[Resolved]  Tata Sky — Tata Sky - The Great Indian DTH Scandal

Classic case study on "Corporate Greed" for MBA students! Driven by the backing of the brand "Tata" in India, this is the second attempt of Tata group to loot people and provide them lousy services - The first one was the Tata Indicom blunder of course. Read the following case staudy:
1. "Tata Sky ab 1499 Rs. mein – Geeta bhabhi ki kasam!" Actual price? It's 2499 Rs. You know how? It's 1000 Rs. for installation! So the installation price is almost equal to that of the product itself! You will not even know about it until someone comes to install it at your house and then asks for extra Rs. 1000 cash:)!
2. Once you have installed it, you'll be duped by the no. of channels available as per your base package of R. 260 per month. Some channels will suddenly be blocked and you'll be asked to subscribe to some packages - Silver, Gold, Platinum and so on! These surprises are given to you after you have made the purchase decision of course! Sports channels are divided into 3 different packages. To view all, you'll have to subscribe to 3 additional packages amounting to additional Rs. 85! DishTV subscriber base is 2.1 million as compared to Tata Sky subscriber base of 0.7 million. DishTV offers 170 channels (and increasing) versus Tata Sky 100 channels (and decreasing). And after that, the total cost of ownership for Tata Sky is almost double that of DishTV!
3. Then there’s this fraud of “Referral” – Use this if you want to spoil your relationships with your friends and family! Campaign says you’ll get 6 months of free TV viewing if you refer a friend. You believed it? Later you’ll come to know it’s for select cities only. That too 1 month! After your friend purchases it using a credit card(That’s essential for this), it takes upto 15 days for delivery! Guess why it takes so long. Actually it has to be shipped from a central warehouse. It doesn’t follow the normal distribution channel. Why? Tata Sky wants to save money on commission to be paid to its partners that they had to pay if you had bought it from shops, dealers etc.
4. It’s not over yet. You have to subscribe for Rs. 500/Year of warranty on set top box! It’s like BSNL charging you for maintaining their instrument. Or for that matter a broadband firm charging you for Router repair ! Ever heard of it?
5. Wait. Your life’s “Jingalala” is not over yet. Try calling their customer care. Firstly, the “Toll Free” number is not really Toll-free. You’ll wait for 10 minutes hearing the ads – it’s called “Advertising at Customer’s Cost”! A brand new sales mantra right out of Tata Management Development Center! I leave this part for you to test for yourself. I called up once to ask why it takes so much time for it to start? Spot on I got the reply – “How much time does your Laptop take to boot?:)” Life is Jingalala…literally:)!