Have To Finally Admit ! Ubc /true Are Poor

[nonthaburial]

Having been a UBC user for nearly 8 years, I have sort have come to accept their many weak points, the worst propbably being their total lack of customer service.

As I am relocating to China on the 1st April, I spent the whole of last week in Kunming, my future home city. This period was spent house hunting and the usual Newbie things. After finding a suitable apartment, I surfed the web looking for satellite TV providers in China (yes it is legal if you are a non Chinese) I found a company based in Beijing, the opposite side of the country to Kunming, who said they were able to install dishes anywhere in China, OK great.

Last Friday afternoon at around 5pm I gave them a call in Beijing, gave them my address (it was strange not mentioning the words Mooban and Soi). They only asked three questions (1) did my apartment have the line of sight to the South East (yes) (2) was the number I was calling from available diuring the day (yes) and (3) which package did I want to subscribe to ? (Dream). After answering the questions I was told OK thanks we will be in touch !!!!! Oh yea I thought.

An hour later they called me back telling me the installation engineer would be at my apartment at noon the next day (Saturday)

Smack on the stroke of mid day there was a knock on my door and there was a guy with a satellite dish and the works. Twenty minutes later all was installed and working well. BUT there was a problem and that was he did not have any Sim cards for my decoder as business was rather brisk and he had run out of stock, but not to worry he would lend me his set up sim card until he could produce an original for me.

So Saturday night there I was, with a tin or six of the very nice Harbin Beer watching Liverpool destroy Manure with original UK sound track.

Sunday morning at 9am there was another knock on the door and a guy from a courier company handed me an envelope which was sent from Beijing overnight containing my original sim card.

Brilliant, absolutely brilliant eat your heart out UBC

And the price ? well it worked out at about 11,000 Baht which included installation and a years fee. The second year would work out at about 6,000 Baht

[GungaDin]

Good post.

5 years ago UBC was OK.

Reading your post and others of the same ilk, I don't think I'll sign up to UBC again.

I haven't seen a tv program since Nov & I haven't missed it one bit.

Good luck in China, it sounds like you're off to a good start.

gd

[indothai]

It's great that you are getting an awesome deal.

True Gold package will run at least (minimum) 16,955.64 baht a year.

Help me work out the economics, are the equipment you getting Chinese made or imports? I'm guessing, it's Chinese made = cheaper price... both at the customer end and corporate end.

I freakin' envy you, right now I'm wishing my equipments are Thai made.

Then again, the average income (salary) there is probably cheaper than Thailand.. so it would only make sense to make their services/products cheaper.

I'm stuck with UBC(truevisions).

[Digitalbanana]

Watching Manure getting thrashed in one game doesn't really sell a whole new TV package for me - though comes close? I could see that on True anyway. What else is there, otherwise my True UBC stays put?

[BigSnake]

Join the Club, I found this to be the case after a year with UBC what a joke for service for the price they want to charge.

[Cromarty]

Watching Manure getting thrashed in one game doesn't really sell a whole new TV package for me - though comes close? I could see that on True anyway. What else is there, otherwise my True UBC stays put?

I think you have completely missed the point Digitalbanana. OP is now in China, comparing the dream package to his old crappy truevisions.

[Digitalbanana]

Watching Manure getting thrashed in one game doesn't really sell a whole new TV package for me - though comes close? I could see that on True anyway. What else is there, otherwise my True UBC stays put?

I think you have completely missed the point Digitalbanana. OP is now in China, comparing the dream package to his old crappy truevisions.

Apologies, I since did my own research as o/p doesn't explain what Dreams offers, except a football game. So I see from dreamsatellite.com the product is similar to True, just cheaper and better service according to o/p outside Thailand? A pity we cannot have a choice of vendors in Thailand?

[Plus]

Don't forget that in Thailand UBC splits the cost of their broadcasting licenses for each channel between five hundred thousand cusomers while in China it's between tens of millions. Guess who will pay more?

Very few people want to watch those programs in Thailand for free, let alone pay for it.

When there WAS a choice in Thailand, both companies were losing money big time because the market is too small to support competition for heavyweight stuff like HBO and ESPN.

[nonthaburial]

As far as I am aware, Dream is available in Thailand. you are correct the channels are similar apart from a few bible bashing channels and Phils MTV, but as the package originates in the Phils cannot complain.