LONDON: The pay-TV Foxtel giant insists it has now tightened up its software and training process and is offering to send out installers for free to customers experiencing ongoing problems.
Foxtel’s Facebook page lit up with angry complaints from customers after it launched the box on March 24, a day before the local launch of US subscription video-on-demand service Netflix, which is seen as a potential threat to Foxtel’s 2.6 million customer base.
Foxtel customers pay $125 for the box plus $25 for postage and handling or $75 for delivery and installation. The box is manufactured by UK-listed Company Pace.
Foxtel’s errors have led to complaints about issues including: recordings of shows disappearing, the box resetting itself at random times and the remote control only working intermittently.
Foxtel says some 30 per cent of boxes installed in the first two days were affected. Tens of thousands of the boxes have been installed in subscribers’ homes in the past two weeks.
Mike Ivanchenko, Foxtel’s director of product, told Fairfax Media it was “ludicrous” to suggest the company had hurried the launch in order to beat Netflix to market, explaining it had tested the box in 2000 homes for the past six months.
“We have been planning and working on the iQ3 for a very long time it’s five years since its inception so the idea that you then rush it at the end of that is ludicrous,” he said.
After an initial peak in complaints in the first few days, calls had “reduced dramatically”, he said.
“With the complexity of a platform of this type you are going to get initial teething problems,” he said. “The key is how quickly we sort them out and deal with them, and we are, and if people are still having issues we will come and fix them.”
The company has about 2000 installers, employed by contracting companies BSA and Downer EDI.
Foxtel, which is owned by News Corp and Telstra, faces a particular challenge in cleaning up badly activated boxes. While it can send software updates to iQ3 over the air, if a box has been activated incorrectly in the Foxtel system in the first place, it needs to take extra technical steps to resolve the problem.
The iQ3 box has many new functions, such as the ability to view multiple episodes in a sitting and rewind any show to the beginning with a single button press. It also carries 7000 to 8000 hours of video content on demand, which Foxtel touts as a superior offer to Netflix, which is charging $8.99 with the first month free.
Unlike Netflix, Foxtel, which has the highest average revenues per user of any cable company in the world, also carries multiple linear content including news, sport and reality TV on hundreds of channels.
Foxtel has teamed up with Seven West Media to offer its own subscription video on demand service, Presto, although it has thus far failed to make the same impact on consumers as Netflix.
Presto also faces competition from Stan, a joint venture between Nine Entertainment Co and Fairfax Media, the owner of The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and Business Day.
