B'yond needs fixing

Last Wednesday, I was surprised to see that my Astro Byond box just suddenly went dead. It had been having problem since we got it installed in April. Every so often, it just frozen, with a loud whirring fan-like sound emanating from the back. A quick search on the web forum confirmed that it was a common problem, as part of the lack of quality control in Astro in general.

But we coped with it, as occasionally it only hanged once in an hour. The week before it went dead, it was freezing a lot more often.

I got on the case straight away when it went dead. And as soon, I realised the reason behind why I did not call them any sooner.

"Welcome to ASTRO. Press 1 for English, press 2 for Malay, press 3 for Iban etc ….". It was really annoying. And that was not the first menu. It went on and on until you were finally connected to a customer service personnel, who then asked you again why you called them in the first place. Did they not get the summary of what keys I had pressed earlier?

And the problem did not end there. I was promised a technician would attend to the problem at home within 48 hours. It was Tuesday today. To be fair, I was contacted by a technician asking for the directions to get to my house. That was last Tuesday morning, while I was at Gleneagles with Dad.

So, not only that they provided substandard hardware, the had a botched customer service personnel protocol and they even messed up on the technician front as well. So, I had to call them again. Went through the mundane menu before getting a live person on the other end. I was again promised service within the next 24 hours ....

I was just trying to figure out what would be the next mess they would create? No replacement parts maybe, while at the same time refusing to provide a new set top unit? I could sense that one coming …..