Complaint

0
Johanna
Country: United States
I signed up for Direct TV in August 2005, with a one year contract. I'm a grad student, so I knew I would be graduating in June 2007. After a year of interrupted service, and a summer during which my service was disconnected (even though I was paying for it in absentia), I called Direct TV in October of 2006 because my service was interrupted for a few days. As an apology, the customer service rep offered me 6 months of $10 off/month. I agreed, a little happier. When it came time to cancel, I received no less than 3 incorrect bills noting that I owed additional money as well as an early cancellation charge. To my surprise, apparently, the rep signed me up for another year's contract, even though she never mentioned it, and I certainly never would have renewed it since I knew I was moving 8 months later. Because of this, I have spent hours arguing on the phone with the customer service reps, who either cannot or will not help me. The end result is that I will have to pay the early cancellation charge, even though I never agreed to a new contract. There is no proof on either side because they claim it was a "verbal agreement". Truly the worst service experience ever. I will never use Direct TV, and in fact, I plan to be an anti-Direct TV evangelist to spread word for people never to use it.

Comments

  • 0
    I am with you
    Everything they say is BS. As I said in my post they charge you for every little thing. Direct TV's attitude is WE ARE RIGHT AND YOU ARE WRONG!!! They are charging me $200 to get out of a 2 year contract, because they were gonna bill me $78/mos just for basic. Their customer service is AWFUL!!! and that is being nice. They should not be able to get away with the crap they tell you, then come to find out it's not true at all.
  • 0
    NAZI TV
    NEVER EVER USE DIRECT TV.... all these cases are valid! My experience was horrendous. I will be going to the FCC and suggest you all file complaints as well.
  • 0
    galina
    wait till you eventually have to cancel their service. We did not have any problems for 5 years either until we moved and had to cancel. Then all the "back" charges and all kinds of charges popped up.
  • 0
    Tired of the BS
    I just got off the phone with some guy in the Philippines and their "service center is not open until 8AM local time"??? I was late but they cancelled my service and charged me $668.00 for the early termination fee and other stuff. So I said I have been gone for 3 months so just turn my service back on. No big deal yeah right... Service was back on in 10 minutes, but it will take 30 days for the money to be refunded to my CC!!
    $500.00!!! I went thru several supervisors and got a promise of 8 days I am going to use a visa gift card to pay my next bill so my debit card info is not on their records and get a new debit card after this has cleared. I have received 2 E-mails asking about my service, I'm telling them it sucks.
    I will be boxing up their junk by July 1 and the dish will be in the trash the same day.
  • 0
    Caren Cee
    Girrrrl I'm going to the FCC!
  • 0
    susan
    DIRECT TV is the very WORST. I would never haved signed up for it if I had aother choice. I live in North Hills Ca, the valley pit of ca. Filth and polution capital of the world just of the 405. I have not been able to watch my CNN news today because of direct tvs f up and I would love to cancel both of my tvs service if i didn't have to pay a penalty, THEY SUCK YOU INTO A TWO YEAR CONTRACT. watch out. Well guess what I am not paying for todays service because I didn't get any!!!!
    Oh and Chase Carey can go to hell, he is the president of a f ed up company and probably doesn't give a sh t! Just another CEO with no scruples and probably in his late 20's with a degree from Screw the People State College.
    Susan 1972 North Eastern Unniversity, Boston Ma. holder of a  Masters Degree in Business Ethics
  • 0
    Christine F.
    Direct Tv sucks. After the first promo year, the price went up to $80. I called to cancel and they offered a month free ($80) to stay so I agreed to keep it. Then one month later I decided to actually cancel and they told me the $80 credit that they gave me would be added back on because I didn't stay for 60 days. I explained to them that no one told me I had to stay for 60 days and they admitted that they do not disclose that information. I said that if I knew in the first place that was the deal, then I would not have stayed the extra 30 days and spent another $80! I hate Direct Tv.
  • 0
    Stan
    count me in, and Im a relatively new customer but already irate
  • 0
    Shawn P
    I agree  - i had the service for 2+ years - for the last 3 months my HD-DVR receiver has been slow and every time i turn my TV on in the mornings I had to hit the red reset button to get it to work - I called multiple times about this and they kept blowing me off-  finally customer service said that i needed a new receiver and then they never let me have it. Then they charged me for NFL Sunday ticket and the lady was rude as can be about removing the charge - put me on the ever lasting hold - SO i called to cancel today and they are charging me $340 for a new HD receiver i needed in my basement to replace a regular recevier and that locked me into a 2 yr contract - EFF THESE GUYS - i had to pay Cox communications $200 today to install because direct tv cut my outside cable line at ground level - i will NEVER USE THESE GUYS AGAIN - BE WARY
  • 0
    JohnnyS
    Direct TV actually asked my 8 months pregnant wife to get on a ladder to disconnect and reconnect the cable to the dish after refusing to come out and fix our lousy service.

    I will never, ever, ever use Direct TV and I will tell everyone I know how bad they suck.
  • 0
    Tracy
    Every single time it my tv goes off (searching for satelite), lately its been everyday, We are now in the midst of a flood and can't get info from a tv that is SEARCHING FOR SATELLITE.
  • 0
    Terry
    Ok, I'm one of those suckers who fell for the Direct TV ads about how much better this was than cable.  Here again, I sit watching nothing - because of a little rain. I lose signal at least once a week, sometimes for an hour or more. It sucks!  Oh how I wish I had my precious cable back.  Yea, it cost a little more, but I always had TV!!
  • 0
    Mike
    I signed a 2 year contract and moved. I haven't had a permanent address to hook up the service again but was completely willing to finish out my contract when I did find a permanent place.

