I hate Direct TV
Complaint
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
cause of nonpayment.well i called western union to make sure they were lying and sure enough western union gave me a confirmation number proving that they did receive the payment.my services has now been off for three days and now they are telling that i will have an adjustment to my next month bill.i hung up on them and i am now in the process of contacting a lawyer to see if i have a case.
INSTALLATION: First, we had issues just to get it installed. They came once and didn't have what they needed (even though we told them exactly what our set up was with Verizon) so we had to HIRE an electrician to run an extra line from the junction box in the basement to the outside. For the second appointment, we had to make a special effort to be back from out of town early to meet the guy and he didn't show up...they never put the appointment in the system, despite having confirmed it over the phone twice before hand...my wife even asked them for a confirmation email and they said no, the system couldn't do that! The customer service rep was a complete [***] and refused to even try to get a service crew to our house that day. She said that they had NO WAY of contacting the service technicians in the area! TOTAL BS! So it took FOUR precious Saturday's wasted just to get the equipment installed!!!
LAGGING and FREEZING: Anyhow, finally got it installed and thought life could go back to normal. But now we've had it for five months and its been nothing but a hassle. It lags just switching channels, sometimes just 2-3 seconds (still unaceptable, but something you learn to live with), but very often it lags for several minutes just to change the channel or bring up the guide. It has also FROZEN several times. The DVR also lags on recorded programs, making them un-watchable.
OVER THE PHONE SUPPORT: We spent an hour on the phone with a technical rep and walked through a full re-set and all sorts of programming checks. After a week or two it was clear that the issues hadn't been resolved.
ON-SITE SUPPORT: They sent out a technician (good thing we got the $5/mo "protection plan". WTF! How do you try to charge people for service calls to fix a defective product that you lease to them! This is a complete and separate SCAM they run). He said the first guy hadn't even plugged it in correctly. He spent about an hour re-connecting and re-setting the system again. Three weeks later, it is still no better. Just had a program recorded yesterday afternoon, tried to watch it last night, and it was lagging (picture freezing and skipping) heavily every five seconds. Impossible to watch.
I absolutely HATE Direct TV. I have much better things to do with my time than post complaints, but I'm so shocked that Direct TV is even in business, that I feel obligated to help spread the word that it is a completely worthless TV service and has no right to exist.
To anyone out there who is considering satellite TV service - Run, do not walk, from Direct TV. They are a bunch of lying CROOKS. Don't end up like the rest of us who innocently wandered into their clutches. SAVE YOURSELF. Please.
And I am looking forward to the day when Direct TV is finally held legally responsible for all the money (not to mention time and energy) they have stolen from innocent consumers.