Active since Sep 2016
Message my wife sent to Showmax in November 2022:- My husband and I are struggling to handle quite a few things on Showmax, so much so, that although you have many good series, the problems which seem to come up are very frustrating and we don’t think we will carry on for too long with Showmax unless you can sort them out to our satisfaction. We watch on our TV by casting on to the TV using Google Chromecast from our iPad and have been doing this for many years now without any trouble at all from you or Netflix. I mention Netflix because we have never had the problems from them as we now have with you. 1. About 2 weeks ago, we started to watch “New Amsterdam” Season 3. We watched Episode 1 one evening and then the next evening, wanting to go to Episode 2, we naturally looked for our “Continue Watching“ where it would normally appear ready for Episode 2 but it did not appear under out “Continue watching” at all, so we had to search again and find Episode 2 as there was no sign of showing us that we were up to Episode 2. And so it went every evening and we had to search every time and keep a note of what Episode we wanted as Showmax seem to have taken this facility away and made it very frustrating. And it went on throughout the whole Season!!! Now we have started watching “This is going to hurt” and exactly the same thing is happening. 2. Being somewhat hard of hearing, we need English subtitles for all programmes. On Netflix, we set this up as the default and we get it on everything we watch automatically. We can even choose the colour and the size of the subtitles and we only have to do it once and it comes up for all programmes. With Showmax, we have to ask for subtitles for each episode and don’t seem to be able to choose sizes or colour etc. Surely you can do better with this. Don’t seem to be able to find anything on your website that would help us with these irritations. Hope you can sort it all out soon. Your very frustrated customer, Joy Blumsohn 65867833:986130 Response from Showmax:- Hi Joy, Thank you for contacting us, Please provide us with the below details: Describe the nature of the problem in detail: Troubleshooting steps taken UserID/Showmax e-mail: When did the issue happen (date & time)?: Has the issue happened before?: Are you using any VPN or Proxy service?: Speed test results: ISP IP address Are you experiencing the same issue on other devices?: Are you experiencing the same issue on a different connection?: What is the device’s Model number?: What is the devices Firmware version?: What is the App version installed?: Screenshot of the error message if available: Kind regards, Showmax support Response from my wife:- Good day, With respect, I think that most of the questions you have here are totally irrelevant to my complaint. The issues that we have were all totally explained and they happen every time we go on to Showmax BUT NEVER EVER HAPPEN WITH NETFLIX! Surely I don’t need to tell you exactly at what time they happen. I will just tell you that we cast from an iPad onto our TV and we are using the same equipment that we have been using for years. Most of the problems started about a month ago or maybe a little more and have been explained fully enough in my previous message. Enough said! Joy Blumsohn ABSOLUTELY PATHETIC SERVICE!
My wife and I are somewhat heard of hearing and although we manage with some shows on the TV, we have lots of difficulty when it comes to English spoken in American and British accents. So, subtitles are important to us. Showmax seem to provide subtitles on all their shows BUT these are quite small and seem always to be white which is often hard to see on a light background. By contrast, Netflix give choices in their subtitles such as different colours and sizes as well as a choice to have the subtitles on a dark background. This suits us very well and we have no trouble at all in setting different colours and sizes and backgrounds and also in reading the subtitles while watching. We contacted Showmax about this and asked if they could help by offering what Netflix do. The consultant to whom we chatted on the chat line said he would pass the suggestion on. (Another relatively small complaint, is that when I asked the consultant how I could get a transcript of my chat with him, the answer was that if I had put my e-mail address where asked (which I had done), that I would get this by e-mail. Well that didn’t happen!) When nothing further happened we sent them an e-mail which elicited an automatic response that they were mobilising people to handle the suggestion. After more than a week -------nothing! Another message from us elicited a response to the effect that they have “escalated” the complaint. Then things go worse. The subtitles got moved to the top of the screen in such a way that the top half of the letters cannot be seen which makes things even worse than they were before. When we pointed this out, their response was “your suggestions have already been forwarded on to the Content team”. That was two weeks ago and since then nothing. We give Showmax a nil out of 5 rating for customer care. They don’t have a clue! Shame on them!
