Things to do

Things to do this morning? Pretty simple. First, stay with Idlan who had been running temperature overnight but was in great spirit this morning. And second, where is Astro? I had to call them again yesterday - call number 5 - as apparently my case had been closed.

So, they promised me that there will be a new a technician with a new Astro Decoder unit at my house by 10 am this morning. Well, it was past that now ..... I'll give I until noon before I call them again I think.

Giving it the boot?!

Well, the good news of the technician coming over was tempered by the fact that apparently there was nothing that he could do, and I, yes, the customer not him, had to call Astro again to tell them that the box was faulty and need replacing.

When I called - I mean pressed the combination of 2,4 and 3 after calling the number to answer the pre-recorded question - the lady on customer support asked me exactly what my wife was told, and after a few minutes explaining, I suggested that she should just contact the technician directly as I have his mobile number with me. On second thought, maybe not. They might just mess things up further.

So, another promise of "everything would be sorted out within 48 hours", until I reminded her that the first call came through last week. According to her, there was no record that I called them yesterday! Sigh! Now they had a bad database system to add to their list of inadequacies.

At least it was Wednesday today. At least they had a couple of days to sort the mess out before the weekend. What I could not understand was, it should have been the technician contacting Astro directly about the replacement. There would be no need for us to be the messenger to explain what had transpired. Why should I waste my time making the phone call. I did not mind making it, but it just reflected how much they value their customers. "Don't bother sorting their problem, they would just call back if they need anything!"

B'yond needs fixing

Last Wednesday, I was surprised to see that my Astro Byond box just suddenly went dead. It had been having problem since we got it installed in April. Every so often, it just frozen, with a loud whirring fan-like sound emanating from the back. A quick search on the web forum confirmed that it was a common problem, as part of the lack of quality control in Astro in general.

But we coped with it, as occasionally it only hanged once in an hour. The week before it went dead, it was freezing a lot more often.

I got on the case straight away when it went dead. And as soon, I realised the reason behind why I did not call them any sooner.

"Welcome to ASTRO. Press 1 for English, press 2 for Malay, press 3 for Iban etc ….". It was really annoying. And that was not the first menu. It went on and on until you were finally connected to a customer service personnel, who then asked you again why you called them in the first place. Did they not get the summary of what keys I had pressed earlier?

And the problem did not end there. I was promised a technician would attend to the problem at home within 48 hours. It was Tuesday today. To be fair, I was contacted by a technician asking for the directions to get to my house. That was last Tuesday morning, while I was at Gleneagles with Dad.

So, not only that they provided substandard hardware, the had a botched customer service personnel protocol and they even messed up on the technician front as well. So, I had to call them again. Went through the mundane menu before getting a live person on the other end. I was again promised service within the next 24 hours ....

I was just trying to figure out what would be the next mess they would create? No replacement parts maybe, while at the same time refusing to provide a new set top unit? I could sense that one coming …..

HD it was

We just got the Astro Byond set box installed yesterday morning. As I was on call yesterday, I did not really have the chance to play around with it until earlier today. I tried the recording system, rather fiddly at the beginning but soon after got used to it. And the quality of the HD pictures through my LCD TV was really impressive. The movies looked great and the Discovery Channel documentaries looked amazing.

And then came the real test. Watching the football matches on HD. Did it live up to what Fernando Torres been trying to tell us? Well, it sure did. You can reality see the drip of sweat on the players faces on close-ups. Much betters than I was expecting.

As with a typical ManYoo games, I went through my rituals. Picked up an order of Tandoori from NZ, got into my Veron shirt and sat in front of the TV. Within the first 20 minutes, United were down by a couple of West Ham's penalties. What have I done wrong? A mini disaster! Was it the TV? What it because I was watching on HD?

I persevered. Rooney came to the rescue by bagging a hattrick, saving our season quite literally. After watching a match with such clarity of HD, it would be difficult to turn back.