We’ve talked a bit about Stan before. Stan is the streaming service borne of a partnership between Fairfax and Nine Entertainment which launched its services in Australia on Australia Day this year. In the six months since launch, it’s easy to see why Stan has become fairly popular; it’s easy to use, its cheap (like most streaming services, it comes in under $10 a month), and it supports viewing content on your mobile, your tablet, or your telly.
To make it work, you need a compatible device, and optionally, a Chromecast, Android TV device, or Apple TV in order to throw it to the big screen. Supported devices are listed on Stan’s website, and include a wide range of current, popular mobiles, tablets and the like. You can view the full list online.
How to access Stan’s help articles
When it works, it’s great. But what if it doesn’t?
We’ve had a number of people approach us at Ausdroid, by email, phone and the like, telling us that getting in touch with Stan is difficult. There’s no phone number. There’s just “one of those online forms”.
Stan has made a deliberate choice not to offer telephone based technical support, and there’s a sound argument for this approach. First and foremost, Stan tells us that there’s a significant library of online support articles which can resolve many, if not most, of the common issues, such as:
- Resetting your password
- Changing your credit card
- How do you watch Stan
- I’m getting buffering issues
- How do I use it with my Chromecast, or Apple TV
There’s easily hundreds of articles which go through things like this, and it’s easy to see how Stan’s argument that phone support isn’t necessary for most things stacks up. If you have a problem with using the service, or a question about it, there’s a really good chance there’s an article here that will answer your needs.
How to get support
But what if you just really need to talk to someone, and receive more personalised support?
Contact Stan’s Support staff. Creating a support request takes a minute or two of your time, and you can do it easily using a computer, your mobile or a tablet; the form works equally on all platforms.
You might think that you’d be waiting a while for support when you’re submitting an online form. Some services are notoriously slow. While it doesn’t make stats public, Stan does endeavour to respond to the majority of enquiries within an hour.
For those issues that are just too tricky, or where someone really does need a human voice to help them out, one of the Stan guys or girls will jump on the phone, and give you a call to work through the issue.
At the end of the day, by offering fast, responsive support in this way, Stan is able to keep costs down, and thus keep your subscription costs low as well. So, next time you have an issue with the service, give the online support request a go, and you should have your problems resolved within an hour or two.
cancelled my subscription, they are still taking payments out and I cannot find a phone number to contact them. My bank says I need to stop it with them which is hard to do given they have no way of contacting them.
How come there is no phome number to stop payments from this ridicilious tv shit
Sorry, but Stan’s online customer support form is just rubbish. It’s been deliberately set up so that when you hit “submit” the form often goes nowhere. In other words, THERE IS NO CUSTOMER/TECH SUPPORT FOR STAN. If you have a buffering problem, an account question, or any other problem, you are totally on your own. Stan are great at taking your money, but if you want to get in touch with them (other than to cancel your account) forget it. On top of this, almost everything they offer is well out of date, so you’re paying to watch old TV,… Read more »
Sorry that you’re having an unpleasant experience with them, but as this article already makes clear, there’s nothing we can do to assist you with that.
Join the discussion…
Agree Stan is a very poor service, no technical support despite promises that “you will be sorted out in a couple of hours”. I could live with simple and buggy app as long as I can stream but recently the streaming just stopped with an error A17 and stan support just keeps sending me some auto messages to do tests, over and over again, and its been close to two days of it and no real support or progress. And those support people that happily hop on the line to sort you out? Well maybe instead of hopping they could… Read more »
How much is stan paying you?
You kinda missed the whole point of this article. Stan literally pays us nothing and we get customer service calls from people looking for Stan.
Guys this isn’t a paid post. We label all those. Clearly. Accusing us of sneaking one past is an attack on our credibility and that won’t be ignored. Comments are closed, and those who shot off their mouths can find somewhere else to do it.
on a related subject, i find Stan’s streaming service incredibly irritating it constantly buffers and makes watching any content so frustrating that I have canned it all together.. simply stating to change the resolution is unacceptable, I have no problem with netflix anytime.. how about fixing your backend instead of just making suggestions that make absolutely no difference…
Native advertising is pretty common. But you guys should do the decent thing and acknoledge this is a paid piece.
As for stan’s service, I attempted to tell them the app wasn’t working on my M preview. I said I didn’t expect it to work but I’d be happy to test any alpha or beta builds.
I got a form reply in response telling me the LG Nexus 5 wasn’t a supported device. Ie, they didn’t even read my support ticket, they just fobbed me off. The weirdest thing? The link they gave me showed me the phone was supported anyway.. Pretty weird.
I was thinking the same thing and going to write something yesterday but decided not to… anyway I imagine Ausdroid get paid substantially more if the ad is an article in their regular news feed. This article was so blatantly written as an advert anyway that I do feel like they did their best to subliminally message “THIS IS AN ADVERT, SORRY!” – the fact it’s written by “Ausdroid Staff” also indicates no-one in particular wanted to claim credit 😉
See above, not a paid advertisement at all, we have and always will label ANY paid article as such.
This ad is actually worse than that.
This is an ad which shows up on the site, for a logged in, paid Ausdroid user.
See comment above Jenny. Not an advertisement. Not native advertising.
Jeni you know better than that. Our paid content is labelled and always is.
Not a paid post at all – more born out of frustration at recieving calls from frustrated STAN users calling Ausdroid’s offices because they can’t find a phone number for support on Stan’s website.
We label all paid content. You should do the decent thing and not levy accusations that you can’t back up.
Their email replies in about half an hour until a little after midnight (maybe 1AM EST?) from what I’ve seen. I’ve emailed them as late as 11:30 PM ACST (NT no daylight savings) and had a reply the same night. They get back very quick imo. Everyone who replies is courteous and sincere. They don’t write back form responses and act like nice normal humans. I never got a reply that treated me like an idiot or ignored the content of my initial email – which can’t be said for some other companies. These are my wait times with the… Read more »
So what you’re saying is that Stan needs lots of support!? Thats a LOT of support requests for a product that should just work.
I like quick online support much better than phone calls.