Poll: Give us back our old forum !

[Optimist]

That should be enough info and insight now, let's look at everything learnt so far logically;

Her statement reads as being too official in its nature, IMO clearly straight from the bosses which means it's either a misunderstanding (or worse) by new less knowledgeable staff here or a change in direction - but it can't be the latter as we continue to get help... case closed as far as I can see ;-)

[Beetle]

With us having had such a good relationship with MoM in the past I can only think that she was sold down the river by MC and that what she advised us was what she thought this new Community Forum would be like. I find it hard to believe that she'd have lied to us. But whether she did or didn't what is written in her letter isn't what we are experiencing with this Forum.

[GeoffD]

Just as a reminder to ALL, members of the old forum and MC members of the new forum, this is what MC Marietjie posted about the introduction of the new forum.  It is a word for word quote out of the old forum. Emphasis added by myself.

2018-03-02, 12:58
The future of the DStv Forum 

As a business, we value having an online space where we can interact
with our customers, and our customers can help each other to solve
problems they're experiencing with our service.

We want to and will continue to support such a space. However, we'll
change the platform this space runs on, and also how the interaction
happens. 

In the middle of April of this year, we'll switch over to Lithium
communities which will then replace this Forum. Essentially you as our
customers will still be able to interact with each other and
representatives of the company to get your queries answered and issues
resolved. It will just be called DStv Communities and not the DStv Forum,
and will be hosted on a different platform.

Moving across to this new platform helps us as a business to integrate
all our customer interaction in one place. This means the team who
currently look after our social media platforms, will also be
responsible for engaging with you on DStv communities. The good news is
that you will then get resolution and engagement during extended hours
very similar to the contact centre (7 days a week, 7am to 11pm weekdays
and Saturdays, 7am to 2pm Sundays). The team will still call on senior
subject matter experts as and when needed.

The new platform also gives us the ability to link your interaction on
this Forum to your DStv account, which means we can resolve your issues
quicker and also capture our learning about you eg what shows you like,
what platform you prefer, etc.

For now, I just wanted to make you aware of the upcoming change.
We'll talk to you more about moving to DStv Communities as the switch
over gets nearer. 

Until then, we're also capturing the important information from this
Forum to build it into the communities platform. If there is any specific
thread/sticky that you would like us to move across, please let me know
in this thread. The team on our side will still have access to this and
the archived forum to retrieve information after switch over, but it won't
be publicly available after 13 April 2018.

I hope we can count on your support of this change.

[Optimist]

The old forum is where the problems started Luke. Not going to go into details in public, but note that the "old" forum management won't be totally uninvolved in these related incidents and I bet are behind some of the politics going on here as well...

I certainly agree that there are possibly lies involved here. Not the first time we've caught MC doing that, although sometime it is just confusion... doesn't look like it in this case though.

I think, as I mentioned in my first post on this page, that we can discard the statement that this isn't / never was a customer service touchpoint. As mentioned there, there's certain such official help going on here daily... so I suggest we ignore that clearly false and I think just manipulative "concept" unless it rears its ugly head again.

Now I really must pull out, or I'll be made the scapegoat again <roll eyes>

[GeoffD]

---

@Luke7777 wrote:

This is not about the old forum, it's about this forum and MC doing an about-turn on promises made (and accepted by all us us) by a highly respected MC member about what this forum will be. To now state that this was never the intention of this forum, is a slap in the face of that member .. actually saying it was a lie. 

Feel welcome to keep or delete this post..

---

Fully agree Luke, MC at some level, or another, is not only affecting us but affecting the reputation of a highly respected MC member of the old forum.

I also cannot understand how anyone can possibly believe that a Community set up by a company, that is on the Internet can believe it is not a "viable customer care platform."  No customer or potential customer will see it that way, and, neither I believe will a Court of Law if it ever came to that.

Especially if this forum has been setup and is operated by the same division of Multichoice that controls/runs the other customer care platforms.

[Luke7777]

This is not about the old forum, it's about this forum and MC doing an about-turn on promises made (and accepted by all us us) by a highly respected MC member about what this forum will be. To now state that this was never the intention of this forum, is a slap in the face of that member .. actually saying it was a lie. 

Feel welcome to keep or delete this post..

[Optimist]

Ryan, you gave me much food for thought there.

Clearly MC are in an uncertain circumstance - they want this to work or they would never have started it, but some bosses have always found the "openness" of a forum daunting so that will have applied the brakes somewhat.

Perhaps a major component of recent negative reaction is the fact that in recent months us Forumites had much more "critical suggestion" to offer.

It's a difficult economy and like everyone MC & co. are tightening their belt, but much of it, especially from M-Net & co., appears rushed and less than practical.

I and some others later reached a point where it seemed mostly enough, but MC do need to realise that there will ALWAYS be people unhappy about those changes and they won't ever stop knocking at the door.

This experimental forum needs more time. Our shock at this thread's development wasn't all that happened this week, we were also given many of the changes asked for, and thanked sincerely for suggesting them.

But don't drag your feet MC...

With that in mind, may I suggest we finish up our comments on this thread shortly. MC - as the OP of the (original) thread I ask that you then close it. We can always start another one if it's later needed again.

[RyanDavid]

It's a bit baffling, if I just wanted to discuss MC with other customers, with no MC input, I could do it on social media, or one of the other forums I'm on, or set up a new forum for the purpose (I've set up a few in my time) - all of which would give us more freedom to discuss what we want without having threads deleted or having to ask for new "discussion topics".

Anyway, I'll leave it there.

[Optimist]

Perhaps Ron is just out of touch, like most forum leaders we've had he's hardly been here - MC have been treating this as a customer touchpoint and hopefully that won't actually have changed...

(Alternatively this is perhaps their last chance to back down and move on...  :-p  )

Either way, truly tired of this :-|

Later...

[Jan-Horn]

Ron_Dstv1 Wrote The main objective of the DStv Community Forum is to encourage customer-to-customer engagement. We want you to contribute to the communities set up under our predetermined discussions. We have taken your advise and added a number of new discussions - You asked and we agree that your ideas where excellent! Thank you! In my view what you are saying is that this is a customer to customer discussion platform where we can discuss predetermined subjects. What's the point? You may save yourself some money and close the site.