Matt Mauldin

A couple of months ago I told you how bad DirecTV sucks.  Well, they still suck and here’s more proof.

DirecTV’s Lame Attempts to Keep a Customer

So after I canceled my account, they called back about 7 times that first week offering me some lame deal – half off the basic price for TV service for 12 months.  The catch was I would still have to pay all the extra fees and crap they charged me which pissed me off in the first place.

Every time they called, I told them I would accept no less than this deal:

• I would pay 1/2 off their basic service
• Free upgrade to their best service
• Free HD service (normally an extra $10.month)
• Free additional boxes (normally an additional $5/month)
• Free movie channels (an additional $7-$21/month)
• They would guarantee this price to me for two years, not one, because I had been a customer of theirs for two years up to this point
• And to top it off, I told them they would have to refund the $300 I paid them for the HD box the “leased” to me.

From what I understand, DirecTV has been losing customers left and right, but they would still be insane to agree to my terms.  On each call, they tried to tell me that their original offer was a great deal. “No.” They may could wave one of the additional box fees. “No.” They didn’t have the authority to make that decision. “The stop wasting my time.”

My favorite was the last guy who, after I refused to negotiate, said “Unfortunately we won’t be able to keep you as a customer”

I responded, “That’s only unfortunate for you.”

I think I finally annoyed them enough because I haven’t had a call from them in almost two months.

DirecTV’s Incompetance … Again

So after they finally canceled my account and returned my receiver boxes, I had $8.43 in service fees that needed to be paid because I canceled 1-2 days into the new billing cycle.  I actually received a bill with this amount on it.  I’m a firm believer in paying what you own (even if the company completely screws you over and sucks in all other possible ways) so I called in and paid with my card to get it over and done with.

But this past month, I saw a charge to my bank account for $13.78, and then three days later I received another bill from DirecTV detailing those charges, but it was already paid.  What?

After reviewing this bill, I found that it was for three movies we rented in 2008.  That’s crap because the charge is supposed to be on the monthly bill that you rent the movie in.  And they went ahead and charged my card for it without telling me?  So I called to deal with these jokers one more time.

The idiot from DirecTV told me that for some reason they were unable to apply the charges on the bill because our receiver would not communicate with DirecTV at the time we rented the movies.  Instead, they had to manyally download the charges from the account card in my receiver after I returned the boxes.  When I asked why, he said because we probably didn’t have a phone line plugged into the back of the receiver.

Wait a minute, you can’t rent a movie without a phone line plugged into the back of the receiver!  Of course we had a phone line plugged in, because the fact that we rented movies proves it.

It wasn’t my fault their crap didn’t work – and here’s another example of them screwing up and asking me to pay for it.  No intelligible response from this genius, so I told him he needed to refund the amount.

He refused.

Some of you may say that I should have paid it because I rented the movies.  Well,

• It would already be paid if DirecTV’s crap worked anywhere near the way they say it does.
• I would have paid it if they called and told me about the charge first (call, email, send the bill first).
• I would have paid it if they hadn’t already sent me a “final bill” for $8.43 the previous month.

But to charge my card, without authorization, after I am no longer a customer, for something that should have been paid the previous year is ridiculous.

Credit Card Dispute to the Rescue

So I called up my bank, and for the first time ever I disputed a credit card charge.  It was for only $13.78, but I did it more out of principle than the money.  DirecTV, you just don’t pull that crap with your customers.  Oh, you DO pull that crap, but you shouldn’t.

DirecTV, go suck a fart.

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