When I first signed up with DirecTV I was excited about their HD-DVR service since they were offering it for $54.99 for the first year. I signed up for it getting one of their moving channel packages free for 3 months as well. For the first three months I was supposed to be paying $54.99 per month until the free movie subscription was up where the cost should have been an additional $23 a month. I signed up for paperless statements and automatic billing as well.
The first bill I received said No Payment Due so immediately I thought the automatic payments were working as they were supposed to. The next month I received the same email, No Payment Due. The problems started to occur on the third month, when the bill all of sudden said I owed $84.48. I immediately went to my account at www.directv.com to see why there was such a large amount owed all of a sudden.
To my surprise I suddenly owed $72.99 per month for the HD-DVR service that I should have only been paying $54.99 a month for and they added their DirecTV Protection Plan for $5.99 per month which I declined to get when initially signing up for the service online and when I signed the contract. I also looked back at my previous statements that said I didn't owe anything to find out they were charging me the full $72.99 a month for the HD-DVR as well. I immediately contacted DirecTV to see why my payments were higher and why the protection plan was added. They said for the $54.99 monthly payments I needed to redeem a rebate online to get the $18 off per month and they said the protection plan was added as a free trial that had to removed by contacting them. I never requested for that protection service and I've looked over all of the emails I've received from DirecTV and no where does it state that service was added or requested even in the initial order that lists the prices of everything I did order.
After contacting them they emailed the link for the online redemption to get the $54.99 per month price I agreed to and I found that I was unable to redeem the rebate. I contacted them again and they told me they would have a supervisor contact me about it so I stood by waiting for the call. I never received the call but instead received a letter in the mail stating that I had 60 days to redeem the rebate and since it was past 60 days I was unable to receive the rebate. Also, since I was canceling the protection plan after it went into effect they wanted to charge me $10 to cancel it so I fought them over that telling them instead to give me a refund for a service I never requested. They said they wouldn't be able to refund me but give me the service for free for a few months, which of course is worthless, but by some miracle they did end up refunding me what they charged.
The deception I'm referring to in the title is with the first two statements I received stating that no payment was due... Seems like a bit of coincidence that the first 60 days of billing they say I don't owe anything to make it look like my automatic payments are working and on the third statement they say I do owe something after I'm unable to redeem the rebate. That is very, very deceptive in my eyes. I do fully admit that I missed the fine print that said I needed to redeem the rebate online but nowhere in any email was there a link to redeem it and by showing I didn't owe anything for only the first two months when I would be able to get the rebate is absolutely ridiculous.
I tried contacting them a few more times to tell them to fix the problem or come get their equipment but of course I never heard anything back from them so this is my final course of action besides taking them to court. Hopefully they'll respond to me now... But I doubt it.
For those of you interested in satellite TV... Don't bother. DirecTV is absolutely horrible and I've heard bad stories about Dish Network as well. If your cable company is at least honest, stick with them. I know once this ordeal is over with I'm definitely going with cable as it is a good local company that I can trust.
Mark
Howard, Kansas
U.S.A.
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