My thoughts are that the most vocal complainers have expectations which do not align with reality. When someone buys illicit goods in grey/black markets they don't go running to consumer protection agencies when there is an issue but it seems like the vocal posters on forums/groups behave like they are buying services from a telecom or Fortune 500 company. The business attracts some shady resellers, but most seem genuinely interested in assisting consumers to the extent they can and frankly speaking it is in their interest to do so as they don't want customers barking up the payment processor tree.

The platform (XC) the more popular services are built on are sacrificing reliability in exchange for servicing the market that flinches if they have to spend over $20 for a device to use the service. Add to that the complexity of trying to find data centers that will knowingly allow service providers to park servers there and then the general headaches that go along with trying to maintain servers and feeds and supporting a wide range of devices.

Pay month to month and your exposure is $15 of potential aggravation. The amount of emotional investment I see people put into their complaining and tantrums makes me question their general well being. I'm not going to have my heart rate or blood pressure spike over $15. I mean christ...

As a reseller i try to get back to my customers within the hour and try to be as open as possible when it comes to issues and downtime.

Most arnt going to believe i get back to people within a hour but I do because like you said the servers are out of the resellers hand and customer service is what we can 100% provide the customer.

If a reseller activates/reups my account in a reasonable amount of time, and offered me the option to pay with my preferred method (paypal), they essentially did their customer service job in my book.

Offering an easy to follow installation install guide on the various devices it supports is always a nice touch too, but beyond that hassling or putting the blame about provider issues on a reseller is just kind of lame/pointless imo.

I understand that this is a market held up largely by individuals that are either in a different country/time zone than me, have day jobs and/or don't make IPTV reselling their main source of income or focus and I try to be understanding of that. However, there is a basic level of customer service that I feel everyone conducting business should have (be polite, appreciate people's business, respond to calls/emails/text messages/etc., deliver what you promised) and this is a level of customer service that is seldom reached. However, some customers have unrealistic expectations for what their money is actually getting them in this market. No provider has 100% uptime, no service will have every channel you could ever want, channels are going to buffer, freeze, stutter sometimes, nothing is perfect. Running to a message board "demanding to see a manager" so to speak isn't going to change anything