I have seen worst with another compagny. Cybersurf Internet Access (CIA) did something similar with me last fall. But in that case, it was not my final bill but i did receive a lettre from a collection agency. In the case of CIA, i have no doubt it is a common practice and not an one time error.

I always keep my shipment tracking details whenever i deal with SC. I would not want to have to pay for a receiver that i no longer have.

Aren't this days the bills available on-line on SC web page?
:confused:

When you sign up for the service.

Great service by SC. My LNBF failed Sunday. I need a stacked unit for a number of reasons. Called tech support on Sunday - said Thursday was first open date for service. SC service showed up yesterday and replaced it (at n/c)

Hard to beat that for service.

Well, another day of looking here for news about the long awaited features.. And nothing but the regular posts about dead 530's and audio dropouts..

I have been with Starchoice for 10 years, and I feel like I have been waiting half that long for them to catch up with the rest of the world. They seem to count on customers like us who will continue to pay their monthly fees for a service that cannot do half that of other providers.

Well, I will shut up now and sit back down and continue to check, everyday, for news about an update on a 3rd party forum because starchoice does not care enough to tell us anything themselves.

They provide TV service and customer service and they prvide both well. I'm not sure they ever promised you innovation or a fast track to new features. That's what competition is about. So if someone else has what you are looking for, why not just go there?

I've had my 530 for a few years with no major problems and the TV service streams without fail. I get what I paid for from day one. Anything else that comes along should be considered a bonus.

:rolleyes:

Yup!:rolleyes: :)

I have had hardware probs with every starchoice box I have owned. From what I have read bell is no better. Cable seems to be a roll of the dice on what quality of connection you get depending on where you are.
The time is out of sinc(programs finishing later) for recording,we often miss the ending of shows. Vcrs with vcr + overcame this prob years ago. This guide is filled with mistakes and often has no data and is still only good up to 3 days. My Ati all in wonder video card came with a guide that absolutely blew away the star choice guide.
I was lead to believe and so were a lot of other people, that high def television was 720 and up and dd5.1 Most of the hd channels do not have hd content most of the time, except for sports weekends(which I do like) and dd5.1 is even less common. If you can get the two together you're
lucky. I just counted 32 Hd channels that I get with my selection. This is a Saturday when the hd content is double what it is normally. 18 channels are hd content, mostly sports. 4 have hd and 5.1 and two of them are the same. There are 3 hd ppv channels, two are off air and the one is hd with no dd5.1
I have 10 ppv movie channels including the 3 hd and not including the pornos. 3 are currently off air and 3 more are showing old movies. Why ? I can rent BluRays for the same price to watch over and over for a couple of days with better picture and far superior sound. I can also stop and pause. The ppv is a joke.
I would leave starchoice in a second, but from what I have read there is nowhere better to go and I have spent too much money on equipment I was forced to buy. It is the lack of competition that allows this to happen. If bell was forced to allow other competitors to use their lines why can't other sat companies use the sats. Two sat providers, if direct tv were allowed to be here Bell and starchoice would be out of business even with the crtc content restrictions.

For what it's worth...we had DirecTv for four years & then switched to StarChoice....

....StarChoice is much better!

Really? I never heard that from anyone before. I have not had it for a few years now,before HD. I guess they have gone down hill. When I did have it there were actually 55 different pay per views on ,I actually counted them. I also never had any problems with the boxes. My direct tv was not legal(in Canada) so I cannot compare packages, pricing and service. I never needed any customer service because my box always worked. I have 4 dead or obsolete boxes from starchoice in the closet and one direct tv which still worked when it went into the closet. (I guess i should clean out the closet)My first $700 pvr last 6 months then I had to pay another $200 for another reconditioned one.It lasted another 6 months I am now on my third one. I do believe Star Choice is the best choice we have in Canada. When I have had to call customer support the response has always been excellent. The people I talked too did the best they could with what they had to work with. I believe they employ Canadians to do this. This is important to me

Tried to pay my bill yesterday. Website gave error message. Tried automated phone service. Message says can't process. Put through to rep. Rep claims no issues and something must be wrong with my card (nice thing to say!). Before hanging up, finds out that that rep sitting beside him had same issue with another customer. Must be a system problem although he has no info on this. Suggests trying again in an hour.

Tried later and website would not even process as only gave my current billing status and said I must be having a problem with my card. Phoned in and finally got processed. Second guy had a heavy French accent.

Looks like service is not what it used to be. Must be lots of new employees with minimal training.

Dewey, just to let you know the 530 is now covered under the warranty (it's in section 11 of ToS). And yes, SC employs Canadians - it's on Wikipedia.org, the call centres are in Montreal, Mississauga, & Calgary.

