LoL - Austar bitchy over Vast using their dishes
Boo hoo hoo. Time for a cry from Austar
It's going to cost them a fortune to send out techs and return (ex)subscribers house's to their original condition that it was in prior to the Austar dish being installed, once people are advised of the situation by their technician.
They haven't thought this one through too good.
This is going to be good fun
Attn: The Proprietor
5 April 2011
Access to VAST through AUSTAR satellite dishes
We understand that your business is involved with the Government's Endorsed Antenna
Installer program relating to the installation of satellite equipment for the VAST service.
This letter contains important information about the ownership of existing satellite dishes
which your installers might be asked to use when connecting a household to VAST in an
AUSTAR area.
When AUSTAR first provides its subscription television service to households, we
usually do so on the basis that we retain ownership of the satellite dish and cabling we
install, and that this equipment can only be used to receive the AUSTAR service.
What this means is that, whether or not it currently subscribes to AUSTAR, a household
with an existing dish that it did not install itself may not be entitled to use that dish to
receive the VAST service without our permission.
To help regional households understand their obligations surrounding the use of
AUSTAR equipment to receive VAST, we have set up a dedicated team for households
to contact. The AUSTAR team can be reached at ask@austar.com.au , on 132 432 or
through the Government's mySwitch website at www. digitalready. gov. au.
lf a customer to your business is in an AUSTAR service area and has an existing
satellite dish on their roof, before your installer uses the dish to give the
household access to VAST we request you direct the customer to contact
AUSTAR to make sure they are entitled to use the dish to receive VAST channels.
lf your business goes ahead and uses AUSTAR dishes to give customers access to
VAST without our permission, we may consider commencing legal proceedings to stop
you.
lf you or your customers have any questions, we recommend you visit the FAQs pages
on the mySwitch website.
Yours sincerely
e'p(/
Page Henty
Corporate Counsel
AUSTAR Entertainment Pty Ltd
Level 1, 46-52 Mountain Street, Ultimo NSW 2007
Locked Bag 43940, Sydney South NSW 1235, Australia
t.029251 6999 f. 02 9295 0163
ABN 93 068 104 530
austar.com.au
Reality is an invention of my imagination.
ಠ_ಠ
| Look Here -> |
I can guess where this is leading.....
Austar will grant permission to use their dish etc, provided any modifications (multiswitch, dual-LNB etc) are only installed by Austar technicians.
Just so they can screw people for more $.
It will be interesting to see what Austar's response will be if anyone requests their permission.
I would be even more interested to see how fast Austar sidesteps any claims if the dish/mount does any damage to a property and for 'the care and storage' of said property after a subscriber leaves or their responce to a request by the property owner that the dish/mount be removed and the roof restored.
AsIf the well known Used Car salesman said recently in previous posts, This aint unexpected Babay !!!!!
This puts the cat well among the pidgeons for that posting of a few weeks ago asking if his employer/company could do a VAST instal using an existing Austar dish.
Hmmmmmmmmmm, I wonder will current Austar customers get a 'Post Out' advising of this requirement should they be considering or have installed a VAST stb?
Last edited by gordon_s1942; 07-04-11 at 07:09 PM.
I stand unequivicably behind everything I say, I just dont ever remember saying it !!
If Austar installs a satellite dish and cabling etc, am I correct in assuming that after the contract expires, the dish becomes property of the house owners?
I may not be using the right words but I bet that so long as your paying the monthly fee's, this will deem that although a 'time related' contract may have expired, the terms and conditions of that contract will still be valid.
You have to remember that presently if a dish rusts out, the LNB fails or water gets into the cable, Austar will do repairs at no cost to you so long as its normal wear and tear.
I stand unequivicably behind everything I say
i bet if you wish to have the dish removed from the roof, as you no longer wish to receive the service, that austar would not send out a technician to as such do this. I daresay they would allow you to remove it at your own discretion and they would not come to pick up the dish at allOriginally Posted by gordon_s1942
It's been a while since I read the T&C's, but if I recall correctly, Austar stated all parts of the installation remain their property, whilst Foxtel state the equipment becomes the property of the building owner, or something to that effect. (with the exception of decoders & smartcards, remaining property of the respective companies).
I know the two companies had differing T&C's on ownership.
On the other hand, Austar installers have never had an issue connecting to existing 'non-Austar-supplied' dishes, cabling and equipment in the past, provided it met their specs.
Now it appears they have double-standards as to who can do what.
I know what I think Austar can do...............
Once again, not wishing to be seen as a paytv supporter, there are always two sides to a story.
This attachment has been posted before in the VAST threads.
This was a submission by Austar, about VAST, and it seems to have been ignored.They did raise this same issue.
I believe they are trying in any way to maintain their competitive edge in the bush/regional areas, protect their shareholders via single use of their assets etc.
