Last month I passed by a shopping mall and was approached by a Starhub cable TV promoter. My natural response was "have already". He was persistent and replied how about 50% off your bill for one year?
Now that's enticing! My cable TV set me back by $50 monthly, including the rental of hubstation. How is that possible? Starhub never offers recontract offers for loyal customers. My loyalty is worth only $50!
Well, just return your set up box today, clear your outstanding bill and sign up with me tomorrow. I will report you as a new subscriber! You just need to sign a 1 year contract and get a 50% off your channels and hubstation.
Knowing the promoter is commission based, I took his word and sign up! Today I received the bill and true enough, I got 50% off for my bill and for the next 11 months!
I do think it is a silly idea to pay out unnecessary commission to the promoters while inconveniencing existing subscribers. Is Starhub aware that their glaring loopholes are eroding shareholder value day by day?
Loyal customers are not retained; new customers are pursued while incurring high costs of acquisitions. As a shareholder of Starhub, I am unimpressed with their marketing strategy.
Is there a need to report "new" subscribers for pay TV when 90% of new subscribers were loyal customers yesterday? Because of the need to manipulate the numbers, fulfill KPIs, money spent on advertising and marketing are wasted down the drain through the loophole.
Time to wake up and value loyal customers, revamp your marketing strategy and retrain your sales officers, Starhub!
3 comments:
Dec 2007. Starhub had a promotion for NEW Cable TV subscribers: a 20 inch LCD TV/Monitor.
I wanted to re-contract to enjoy the promotion, but they said it was not applicable to me and strictly for new subscribers! Duh?!? To me, a loyal Starhub subscriber for 5yrs prior, I felt that there was no difference.
The loophole? I terminated my Cable TV (contract was already over, so no penalty), returned the set-top box, and got my wife to sign up as a NEW SUBSCRIBER.
I complained to the Customer Service that we had to go through this whole "process". simply to enjoy the promotion. Best of it all, the Customer Service Officer said that they are aware that customers are doing this!! Then why not just reward Customer Loyalty in the first place?!?!?
Thanks for the info. I am thinking of writing to the CEO on this issue and bringing up this on the AGM.
Though I like Starhub as a laggard play, it seems paying too much commission to poorly designed marketing strategies.
I cannot imagine how much the marketing department has wasted their budget over the years on attracting old "new" subscribers!
Wow... is it really that bad?
I am using Singtel MIO, once they reduce the MIO plan from $69 to $54, immediately the next month of my bill is reduced to $54 without me asking for it...... I found it quite impressive the service..
But again, I bought starhub shares, but not singtel shares, ha ha..... purely because starhub dividend is super good, and based on the price now, the upside percentage is much higher than singtel, heee...
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