I moved into a new apartment a few months ago. All apartments come with DirecTV. No choice. OK. The product actually seemed pretty cool – better than the cable service I was used to.
I signed up for Whole Home DVR – a service that allows me to have one DVR but watch movies and shows from any other room in the house. Very cool. I love it. In principle.
The problem is that it’s been almost 2 months and it doesn’t work. First, I was unable to watch shows in the other room – which is the whole point of the service. They came and replaced both of my receivers. That seemed to work. I recorded a bunch of movies, went out of town and eagerly looked forward to watching them. When I got home, all of my movies were gone. Deleted. It turns out that some of the wires can cross in an apartment building and one of my neighbors was able to delete my shows.
So they installed a block. Supposedly, my DVR was blocked and on its own line. Impregnable! But yet, I’m still seeing shows on my DVR that my neighbors are recording and I’m still seeing their DVRs show up in my list of authorized DVRs. In order to make it impossible for my neighbors to delete my shows, I have to make it impossible to delete my own shows from other rooms in my apartment (part of the point of having Whole Home DVR).
Bottom line: DirecTV is not yet providing a service that works as it should.
But of course they’re charging me for it.
So I call up today. I want at least a partial refund. I’m paying for a fully functional service but not getting one. Their policy: I have to keep paying until they resolve the problem. Then they can refund me whatever share they think makes sense retroactive to when I first reported the problem.
Huh?
What if they never solve it? Ummmm. What if it takes a long time? Ummmmm. How about I pay nothing until you resolve it and once you do we’ll figure out what I owe you going back to when I first reported the problem. Well, that’s not our policy. So I have to give DirecTV a loan for free? Well, that’s how we do it.
So, I’m forced to say that DirecTV sucks. Their customer service is not really serving the customer at all. They should call it “DirecTV Bottom Line Service.”
Consequence: Well, now I’m pissed off. Now I’m going to complain to my building management. To my congressman. To the State Consumer Board. To the FCC. And to you, dear reader. Is that really worth it? DirecTV could have turned me into a passionate loyal fan. I was already impressed with the product (in theory). They could have said “You know what, we screwed up. We’re going to give you a full refund going back to when you opened your account and we’re going to not charge you until we fix this. It’s our fault so it should be our problem.” Or, they could have offered me another handful of movie channels for free. Or. Or. Or… But instead, they read me the company line which is not at all in my favor and which is absolutely unfair.
So now they’ve got a pissed off customer who wants to fight.
Worth it?
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Having no choice is never good, but you went into it with an open mind and seemed to be more then willing to adapt to the change. Working for DISH I have seen problems that take a while to correct, but never once have I ever told a customer to keep paying us until we get it fixed, and then we will retroactively credit them, just doesn’t happen like that, if you are paying for something it better be working. I think the customer service side of DIRECTV is only part of the problem with the “value” of the company, they offer new customer overextended credits to keep up with the market, then expect existing customers to cover their profit. Value is not made up of those two qualifications. Like I tell anyone though, comparison is the basis of any good informed decision, although in your case they didn’t really give you a choice, but it is always good to be informed, check it out at http://www.besttvforme.com
Wow Adam; that is certainly a bizarre and complicated problem. I imagine that your apartment is a commercial installation and the problem is complicated by the new technology in the receivers connecting with the other apartments somehow; (obviously) unfortunately the more complex we make technology the more potential there is for problems. I really like my two room DVR I have with my DISH Network employee account because it doesn’t have problems like that, it’s hard wired. I was concerned about the price I was paying for my fees though and so I started looking around to see if I could save money with another company. I was surprised to find on a website called besttvforme.com that someone else had the same idea and did the research already. I am actually paying less for my fees already with my DISH service which was a huge relief. I sure hope you get your problem fixed but I would say starting from scratch is the easiest thing to do.
On one hand, this is spam. This DISH folks are responding to my post in an effort to sell their own product. On the other hand, Bryon actually typed a customized response to my post (i.e., he didn’t just paste some boilerplate DISH sales pitch) and his comment was relevant. Same goes for Jason’s. I’m not going to look into DISH and I don’t endorse (or not) their product. But I’m publishing these comments because I do approve of them. DISH is going out on the web and engaging. That’s what they should be doing and I applaud it.
I got dish 3 months ago. This is happening to me. Same thing!! What happen did DirecTV ever fix it? They won’t help me. I keep calling them.