by Thinus Ferreira
In a significant sign of subscriber discontent, the number of people who have signed a petition asking MultiChoice to lower monthly DStv fees and to show payment compassion in South Africa surged past 100 000 signatures on Tuesday morning just 4 days after it was started last week.
MultiChoice ignited anger under specifically South African DStv subscribers after the Randburg-based company's MultiChoice Africa division decided to give massive discounts of up to 75% and automatic free bouquet upgrades to its DStv and GOtv subscribers elsewhere in Africa to offer consumer relief because of Covid-19 national shutdowns.
Because of the various Covid-19 national lockdown situations enacted across the African continent, MultiChoice has given subscription fee discounts of up to 44% to DStv subscribers and up to 75% to GOtv subscribers in Nigeria.
Martin Mabutho, MultiChoice Nigeria's chief customer officer said that the huge pay-TV discounts are a way of thanking pay-TV customers for their consistent loyalty.
In Botswana MultiChoice thanked DStv subscribers in that country last week for their loyalty and automatically upgraded them the next DStv bouquet for free.
Lorato Mwape, MultiChoice Botswana's acting managing director, in a statement, said that "It is our priority to put customers at the heart of everything we do, and in line with our mission to make great entertainment available, even during the most trying of times, we wanted to gift our very loyal and valued customer base by giving them a chance to experience a wider range of the quality content we carry on our other packages. This is our token of appreciation for their continued support".
Since Thursday last week representatives of MultiChoice South Africa and its PR company Aprio were asked whether MultiChoice has any plans to offer similar discounts or free upgrades to South African customers as in Nigeria and Botswana.
MultiChoice said it is working on a response. When comment is received from MultiChoice it will be added here.
In South Africa, MultiChoice's biggest market, DStv subscribers are already paying some of the highest monthly subscription fees after currency adjustments where another annual increase came into effect at the beginning of April amidst the Covid-19 shutdown in the country.
Through no fault of MultiChoice and to make matters worse, the DStv price increase happened as live sports programming on SuperSport dried up because of the global pandemic, while multiple international and local TV channels had to adjust their schedules and push out new programming, while some local weekday soaps have run out of episodes with more to follow during May.
Sfiso Gwala started the petition entitled "DStv should give S.A. subscribers a payment break or decrease prices during Covid-19" on the change.org platform last week Thursday 23 April, and has quickly become one of the highest "trending" and popular petitions on the platform.
The over 101 000 signatures that the petition amassed by Tuesday morning is tens of thousands more than the petition that was started in October 2019 that demanded that MultiChoice return the Crime+Investigation, History and Lifetime TV channels from A+E Networks UK to DStv and which eventually saw the History and Lifetime channels saved.
ALSO READ: Coronavirus: South Africa's DStv subscribers up in arms as thousands sign a petition over massive MultiChoice discounts and free bouquet upgrades in other African countries over Covid-19: 'My kids laugh in my face that Anaconda has been repeated so much they are no longer scared'.