Incredibly bad service from TIME Magazine:- I am taking the time to record these events and put them on HelloPeter in order to inform other subscribers and prospective subscribers of the incredibly bad service that I have received from TIME Magazine. Quite frankly, I have never ever been treated so badly by any service provider in the past. So here goes:- I have been a subscriber to TIME Magazine for about 60 years. The service I have had from them throughout that time has been pretty good up until recently. For example, whenever I missed a copy for whatever reason, they always obliged by sending another copy very quickly. When the South African Post Office deliveries deteriorated, TIME agreed without any fuss to extend my subscription for several weeks. Then, about 6 months or so ago, the Post Office workers in South Africa went on strike and we were receiving no post at all. I then asked TIME if they could, in addition to the print copy, give me digital copies on my iPad. This was no problem for them and ever since then until about 3 months ago, I have been getting these copies without any problems. Then, suddenly an issue of around the middle of March came on to the iPad but it had a lock next to it and when I tried to download it, I was told that I must subscribe or that I could purchase that issue for R59.95. I waited until the next copy was due to see what would happen, and the same thing happened. At the same time, although the Post Office strike was long over and issues were being delivered by them, my printed copies stopped coming! On the 26th March I sent an e-mail to TIME (the address that we have here for our subscriptions used to be in Holland but is now in the UK). I told them what was happening and asked what was going on. Almost immediately I received and automated response telling me that my “query is very important to us and will be dealt with as quickly as possible. You will receive a response within 5 working days”. Having had no reply by the 9th April (very annoying!) I sent another e-mail. Once again the same automated reply came to me. This time a response came the next day from Kristy H who told me that “a print issue was returned by the local postal services as undeliverable. Consequently your subscription has been suspended and no further issues have been despatched during this timeframe to avoid any further issues going to an incorrect address. This also suspends your digital account.” Can you believe this? They didn’t even bother to contact me and ask me if I had moved, or anything at all. Just cut me off, (including the digital edition which has nothing to do with my postal address) without any further ado!! And my subscription only expires in September of 2019. The message then went on to say “Could you therefore please confirm the full delivery address details and I will arrange for the account to be updated. In the meantime I have reset the account to ensure that you will be able to access the digital editions. Please allow 24 hours for this to work.” OK, although not good, the future now at least looked somewhat positive. But worse was yet to come. I, of course, sent them my delivery address details as requested and then tried to access the locked issues after 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours all unsuccessfully. On the 15th April I sent another message which complained bitterly about this, as well as the fact that they had not bothered to contact me when one copy had been returned as “undeliverable”. In spite of repeated messages since then, (all of which produced the automatic response telling me that I would receive a reply in 5 days) no response came until the 3rd of May from Vikki C who said “I am extremely sorry, I am still investigating this as a priority however I will ensure you are provided with an update within the next 2 working days”. Today is the 13th May – no feedback, no unlocking of the digital copies, (the last 8 issues on my iPad are all locked) and am also missing most of the printed copies as well. I have also tried their website, wanting to try and logon and see whether anything of interest can be found about my subscription. What do you think I found? For the past 4 weeks or so their website has been unavailable due to “maintenance”. It remains only for me to give them as much bad publicity as possible and to cancel my subscription. Will they give me a refund? Watch this space and I’ll let you know what happens. I am extremely angry! Shame on TIME Magazine!
I give FNB a rating of “terrible” because of their recent absolutely hopeless service. The story is a follows:- On the 7th February I received an e-mail message from an address ********** which had an attachment of a form for me to complete and return to that address. The form asked for information about tax matters, in particular about whether or not I am registered a taxpayer in South Africa and more especially if I was registered a tax payer in any foreign countries. If so, I was to complete all the details and return the completed form to them. With all the fraud that is prevalent here, I needed to be assured by FNB that this message did come from FNB and not from some other source, who may be trying to obtain information from me illegally. I thus sent a message on the 8th February to their Call Centre e-mail address asking if this was a genuine message emanating from FNB and not from some other unauthorised source. I received a response the next day saying that my e-mail had been forwarded to their FNB Consumer Foreign Tax Department for attention. And then - totally no further response in spite of a further message which I sent on the 14th February to several addresses, including their “Call Centre”, their “Premier Suite” and their “Consumer Foreign Tax (from some of which I received “read receipts”). FNB are totally incapable of answering a simple question which basically needs a “yes” or “no” answer. Absolutely appalling service!! I can hardly believe that they can be so bad. Their slogan, or whatever it is, says “HOW CAN WE HELP YOU?” Really!! SHAME ON FNB! Maurice Blumsohn
I assist my brother with his Financial affairs. He has some Fixed Deposits with ABSA. They have not sent him a Tax Certificate for the Tax Year ending 28 Feb 2018. I have been trying to get this from them for almost a month now with no success. It is quite amazing that ABSA cannot comply with this simple request. I am flabbergasted! At first every e-mail we sent got an automatic response telling us that they aim to give excellent service. Now these automatic responses have not been coming so I suspect that they have blocked messages from this e-email address, so that they can pretend they don’t exist? All we can get from them are requests for my brother’s ID Number which we have sent twice and then absolutely nothing. We have tried every e-mail address we can find for ABSA including the one they give for lodging complaints, to no avail. I am now posting this review so that as many people as possible can see how bad the service is from ABSA. In fact, service is just non-existent. Prospective customers should beware of dealing with this Bank, in my opinion. Just before submitting this review, I just checked my e-mails and found one from ABSA, saying that my complain is receiving their urgent attention!!! Their reference ********** . Maybe this is a joke and will also lead nowhere as all their other messages have done. FOR GOODNESS SAKE, all we want is a Tax Certificate!! WHAT ON EARTH IS SO DIFFICULT ABOUT THAT??? THE FIRST REQUEST WAS SENT ON THE 6TH SEPTEMBER, ALMOST A MONTH AGO. WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH ABSA???
