WARNING: LONG REVIEW/RANT! Read at your own risk!
I have been using iTalkBB service for over a year now, and was happy that they have opened a store location in Fremont.
So naturally I opted to go to the store to sign up for their iTalkTV service, so I can get my hands on them TV boxes right away instead of waiting for the company to ship them over to my house, plus, I don't have to pay shipping fees!
The registration was very fast since I am an existing customer, and my TV service works like a charm, up until today.
iTalkTV is an online streaming TV service that offers many mandarin channels at a much cheaper rate than you would pay for DirectTV or DishNetwork. So as long as your internet is working fine and you hooked up the TV box right, you should have no problem accessing the many channels offered.
However, today while having dinner, we turned on our TV only to find it at constant loading status. After a full 10min of waiting and checking our connection and set up, we have reached the conclusion that there must be something wrong at the company end. Then a few minutes later one of our friend, who also is using iTalkTV service called us, and they have the same problem with unable to view TV, and they live 30miles away from us.
So naturally, my response was to pick up the phone and call the Fremont store, and check with them to see if their TV service in the store is working. After explaining my problem to the girl who answered the phone and kindly asked if she knew what was going on, she just gave me the 'call customer service" reply. So I told her I just wanted to ask her if the TV in the store was working, just to make sure if it's a local problem or something going on at the company end, and she told me that the TV in the store was working fine, and then told me again to just call the customer service number.
With her answer, I thought it was probably an individual problem, and a mere coincidence that my friend and I have the same problem even though we live 30miles apart. Meh, so I picked up the phone and called their TV customer service, which gave me an automated message about maintenance on March 4th, then busy line. After several tries with no success at reaching a real person, I got frustrated and called up iTalkBB (the phone service part) customer service line, since they are from the same company anyways. The representative was kind enough to tell me that they just received news that the TV is undergoing maintenance and would be out for roughly two hours.
Aha! So it wasn't my problem, and the girl at the Fremont store just outright lied to me! Just to double check, I called their store in Milpitas, and the guy who answered the phone was honest enough to tell me that the TV system was shut down and is currently undergoing maintenance.
I don't know why the girl would lie to me. it takes only 2 minutes at most to check if the TV in the store is working or not. Instead of being helpful, she chose to lie to me just to get me off the phone.
Well... I will continue using the service because it is dirt cheap compared to other companies, but I'll be damned if I refer any future customers to this location. Even though the Milpitas location doesn't have its own store and is instead just a booth inside the 99ranch market, but the guy working there is honest and helpful!! read more