Bloated bills after new TRAI guidelines sees an entire housing society in Andheri migrate from cable to direct to home service
Jitendra Jain (right), secretary of Railway Men's Apna Ghar housing society, with residents, points to the newly-installed DTH dishes.
Fed up of being treated as idiot boxes by their cable operator, who cut off channels and allegedly sent them inflated bills without any prior notice after the recent tariff change, residents of a housing society in Andheri East have ditched him for a direct-to-home (DTH) operator. The residents of Railway Men's Apna Ghar society's D Group cut off the 20-year association also because the operator, Arjun Jamkhindikar, was neglecting their needs.
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The housing society, which has 196 members, will terminate their business with Jamkhindikar starting from April. Several channels going off the service after the recent change in tariff proved to be the tipping point. Once that happened, residents calculated the rates they should have been charged, but those were going way beyond what was affordable for them.
Rising cable rates and cable operator's negligence led to residents snapping off ties. Pics/Pradeep Dhivar
Also Read: TRAI protest: Operators, viewers come together to battle cable mess
Further, instead of explaining the issue, Jamkhindikar allegedly decided to ignore them completely. And thus, for the past week, the society has started installing DTH dishes to provide the service to the households that have signed up. The process is nearing completion. One of the factors that attracted them to the DTH service was the option to recharge it when they were out of town for long durations.
Jitendra Jain, the secretary of the society said, "When the change was being done, the operator did not come to our society to explain anything to the members and instead asked us to come over to his house, which was absolutely not acceptable. Plus, when we asked him to give us some concession on the rates, he paid no heed to our requests."
Sushila Shetty, resident
The residents also pointed out that according to the new rule, GST is supposed to be levied on the bill. However, the bills they were being sent made no mention of Jamkhandekar's GST number. He was also arbitrarily cutting off free-to-air channels.
The DTH operator has offered the first month for free, after which the residents will be charged according to the package they pick. To avoid any shutting down of services during the monsoon or in windy weather, the provider has suggested getting a dish antenna cover.
Operator says
Arjun Jamkhindikar said, "The secretary has taken out his personal grudge against me because I asked him to pay the bills on time. When I asked about the payment again, he said he didn't need us anymore. I did not argue at all as it is every individual's choice to pick whichever service providers they want. The residents who spoke against me were forced to say those things and switch to DTH providers. Even the chairman of the society has similar issues with the secretary."
'No response from him'
Waman Gawade,
resident since 25 years
'We expected the operator to come and help us with the transition but there was absolutely no response from his end. When the society members offered us a better deal,
we took it'
Sushila Shetty,
resident since 20 years
'We suffered due to this change for a month. The frustrating part was the lack of cooperation from the operator's end, and the increased prices that were unaffordable. Now, with DTH, we'll get almost the same number of channels we used to watch regularly'
Arvind Khot,
resident since 26 years
'It was almost impossible for us to take the same channels at the earlier rates of Rs 350 and thus, we needed a DTH provider. Khandikar was also charging those staying on rent extra for his services'
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