As the title of the blog points out, this is not another vehicle or property blog, but with our readers standing at 300+ daily, we are trying to perform our duties as a responsible citizen by pointing out how we are conned by corporate Malaysian.

 

We are very sure many of us were whining when the news first came out about Astro raising its subscription fees. Below is the reason of the increased price reason given by Astro.

 

Astro revises upward monthly subscription fee
05 May, 2007

 

PETALING JAYA: Multi-channel television operator Astro All Asia Networks Plc Friday announced revised monthly subscription fees, driven by rising programming costs.

The price revision of between RM5 and RM15, up by about 15 percent on the average, is effective immediately for new customers and from next month onwards for existing customers.

"The costs of programming and in particular live sports have increased significantly in excess of 20 percent," Astro TV's chief executive officer Rohana Rozhan said at a press conference here.

Astro's programming cost stood at about RM600 million last year.

"We have been absorbing the increase in costs in the last three years.

Programming costs continue to escalate to such an extent that it is now necessary for us to revise our prices," she said.

The last price increase of RM5 "across the board" was carried out in May 2004.

 

To us the reason just doesn’t make sense and the math just don’t add up, and we have 2 solid reason why.

 

1. First of all, my family was the first few Astro subscriber when it was first launched, I remember vividly that the price of it was at about rm50++ region. We were getting all the basic good channel, HBO, sports, MTV, WLT and many more, but as years go by, Astro, cunningly divided the channels into many mini packages, and prior to the recent increased I was already paying about rm80++, which was almost at 100% increased in prices, and I was not even taking all the channel. The subscription has already went up by 2 fold!!

 

2. 3 years ago Ringgit was standing at rm3.80 compared to 1 dollar. Lets say for example Astro buys ESPN, star sports and the channel 80 sports program at the price of USD100 million a year. 3 years ago Astro would need to fork out RM380 million from our subscription to pay for it. But today with Ringgit at 3.40 for every USD, Astro would just need to fork out RM340 million, and that means Astro saves about RM40 million, which directly goes into its profit!!! A WHOPPING 40 million Ringgit without doing a single thing.

 

I am not economic or accountant but I surely hope someone could help me shed some light on the above. I would love to be proven wrong, so that I do not hold so much grudge against Astro.

 

We guess we could say that Astro is no charitable organization, and it is 100% profit driven, but please don’t treat us like fools. Another way to look at it is, we are all hooked to Astro and without good competition Astro could do anything they want. No matter how much we cursed and swear but end of the day, without fail after work we would all be holding the Astro remote control.

 

Maybe its time to pull the plug and switch back to the free channel, or even switch to other pay TV, such as MiTV. Enough is enough!!!