way reflect those of my employer. These pages are entirely private. |