Astro is currently in the process of upgrading their customers’ smart-card. And in this process, they will send you a new ‘gold colour’ smart-card to replace the old one. I don’t know why the fuck they call it ‘gold colour’ because from every possible angle, I only see ‘cheap dirty yellow’.

You will have to insert the new card into the decoder, press ‘OK’ and the decoder will download a new firmware to replace the old version in it. The process will take less than a minute although it is stated that it may take up to 15 minutes.

Now please beware! Once the decoder upgraded its firmware, it will no longer accept any old smart-card. You can probably still use the old smart-card in decoders that have not been upgraded, though. But for how long, I don’t know.

And now the problem…

Emperor has His own smart-card, which is the main account. And Empress has a supplementary smart-card, which costs only half the subscription price. There are two decoders in the Palace. Both subscribes to different channels. Emperor’s mainly news and sports while Empress’ mainly mandarin movies and series.

So They received ONE SINGLE new smart-card by mail yesterday. The Emperor slotted it into His own decoder and upgraded the firmware. But He soon realised that His news and sports channels disappeared! Instead, He got the mandarin channels…

Realising that the new smart-card must have belonged to The Empress, He went and upgraded The Empress’ decoder. Thus The Empress is now happily watching Her favourite mandarin movies and series.

Then The Emperor slotted in his old smart-card into his own decoder…

And yes, you’ve guessed it right. The decoder rejected the old smart-card. In fact, both decoders rejected both old smart-cards. And now The Emperor is without access to any news nor sports channels.

A call to Astro customer service was then made. The technical support confirmed the problem - both the decoders have been upgraded to reject the old smart-cards. They have sent out the new smart-card for the supplementary account while the main account is still in process and will probably take a week or two before its new card is sent out by mail.

They also offered to amend the subscription for the supplementary account to include news and sports which I promptly rejected. For that, there maybe bloodshed fighting for the channels within ONE SINGLE card.

And they offered again another solution that when the new smart-card to the main account is received, I can then call up for billing adjustment - which is to deduct the amount based on the number of days the main account is unaccessible.

Actually, this problem can be easily solved if those idiots at Astro care to use their brain instead of knees when planning - fucking send both smart-cards, the main and the supplementary, together in one single mail!!! For that, they can also save a certain amount on postage towards customers with supplementary account!

Fucking idiots!

- just another idiot-bashing post from drliew.net.