I have been a DirecTV customer for 17 years. There have been a few ups and downs, picture quality went up and down with compression as the demand for lots of channels changed, choice of marketing packages got worse as pricing structures got more greedy, but it's a tough industry, so I was usually more or less satisfied.
I had to call them 3 or 4 times over the years to ask to be removed from the sales/marketing call list. Sometimes the service personnel were so poorly trained they didn't even know there was such a list but if I would call back I'd eventually get put back on the list for no marketing calls.
A few weeks back I got a call, the first thing the guy said was that this was not a sales call. They wanted to offer me movie packages for 10 bucks a month for 3 months. It was clearly stated that any time during the 3 months I could cancel, if I continued it would be normal price, but then if I canceled it would be pro-rated by the partial month. I was told there was no contract, but rather that this was a thank-you gift offer for being a long time customer (thus not really a sales call). I also would get NFL Sunday ticket at no price for reviewing the offer. This sounded too good to be true, so I asked about it twice.
When the bill came in sure enough, it had gone up 60 bucks. I was so mad that after 17 years I was ready to cancel on the spot and go with ATT. But then I was told that I was on a 1 year contract which the salesman had denied! Usually a contract is to cover the cost of an installation or expensive equipment, I received neither and never agreed to a term contract.
The first service contacts I talked to were extremely rude, they have a pretty bad bunch down there, must be the Atlanta center from their accent. I was told several false and contradictory things about the service just because their staff is so poorly trained. The Atlanta people treated me like I was a crook trying to get away with something.
After persisting I got to talk to a more reasonable employee who backed off all the charges but I still seem to be set at a base price higher than the old one for the same service. I'll wait a week and call them again, I want to see if the flag that says I'm on a contract was really removed. I really think I'll cancel to go with another provider. Every time I grab my remote control or see the DirecTV logo I feel like I need to take a shower.
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