Recently I was going through the Tata Sky website, and just happened to go through their updated Terms & Conditions. I was shocked to see this in the list:

Can a subscriber transfer the ownership of the box to someone else?
Effective 30 December, 2010 the Transfer of Ownership facility has been withdrawn. In case of discontinuation of services on subscriber’s request, the subscriber will not be allowed to transfer the digicomp/connection to anybody else. The subscriber’s account will stand cancelled. Remaining account balance, if any, shall stand forfeited.

So essentially, you can no longer transfer or sell your Tata Sky connection to anyone else from now on. If you choose not to retain your subscription, the money you paid for the STB goes down the drain!

Not to mention that STBs of different DTH service providers are not interoperable, so you can’t use the STB with another DTH service either. It will just be a useless box that you will have to sell as scrap. This is quite shocking!

Tata Sky has been tom-tomming the fact that they have reduced the service charges from Rs. 350 to Rs. 125. But obviously they chose not to publicise this particular fact that you can’t sell the STB anymore. How ethical!

I am not sure if this new condition is even legal. Once we pay for the STB in full, legally we are the owners of the STB and we can do whatever we wish to with it. I don’t see why we should not be allowed to sell the STB to anyone else if we wish to, just as we can sell our mobile phones or any other electronic item if we are no longer using it. I think this is plain fraud and someone should (and probably will) take them to the consumer court over this.

So all those of you planning to buy a Tata Sky connection, please keep this in mind and make an informed choice!