<p>I subscribed to the Sunday Independent in April 2016 for 1 year. All went well until January 2017 when suddenly my newspaper was not delivered one week. I complained and then it happened again two weeks later. I have no patience with such bad service so I emailed them to stop my deliveries and to cancel my subscription. I asked for a refund of the balance of the approximately 3 months still due and paid in advance. They promised to make this refund and I gave them by Bank Account details in which to deposit the funds which would amount to approximately R140. Although they acknowledged receipt of my message they have not deposited this refund despite my repeated emails to them in this regard. I asked why I was being ignored and they sent me a response saying "No one is ignoring you" and after that .... nothing. </p> <p> </p> <p>Either couldn’t care less, totally incompetent or.... Draw our own conclusions!</p> <p>Maurice Blumsohn</p> <p> </p>
<p>We have been greatly dissatisfied with the service from Multichoice (DStv) and in particular with their Explora more recently and we are interested in finding out about other people’s experiences with this company and again in particular with the Explora.</p> <p> </p> <p><br />From our experience we find the Explora to be the most unreliable and unstable recording device that we have ever used. Before the days of DStv, we had a Sony Betamax Recording machine. This was followed by a VHS machine. In both these cases, the reels on which the programmes were recorded were separate from the machine itself. Thus if the machine broke down one did not lose all the recordings. One bought a new machine and continued. Then we graduated to DVR which we had for some 5 or more years with never any trouble. This had a Hard Drive on which recording were made and it also had a DVD section and we could record on these as an alternative. We never, in all the 5 years had any trouble with this machine.</p> <p> </p> <p><br />However, when we decided to sign up for DStv with Multichoice, we found that in order to watch what we wanted at a time of our convenience, we should invest in the Explora.</p> <p> </p> <p><br />For about 2 years all went reasonably well with the machine itself, although we were never really happy that the DStv “team” were very helpful with aspects of service. Then the Explora crashed one day and we had a message saying that the Hard Drive was corrupted and that, in order to use it again, we had to format it and we would lose all the recording that were there. We had gone to a lot of trouble to record lots of good programmes, series, movies, etc. And to lose them all when we were part way through some series which have long stories etc. was just so so annoying!! We were paying loads of hard earned cash for the privilege of being able to watch and to record and watch at our leisure and suddenly, what we had paid for was just going to disappear in a flash! It felt as though we were victims of a robbery which in fact was the case.</p> <p> </p> <p><br />Before formatting the disk, I telephoned the Multichoice call centre and I was told that if I brought the machine to them they would be able to save my recordings. I heaved a sigh of relief, unplugged the Explora (took me as an untrained person about 20 minutes) loaded it into my car and went off to Multichoice (about a 20 minute drive), sat in the queue there for about 20 minutes and then saw a “consultant” who on hearing the details of the problem, proceeded immediately to tell me that there was nothing she could do to save the rerecorded programmes and that the only thing she could do was to format the Disc, I would lose all the recording and then I would be able to use the machine again.</p> <p>Now, why on earth would the person I spoke to on the phone tell me that they would be able to save the recordings when that was obviously nonsense? I had wasted an hour and a half of my time, as well as petrol to get there and back, when if I had been told the truth, I should have been able to format the disc myself and saved the trip and time.</p> <p> </p> <p><br />Approximately 4 months later it crashed again!! Once again, we had been robbed! This time I did not phone, but when I tried to format the disc, (a message appeared as it had done the first time, giving me ac choice to format or not to format). I chose to format and it said words to the effect that I should wait while the formatting took place – but it never did and the same message came up and did this over and over again. Surely, if it gives me a choice to format one would think the job would be done! So once again, off I went to Multichoice and they formatted it for me. However, this time, I reckoned that this was quite likely to happen again and I started to investigate Netflix. Needless to say, the Explora crashed again 3 weeks after it had been formatted and we have signed up for the Netflix trial which is going pretty well so far. We don’t have a “smart” TV and are currently watching on our computer monitor until we decide finally on our future path.</p> <p> </p> <p><br />At no stage did ant of the consultants suggest that I buy a new machine. But I will always have the fear that it will crash at some point as well.</p> <p> </p> <p><br />In conclusion:-</p> <p>I am very interested to know if other people have had the same or similar experiences with the Explora and with DStv’s uncaring service.</p> <p>I am also interested to have any advice as to what, if anything, one can do to get some live sport – particularly tennis (Grand Slams and other major tournaments) from some other source than DStv.</p> <p>I don’t have a smart TV and I have been told of several ways of connecting our non-smart TV to the Internet, such as the Roku stick. If there is anyone out there reading this who has had some experience in this regard, I would appreciate some feedback.</p> <p>And I am also interested to have any advice as to experiences of people with Netflix and / or Showmax as far as their service and content are concerned.</p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p>
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