Problem #1. I phoned DirecTV on June 10 to cancel the account I had held with them since 1998. I was told there would be a cancellation fee of $140.00. When I asked what the cancellation fee was for, I was told the fee was being charged because I had asked that a defective receiver be replaced a year earlier.
I was further informed that this receiver exchange request further triggered an 18 month renewal of my contract. This information was never disclosed to me at the time, nor, did I ever sign anything to that effect.
Problem #2. I am also being billed $37.96 for some Pay-Per-View events that they found on my returned receiver card. DirecTV says the events occurred in 2005.
When I explained that they had sent me new cards in 2006 and that my receiver was never hooked up to a phone, nor did they have any record of me ever ordering PPV. They said "too bad, you still owe us". The only way these events could have been logged is that DirecTV is using a form of 'phishing', i.E., turning on PPV channels at random, then, when someone inadvertently pushes, for example 595 on the remote (an adult channel) instead of 295, the event gets logged. This can easily occur as the '2' is just above the '5' on the remote keypad.
After searching various other consumer sites, this practice seems to be fairly common. DirecTV is leaving themselves wide open for some enterprising attorney to file a class action lawsuit on this practice.
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