TelstraClear Digital TV

**Madness** · 11th June 2007, 22:06

Do you have a TelstraClear Digital TV decoder? Does the decoder shut down intermittently when you change channels?

If so, you are not alone...

Originally Posted by Disgruntled TelstraClear Customer (Madness)

To the management of TelstraClear.

I would like to offer some feedback from today's interface with your organisaton. Unfortunately today was like most times I have contacted TelstraClear, very disappointing.

We have TelstraClear Phone,Broadband and now Digital Cable (more on this later). I firmly believe that TelstraClear offer the best package in terms of product and pricing. Nothing is ever perfect with any product, when a TelstraClear product fails is when the worst happens, direct contact with the company.

Since our recent "upgrade" to Digital Cable we have had intermittent problems with the decoder shutting down when changing channels, each time taking a minute or so to reload the decoder & giving us an unexpected high-volume static noise blast. This is not good when you own a Cockatoo that lives next to the telly. We had until today decided to live with this problem in order to prevent direct contact.

Today our decoder locked up when I tried to change channels, staying on the original channel but not allowing any change, by remote or manual switch. It caused much frustration, eventually I figured to unplug the decoder at the wall, this appeared to fix the issue.

Despite this new problem appearing to now be resolved I decided to call as I was now feeling like the situation was unacceptable, the product is failing. It took me 45 minutes to get the run-around, conflicting information and varying levels of percieved competency. Eventually, several hours later I got a call back from another technician. I again explained the fault, was placed on hold.....

I was told that there is no ability to resolve this issue, it is a known fault and is reasonably widespread. There is no known time-frame to resolve this fault despite being known & widespread. I can either live with the unit turning itself off intermittently, taking a minute to re-boot, until such time as a solution is found. Alternately I can be "downgraded" back to the Analogue decoder that this faulty unit replaced.

I am now undecided about what I will do, I am not particularly worried any more, now I realise it's a widespread issue. It might one day get resolved?.

Why the hell did it hurt so much to find out that my problem is a known fault?. I honestly believe that this fault (or any for that matter) could be more widespread than you think. People are too scared to talk to you it hurts so much, kind of like making a police-rape complaint.

What I feel I must do is to try and communicate to you as a company. You are a brilliant telecommunications company but in my opinion you couldn't communicate your way out of a paper bag. If you have a fault, let customers know. You don't have to write them a letter, just have somebody with half a clue on the end of the phone. It amazes me that the worst company I have to deal with over the phone is the bloody phone company.

Let your people know what is going on. Hire more of them so I don't have to hold for at least 45 minutes, every god-damned time I call you. Make one person answer the call (promptly) and see that this person has the resources to deal with the call. Crikey I had to make 3 calls today in total, that's another thing; if one person deals with my enquiry there's less chance of me getting cut-off by a "telecomms technician".

Seriously TelstraClear, I have been loyal to you for almost a decade. I seriously considered arranging disconnection tonight. Please sort your act out, I don't really want to go to Telecom.

Mr Madness
Customer.

**sanchez** · 11th June 2007, 22:10

Our decoder likes to lock up and restart every few days, goes through some long tuning process each time as well.

**skelstar** · 11th June 2007, 22:28

Mine locks itself up when you look at the info for the channels etc, clears in about 1-2 annoying minutes though. Sometimes can't see info for progs more than in 1 hours time.

**Skunk** · 11th June 2007, 22:45

Thank fuck I'm still analogue.

**Bullitt** · 11th June 2007, 22:52

Yep we have the same problem with telstra

**wilber** · 11th June 2007, 22:54

Mine hasnt done it for a while used to happen when channel surfing but not all the time either .

**magicfairy** · 12th June 2007, 06:55

That's a shocker! We were considering switching from analogue to digital but not now.
You might find commerce commission might be interested in this one, Telstra selling a product with a known fault and not telling customers. Paying for a service you are not receiving...Also Consumers Institute - if a member, might want to know. There is always the "Fair Go" threat as well. If this became public Telstra might work a bit harder to fix it.

**Fatjim** · 12th June 2007, 08:19

Ha ha ha. You should try working for them!!!!

Yes it's a known fault. The boxes where the cheapest they could buy, and don't have enough memory. The channel guide is the usual suspect. Don't expect a fix soon as it involves TelstraClear spending money to swap out the box. And don't go asking "why don't they just upgrade the memory?"

Wait for them to sell the cable network, then the new owners might put some money into it, before they start hemorrhaging and go bankrupt.

But give me cable over DSL any day.

**Paul in NZ** · 12th June 2007, 08:51

Yeah - we stuck with the old box because i sort of 'knew' there were issues.

There was a LOT of pressure to 'upgrade' because the telesales folk get a % of the sale which, considering they all know about the problems is pretty low boardering on criminal...

**riffer** · 12th June 2007, 09:02

Meh. It's just your standard cheap ethernet device.

A bit like a windows PC in that it crashes and needs to reboot.

We've got used to it. Just like we got used to the noise of the goods train going past at 5.00 every morning.

It only happens every couple of days.

I thought it was just our decoder.

And yeah Fatjim - the fast internet makes up for it.

**Hitcher** · 12th June 2007, 09:05

TV "freezing" is an irritating, but thankfully reasonably infrequent, fact of life. The programme guide absence or problems with the "i" function are the most common.

But given that both digital tv platform operators seriously fucked up their install (Sky made the worst stuff up, architecture wise. TelstraClear merely recycle the Sky platform) it will be some time before things are resolved. By "fucked up" I mean their inability to offer the functions that overseas digital platform operators can (multi-feature news and sports coverage, online polling, and other interactive features).

Anything is better than the state broadcaster's feeble attempts at programming, so the odd excursion to the power switch behind the tellie makes it worthwhile.