I don't believe they stand a chance in heaven of knowing their installed dishes are only being used only for Austar, but I guess they can try. Whilst you still only have to cancel your sub and take the receiver to a PO, this will always be a problem. I think the only way to force it, would be on cancellation, to have an installer collect the receiver, and possibly remove the actual dish and lnb, but leave the fittings in place. Having said that, it would look very ugly, add to costs, and inevitabely, increase in sub prices for the viewer to cover the additional costs.Maybe the customer pays for the dish and lnb, and that remains their property, with the installer company seeing the dish as a service component in the future, owned by the customer? I guess that would likely see the end of the free installation offer...who knows?
I suppose if we owned the paytv company, we would be trying what we could to maximise our capital and protect our assets.
I know there is the other school of thought that there should be co-agreement to utilise present infrastructure already in place, and this is better marketing sense.
One way or another, this is something that does require some thought, and rationale to come to something workable for owners and paytv companies?
If they don't come and remove it when the householder stops subscribing, how can they later claim it is still property?
If they tried that on, I think I'd be sending them a bill for "rent" or "storage" of their unrecovered property, and insisting they send someone out to restore the property to the condition it was before they installed the dish.
Last edited by MyComputer; 07-04-11 at 08:08 PM.
best4less (07-04-11)
Their printer's red toner needs a top up
Reality is an invention of my imagination.
ಠ_ಠ
what's the drama, they will end up being sold fox and we wont hear about them again
I have three potential customers for VAST who cancelled their contracts with Austar at least two years ago. Their dish and LNB are still there. As I said in a previous post, Austar and Foxtel must be getting really scared. For rural and regional areas where the only reason to have had Sat TV was that there was no reasonable terrestrial signal and there are now ?23 channels on VAST, why would you want to pay. The cost to un-install the mounts and repair the holes would far outweigh the the initial cost of the components. Again, for the providers, it might be more sensible to say ' Let's allow connection to VAST and we may be able to retain some users who still want the Movie Channels or National Geographic'
Well do A* really own the dish??, if you cancel a subscription all they ask back is the box,cables and card, if a dish is installed then you the home owner are the legal owner, its bolted and classified as a permanent fixture, this is what I can see a lot of happening LOL
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bHH_HVx3Lw]YouTube - Trailer Park Boys Satellite Dish[/ame]
When I cancelled my subscription some years back I told them to remove their dish, cable and to repair my lawn, they said they would leave it for the next person, I explained I owned the house, it was my property and they had to remove the equipment, they refused. I sent a letter outlining that they had 14 days to remove the equipment, or I would be doing it for them and throwing their gear away, they never showed, the gear was removed. Never heard a peep out of them.
Cheers
Ted (Al)
Al Bundy you should have sent them a bill
When you do things right, people won't be sure that you have done anything at all
Good, and I hope to buggery Poxtel cop it up the ass as well. Its time these two thieving companies get what's coming to them, losing a quarter of their regional customers would make me very happy.
In their Agreement Booklet, A* have an equipment removal fee. $149.95
Cheers, Tiny
"You can lead a person to knowledge, but you can't make them think? If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
The information is out there; you just have to let it in."
In their Agreement Booklet, A* have an equipment removal fee. $149.95
They dont have a leg to stand as Al Bundy showed and if they tried that one they would be sorry. If you disconnect the service, they are obliged to remove their equipment. If they dont, you can give them notice that you are disposing of it after X amount of days or that you intend to charge them a storage fee to have it on your property after that date.
They really are knobheads, Foxtel on the other hand dont really care what you do with the gear.
Bear with me on this as it may seem out of left field but many years ago a person claimed ownership of the property where they lived and was awarded ownership because the owner had never collected rents, paid Rates/Tax's/Fee's (the 'Squatter' did) nor had any verbal/written aggreement in place between the 2 parties.
Basicaly I think this is a similar situation that by putting such a letter/advise/Instruction in place, should anything unforseen happens because someone used 'Their Dish' without permission, Austar can say "We're not responsible".
A local Rural Council was sued for heaps because of a car crash on a gavel road, the ruling partly was that because the Council didnt put up a sign saying 'Gravel Road', they were negligent.
The road had never been anything else since it was made 150 years before but no sign where the bitumen surface ended and the Gravel began.
Since then I have noticed signs appearing almost immediately if a problem changes the road structure.
They dont fix it any quicker, just bung up a sign and this is what I think Austar is doing.
Another thing to is most dishes have no marks or brands on them so identifing them is a bit difficult if their not currently in use.
I have 4 different shaped dish's scavanged from the tip, demolished houses or just plain dumped and none have any markings.
Last edited by gordon_s1942; 08-04-11 at 11:41 AM.
I stand unequivicably behind everything I say
What I don't get is how they are going to know....
If a subscriber cancels their service are they going to send someone out to check to see if the home owner is using a dish for vast or not??
It's purely them attempting to throw their weight around especially with the larger contracting companies... usually the same ones that had/have austar contracts.. I'm not sure who owns what in terms of companies but the cynic in mays says if there are financial gains to be had by having customers install another dish they the larger contractors will go down that path to make an extra buck regardless of what the customer needs or not.
as MTV says it seems like an interesting double standard... how many times do they do an install and if there's spare coax (of reasonable quality) installed they us that...
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