I have been a reluctant subscriber with DirecTV since they bought my previous provider six years ago. It has been a rocky relationship at best.
Two years ago, because of a job location change, I called them to put the account in suspension. To my way of thinking, that meant that the billing and service would stop until I changed it. They had other ideas but didn't bother to tell me what they were. At the time I had approximately $130.00 credit sitting on the account. Approximately a year after I placed the account in suspension, I got a call telling me that my account was overdue and was subject to cancellation and collection.
I informed them that the account was suspended at my request and that "you owe me money." On the contrary, I was informed, the account was only suspended, and suspensions are only good for six months, after which they reactivate the account. "Maybe," I said, "somebody should have mentioned that at the time." Yes, they agreed, they should have. "Where," I asked, "in your agreement does it say that? In fact, where anywhere does it say that?" After a long discussion they agreed to cancel the fees and refund my money. "Did I want to activate the account?" No, cancel the account, effective immediately, I told them. They didn't.
Unknown to me, the account was once again put into suspension, and once again I received a phone call telling me that the account was overdue.
"How can that be?" I asked. "The account is cancelled." No, they said, it's suspended. I informed them that that is an error: you were supposed to shut it off and refund my money. "Oh," they said.
To make a long story short, they not only refused to accept that they made a mistake because "according to my notes we were only to suspend it," they ate through the balance and added an amount almost exactly twice that for service I never ordered. And if I want to dispute it, I have to write a letter.
I wrote the letter, and two weeks later I got a phone call from India or someplace from a man telling me that "according to the notes he was looking at..." I asked him if there was a note on his notes telling him that I said his notes were wrong. No, he said. Then he proceeded to interpret my letter. He had the claims that I stated in my letter completely backward. So not only are they incapable of listening, they are highly selective with what they note and seemed to be challenged by the written word.
This man went on to tell me, according to his notes, how they had left repeated messages on my answering machine beginning in February of last year. I informed him that there had never been an answering machine on that phone until October of this year.
Then he told me that I should have checked my bills. I informed him that the account is set up as direct debit, so you don't send bills. Then he told me that I should have checked my account on the web. I told him that I can't log into the account and haven't been able to for a year. He told me that they turn off the web account when they turn off the service. "Exactly," I said. "You shut off the web account, you don't send bills, is there any reason why I should not have thought that the account was closed?" "You could have e-mailed us if you had a question," he said. "Why would I e-mail you? I didn't have any questions. The account is closed." And on and on.
After all that, DirecTV still insists that the account was only suspended. "Well, that's fine, whatever you say. Note this: you are not getting paid, period, end of story." These people are an abomination. They will cheat you out of ten cents if they can, because somewhere in their notes it probably says they can.
Is DirecTV bad? Absolutely!
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