by
Thinus Ferreira
Multiple
technical problems and shocking breaches of personal consumer information
marred the launch of The Walt Disney Company’s Disney+ video streaming service
in the country on Wednesday.
While
some new Disney+ SA consumers logged in only to find the personal profiles and
things like email addresses and cellphone numbers of other people, many
potential subscribers complained that they didn’t get the link or code that
Disney+ promised to email or send if they registered beforehand for the
once-off R950 special sign-up offer.
Moms
who wanted to surprise their kids when they come home Wednesday afternoon with
Disney+ were exasperated trying to sign up through the buggy Disney+ SA app,
while others said they’re angry and disappointed that they haven’t received the
link to the R950 offer by noon.
“What
do you tell a 9-year old who has been looking forward to getting Disney+ today?
Who is using his own pocket-money to pay for Disney+ and who has been so excited
and looking forward to watching Disney+ today? He’s coming home this afternoon
with so much anticipation and we didn’t get any link yet. It feels as if Disney
wants to force us to pay the R1190 and to forget about the promise of giving it
for R950 if you registered you’re interest,” an angry mom told Channel24 on Thursday.
Other
users said they were told by Disney+ technical support to sign up and get
billed for the R1190 and to claw back the promised discount later.
Other
said they struggled to sign up for Disney+, and several explained how, when
they logged in, were suddenly linked to other people’s personal profiles with
access to their accounts and saw other people’s email addresses, cellphone
numbers and personal details.
The
technical launch side of Disney+ SA is handled by Disney Hotstar in India.
In
an interview on Tuesday the day before Disney+’s South African launch,
Christine Service, The Walt Disney Company Africa senior vice president and general manager, said “We’ve worked really hard to make sure that the sign-up is seamless and we’ve done a huge amount of testing, but absolutely if something goes wrong for a customer you can go to the platform and either deal with any queries through a chat; you can ask for a callback from our call centre, or if you’re accessing it from mobile phone you can actually click straight through and have a voice chat with the call centre as well”.
“We hope that we will have very high volumes in the next few days as people who are exited, sign up.”
Disney Africa was asked on Wednesday a range of questions about the technical issues that Disney+ users faced, and about people accessing other people’s personal consumer data.
Disney didn’t respond with an official reply to questions but insiders reiterated that Disney and Disney+ take the security of its customers’ accounts very seriously.
According to insiders, a technical issues which impacted subscribers were resolved by Wednesday afternoon and no payment details were exposed and subscribers
accounts remained secure.
Insiders reiterated that emails and SMS messages are being sent to interested customers throughout the day and that people who haven’t heard back from Disney+ should get in touch
with our customer team. Everyone who pre-registered their intent should receive an email or SMS on Wednesday.
On Twitter Disney+ SA said it has “resolved the technical issue that temporarily impacted some of our subscribers seeing issues on their subscription details reflecting on their account profile. Please clear any app/browser cache and try again. We apologise for the inconvenience.”