Ok, here is my story, got starchoice (505) in Jan 08, in February of this year the 505 stopped working. I received an email from shaw offering me a refurbished dvr if i went back to them. Called starchoice to see if they would match the offer, they said they could not. Called shaw and tried to take them up on their offer, they told me that starchoice customers were not part of the deal as they are the same company (makes sense). Went out and bought a new 505 and installed it. I was not very happy that no offers were being extended to me and decided to send an email to the ask jim portion of the starchoice website. They called my wife and offered a 530 refurbished for 399.00. My wife wrote the price down wrong, she wrote down 299.00. Went to pick it up at a local sat. store 2 weeks later. The owner of the shop told us the price was 399, we said that was wrong it should be 299. She called starchoice and they agreed and let us buy it for 299. Got home installed it, called in for activation waited 30 min. on hold, got halfway through activation and my cordless phone died. Called in again, waited 45min this time and got it activated. The waiting was a pain, but the service was great. I sent another email to the ask jim and told him that although the wait was brutal the service was great. A week later I had the normal problems with the unit freezing, not recognizing the hard drive and lock-ups. Four more calls and a new (refurbished) receiver is on the way to me. One interesting little note, the jim on the ask jim feature is given a budget of credits to give out monthly, and gave us a $250 credit and a $50 ppv credit. I was going to raise a stink about having to pay 13.99 in shipping a receiver back to them less than 2 weeks after buying it but it ends up that this receiver didn't cost me a dime. In essence they matched shaws free pvr offer. Deffinately a great company. I just hope my next pvr will be a keeper.

Hi There,

We've been with Starchoice for a couple of years now. We purchased an HD PVR about a year ago. In the last six months we have had issues with the hardware & signal strength, issues with the liness and issues with the dish installed on our roof. Don't get me started on the technicians.

In the beginning the customer service was outstanding and the monthly subscription fees were still quite a bit lower than the competition. Increasingly, it is taking forever on hold (or callback) to have someone return our calls. In the GTA, it is at least a one week wait to get a technician to come to the house for a service call. So, I have no TV for that time and may be required to pay for the visit.

There is a new call centre (Calgary?) that doesn't seem to be in sync with the technicians in Toronto. We had a technician show up at our house, after taking the entire day off work, of course, only to tell us that his work order did not match the work we hoped to get done - he left, due to insufficient time, and suggested we rebook. Another seven days...

Has anyone else noticed this stuff? We are considering a switch to Rogers to avoid the weather, hardware and service problems at this point...

We may just sell the PVR and move on.

Thanks for reading my rant...

K

The whole thing seems like a mess

Not sure what your issues are other than generalized stuff you mention. I have had SC over 10 years and have never been "without TV". I have the PVR as well and while there have been a few issues, I've never had a problem that wasn't cured by a reboot.

Since you say that yo've been with SC a couple of years, why would you have continuing problems. Any signal issue should be cleared up in one visit (check before the technician leaves).

when we show up to do the work order or service call there is often something on the work order that differs from what the customer actually expected to be done. if it's only the wording that needs to be clarified we can just call in and verify that we are supposed to install another cable when the work order called for just a dish upgrade. sometimes though we get a service call dispatched and discover that the reason the customer called in with "no signal" was because he had just moved in to a new house that supposedly had starchoice service before. we discover the previous tenants had removed dish and cabling when they moved out so we have to get the service call changed to a work order and redispatched so that we can be sure we get paid correctly. what we installers would like to see is customers fully explain how many receivers need to be installed ( especially in the case of home away from home, work orders often list many receivers that starchoice thinks you still own ) and communicate to the spouse exactly what work starchoice was paying for ( or putting on your bill ) and what you were paying the installer directly for, so that there are no suprises and the installer doesn't have to play a game of 20 questions when we call. and most important, make sure you give them a phone number that works. many work orders have gone past their expiry date simply because the number on the work order was out of service or the voicemail box was full.

I recently had an issue where I was losing signal in high winds.
After checking I found the mount for the dish was coming off because one of the bolts had stripped the wood.
The technician called the night before, verified why he needed to come out and gave me a time. He arrived on time and determined what needed to be done to fix the mount. It did cost me some money but the service was excellent, and the technician was professional.

This was the only time a technician has had to come out in over 3 years.

IIt did cost me some money but the service was excellent, and the technician was professional.


Why did it cost you money, I thought *C service calls were free of charge? At least that is what I was told by the service tech that came to my house.

if the service call involves more than basic repairs, we would have to charge the customer at our hourly rate. for example if the reason the receiver doesn't work is bad rg59 cable in the walls, starchoice might pay for running a new rg6 cable around the outside of the house and a single hole through the wall to the receiver. starchoice wouldn't pay us to fish cable inside walls and attics. if the customer is outside the 50km travel radius, he would probably have to pay mileage. ( you may not know that there was a closer installer though because work gets evenly divided up between installers who say that they will cover that area. ) if you don't want to pay mileage, check to see if there's a local installer, the dealers usually know who is nearby if, as sometimes happens, the csr tells you that you are in a self install area. some installers though only do the new installs for the dealer and are not listed with starchoice as a designate installer.
a service call is basically a 1 hour job and if it's going to take any longer than that, it would have to be approved or the customer pays for the extra work directly to the installer, it usually won't be added to your bill unless you had set that up before the installer received the work order.