I have been a long term Optus customer. For a couple of years now, Optus sales kept on calling me asking me to subscribe the Optus Fetch TV 'for free'. Since I am not a fan of pay TV and free TV is totally adequate for me anyway, I kept politely refusing the sales calls - until a couple of months ago. The sales guy promised that I did not have to pay anything at all to get the set top box. I thought OK, I'd give it a try - even if I don't use it to watch any paid channels, I can still use it as a hard disk to record free TV programs. Hence, I yielded.
Surely enough, I received the Fetch TV box and a letter saying that there was a fee associated with the Fetch TV. So I immediately called Optus and they ensured me that the fee was there for Optus internal purposes only and I would not have to pay a single cent.
So I opened the box and started to install the set top box. Then I realized that the box does not work on Wi-Fi. So I had to buy a couple of those Ethernet power line adaptors. I got on to e-Bay and forked out $80 for four. At the mean time, I had to put the set top box away.
Several weeks later, the adaptors arrived. I connected up the Fetch TV. Oh boy! Was I disappointed or what! There is not a single movie, or TV show, or cable channel that comes for free with the subscription. To watch anything, I had to pay and it was expensive! Kid's channels are the cheapest at around $5-$6 per channel per month - PER CHANNEL! A Chinese channel costs around $30! For that much I could buy an entire package of Chinese channels at any Chinese grocery store!
What Optus is hoping for is that once you have installed the box, you will inevitably buy something on it whether it's on purpose or by accident. For me, this box is totally piece of useless junk wasting space, electricity and my internet traffic. So I promptly disconnected it and put it back into its box. I thought of throwing it away, but then realized that I had put in my authorization code into it. So anyone who picked it up can start using it and put on my account. So I could not even get rid of it! Into the garage it went.
I thought that would be the end of it. Then a month later, I received my Optus bill. It clearly charged me for $13.xx per month for this piece of junk. So I rang up Optus and asked why. They told me that the Fetch TV was free for the $95 internet package, while mine was $90 package. So it was not free. I almost exploded when I heard that - I triple and quadruple checked with the Optus sales guy when he peddled this junk to me 2 months ago. Eventually, I canceled the package and got the refund back. I hope that will be the end of this saga.
Moral of the story:
Surely enough, I received the Fetch TV box and a letter saying that there was a fee associated with the Fetch TV. So I immediately called Optus and they ensured me that the fee was there for Optus internal purposes only and I would not have to pay a single cent.
So I opened the box and started to install the set top box. Then I realized that the box does not work on Wi-Fi. So I had to buy a couple of those Ethernet power line adaptors. I got on to e-Bay and forked out $80 for four. At the mean time, I had to put the set top box away.
Several weeks later, the adaptors arrived. I connected up the Fetch TV. Oh boy! Was I disappointed or what! There is not a single movie, or TV show, or cable channel that comes for free with the subscription. To watch anything, I had to pay and it was expensive! Kid's channels are the cheapest at around $5-$6 per channel per month - PER CHANNEL! A Chinese channel costs around $30! For that much I could buy an entire package of Chinese channels at any Chinese grocery store!
What Optus is hoping for is that once you have installed the box, you will inevitably buy something on it whether it's on purpose or by accident. For me, this box is totally piece of useless junk wasting space, electricity and my internet traffic. So I promptly disconnected it and put it back into its box. I thought of throwing it away, but then realized that I had put in my authorization code into it. So anyone who picked it up can start using it and put on my account. So I could not even get rid of it! Into the garage it went.
I thought that would be the end of it. Then a month later, I received my Optus bill. It clearly charged me for $13.xx per month for this piece of junk. So I rang up Optus and asked why. They told me that the Fetch TV was free for the $95 internet package, while mine was $90 package. So it was not free. I almost exploded when I heard that - I triple and quadruple checked with the Optus sales guy when he peddled this junk to me 2 months ago. Eventually, I canceled the package and got the refund back. I hope that will be the end of this saga.
Moral of the story:
- Optus Fetch TV is a piece of junk - stay away from it at all cost. Anything it offers, you can get from your internet capable TV anyway.
- If you want to accept anything free from anybody, make sure it does not know your bank/credit card details.