    Basically they started charging me for services I wasn't getting and then charged a $180 early termination fee even though I didn't cancel the account.

    Direct TV is the most fraudulent cable company that has ever existed, once you sign with them you are basically signing your rights away to let them screw you.

    We must do everything we can to warn people about this evil shady beast!
  • 0
    Desmond Sheerin
    I just had the same thing happen and they said they would take it out of our acct~!! so deceptive and manipulative! I am disgusted to know that people or companies like this exist! what did u end up doing??
  • 0
    Desmond Sheerin
    They scammed us over and over again. We wanted to be out of our contract because their service sucked and when we called they told us we had 3 more months on our contract. So we waited the 3 months then called them to say we wanted to end which to our surprise they told us we had a contract with them until 2014. The reason they said was because a service was added to our contract which allows them to extend it. The service they are talking about was the dvr service and we NEVER asked for it to be added or wanted it. They had offered it free for 3 months and had told us once the 3 months was over it would automatically come off. Not only did it not come off they used it as an excuse to extend our contract. Please if anyone is reading this: DO NOT USE DIRECTV!!! I HAVE never in my life had to deal with such a manipulative company.
  • 0
    Desmond Sheerin
    I knew you all were liars! try and find another job that doesn't make u lose your morals!!!@
  • 0
    Rick
    I know what all you are saying. I had nothing but bad service from them and even though I had a maintenance contract they kept sending me defective units. After the 5th or 6th one, I gave us since my contract only had a few more months to go. Now that the contract has ended and I have sent the equipment back they keep calling me two or three times a month, plus their mailing to get me to return. I have repeatedly told them to take me off their list, but the calls keep coming. I will NEVER go back to them and have put up an antenna for my TV viewing.
  • 0
    Karen
    I agree with all other postings. Don't get mixed up with this company. We switched to direct tv a year ago when our phone company (frontier) offered us a bundle pack for the tv, phone and wireless internet. We'd been waiting for wireless service for 6 years, and had become very unhappy with dish tv, which we'ed had for 6 years. The frontier phone rep made it sound so wonderful, so easy, so great. They offered this great rate for one year. I called Direct Tv myself to find out what our payment would be after the 1st year. I was told it would go up slightly, but not by much, maybe $25 or $30.. We decided to sign up, and have regretted it from the start. As unhappy as we had become with dish tv, we have to say, their service really is better. Their dvr's are more user friendly and you get more for your money.

    After one year of service with direct tv, suddenly our bundle rate jumped from $123 to $172 a month.. I called to complain..I was told the extras we had were our choice, no one was forcing us to have them.. Every time I've called there, I feel as if the service reps are extremely condescending the minute you question what they're saying.

    I changed a few options at that time to get the bill down where it was a little more affordable. The next month, our bill was $188!!! I called to complain, again got the condescending attitude.. I started going through our bill, cancelling everything I could. When it came to the whole house option (so the dvr can be used on all tv's), I was told they couldn't remove the hd fee. I asked why not, that we didn't even have HD tv's, but were told we had to pay for that service in order to have the whole house option. Since we are now cancelling the whole house option, we want to cancel the HD fee, too. I was told by condescending "janelle" that she would try to explain this to me in the simplest of terms since it was clear that "I" was confused... half way through her explanation I interrupted her to ask if we've always paid the HD fee (I knew we hadn't.. we added the whole house option a few months ago).. She said yes, we had always paid it because our equipment "required" it.. I said, are you sure about that? she said yes.. I said, hmmmmm...really? because we never paid for it until we added the whole house option.. she again insisted that yes we had always paid for it and it could not be removed unless we wanted to pay for new dvr's.. i said again, really? she said in a very snide tone 'why don't we just take a look at your bill to see".. she put me on hold, and about 5 minutes later came back, with a very different tone to her voice, to say she guesses we hadn't been paying for it up until the whole house was added, so she would see if she could get that removed for me (as if she was doing me a huge favor)...

    Long story short, I got our bill cut down by $35, but we are still paying them way too much money for dvr service on one tv and one other tv in the house. We have the next to smallest package (the next one down is only $5 less)... This is a rip off company with many little tricks up their sleeves..

    I'm not sure how a company gets away with expecting customers to honor their so called "contract" when the customer has no control over the ridiculous hike in the cost of their service..

    After reading so many complaints about direct tv charging customer's credit card accounts without permission, I thought to myself, well, at least they don't have our debit card number, since we did all this through our phone company. We've never paid direct tv directly and never gave them our debit card number.. Just to be on the safe side, I just checked our account info on the direct tv website. THEY HAVE OUR DEBIT CARD NUMBER LISTED!!! We never gave it to them, so how did they get it?

    I'm furious and hope anyone thinking of signing up with them will think twice! Dish tv had horrible customer service, but at least we didn't live in fear that if we cancelled them, they could empty our checking account!
  • 0
    SUE
    CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT THEY R NOT GOING TO SHOW THE SUPERBOWL ON CHANNELL 7 CAUSE THEY R WORRIED ABOUT MONEY R U FREAKING KIDDING ME ITS THE SUPERBOWL
  • 0
    SUE
    CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT THEY R NOT GOING TO SHOW THE SUPERBOWL ON CHANNELL 7 CAUSE THEY R WORRIED ABOUT MONEY R U FREAKING KIDDING ME ITS THE SUPERBOWL

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