On Digital Media (ODM) is busy reconnecting a lot of incensed TopTV subscribers who were paid up but saw their signals blocked and got disconnected on Tuesday 1 October, the result of a major technical problem which occured with the introduction of a yet another new billing system by the struggling Woodmead based satellite pay-TV operator.
Shocked and livid TopTV subscribers were unable to get through to the TopTV call centre on Tuesday as they clamoured to get answers and tried to get their pay-TV subscription restored. The company fell silent on Tuesday over what the problem was and didn't respond to hundreds of enquiries from exasperated TopTV subscribers wondering what's going on.
"This Service is blocked (4)" is what appeared on a lot of TopTV subscribers TV screens on Tuesday, launching an avalanche of complaints which stemmed from the introduction of a new "real-time" payment reconciliation system which disconnects subscribers if no payment is reflected on their accounts.
In the past ODM gave TopTV subscribers a few days grace into the start of a new month to settle their new month's payment upfront. However, the new billing system had a serious glitch and where payments didn't reflect or were only made on the 1st of October, TopTV subscribers were instantly cut.
ODM introduced the new billing system in order to be able to reconcile subscribers' payments quicker, with account transactions which will show immediately in future.
"TopTV apologises to subscribers for the recent disconnections. This was due to a technical glitch in the new billing system. We are currently in the process of reactivating subscribers whose payments have reflected in the system," the company said.
This is the third major billing system problem TopTV experienced in three years leading to widespread TopTV customer anger and denting the pay-TV provider's reputation. In February 2011 TopTV erroneously ran a double debit order run on thousands of TopTV subscribers' bank accounts when it upgraded to a new billing system.
In April 2012 TopTV again had a billing system problem when incorrect debit order instructions saw 17 000 TopTV subscribers affected when the company ran a debit order too early, incorrectly and in some cases double.
ODM hopes to have all affected disconnected subscribers reconnected soon as ODM and StarTimes South Africa work on rolling out new "StarTV" and other third-party TV channels later this month in new bouquets.
TopTV has already done away with the "Top" logo which can no longer be found on any channel and which suffered huge reputational damage with South African consumers and subscribers the past three years since its commercial launch in May 2010.
It has now quietly been replaced by the StarTimes logo for test channels such as Star One or STV One, Star Movies 1 and Star Movies +2.
With StarTimes taking over and bailing out ODM, the pay-TV operator is looking ahead to attempt to start over and "resetting" its entire channel bouquet offering later in October.
Last week TopTV launched a new set of "Star" branded test channels. TopTV added Nigerian channels such as WAPTV, E-Star and Oh Africa, an African news channel TVC News and two music channels, Nigezie and STV music. Subscribers are however already complaining about the increase in Chinese entertainment and Chinese movies.
