Since the beginning of this year, Melita Cable has been changing channel stations and the quality of service according to its whims and fancies without requesting any acceptance to the changes in the contract of service to its customers. At the start of this year, two channels that were introduced last year on the reception tier together with MTV Italia have been replaced with Rai24 news. When I complained, Melita Cable’s customer service questioned my complaint in a very arrogant tone and stated that the first two channels mentioned above had been introduced for free while MTV Italia was no longer free to air. When a local channel stopped transmitting in the past, Melita Cable did not feel obliged to replace it with a similar channel or reduce the service cost but since Club and Reality TV channels were introduced at ‘no additional cost’, Melita has retained the right to remove them. As regards MTV Italia, Melita Cable is only cheating its customers. Anyone who has an aerial installed knows well that this channel is still aired for free.

To add insult to injury, recently, major sports events have been blocked from the free to air channels as well with the excuse that Melita is not authorised to retransmit. We should all know that this is not the real reason; the fact of the matter is that Melita has created a Sports channel at a premium cost to anyone who wants to watch these events. With the upcoming World Cup tournament, Melita is relying on the fact that most of the local viewers, irrespective of whether they are football fans or not, will still take keen interest

in the major World Cup matches.

Since we are in a country where government appointed and publicly funded authorities such as MCA and the ministry for competition are useless, I strongly recommend Melita Cable subscribers to seriously consider cancelling their subscription with this rogue service provider. This will send a strong message that the Maltese customer is no longer willing to accept this kind of service and will hopefully rid us of such companies.

Alexander Galea

DINGLI