I love Astro's services. Perhaps they were an underdog when it comes to handling skepticism among consumers in Malaysia when they aim to be the number one broadcasting company several years ago. Those were the days when Malaysia successfully launched it first satellite. Those were history.
When Astro was young, they were a lot of billing issues. Everyday we can read complaints in Utusan Malaysia, regarding the double-billing, contractor illegally charged naive customers, and several quality issues. However, fast forward to date, the customer service has been improved in many order of magnitude. They are now quick in handling customer relation matters, which is crucial for business.
Though the business matters have been improved, there are several other things that are still broken and need to be fixed. Perhaps I should list only two of them below, which focused on the technical aspect:
- Picture quality: When I was studying in Australia, the government were high on promoting the set top box. What is set top box? Set top box is similar to the Astro decoder that you are using. There, the free channels being tunneled via set-top box are of HD quality. No pixellation. Unfortunately although by default Astro came with a high-quality capable decoder, they maintain the use of low-resolution picture quality. Take note that if you did not subscribe to Astro HD package, you'll realize how disgustingly 'YouTube' quality of Astro's image quality. As an educated consumer, you should realize that with the money that you pay every month, you deserve better picture quality than the one you are viewing every day.
- Reception problem: Now is 2011 and we are close approaching 2012. Notice that when it is raining and windy, your Astro decoder will quickly tells you that they are experincing problem to get the reception, and serve you with a blank TV. What was that? To be fair, Astro's customers paid a full-month of service. Would Astro give the customer any compensation for that? Probably not. We are close to 2012 and such problem should not exist anymore. Such technical challenges are meaningful to be solved in order for Astro to gain international respect, for us Malaysian to be proud of your service.
Finally, it is worth to mention to this point that as a consumer, you have the right to get the best out of a service. As a world class consumer of Malaysia, you need to voice out your concern regarding the poor service that you've received. I hope this discussion will reach critical mass and therefore serve as a cry for help for Astro to improve and be the best service not only in Malaysia, but also globally.
Posted on Tuesday, Nov 22nd 2011, @ 09:08
