I recently decided to sign a contract with DirecTV, who I used as my satellite provider several years ago. As with many providers, I signed the standard two-year contract, in which DirecTV provides the service and equipment for a monthly charge. As soon as the system was installed, we set the Parental Locks and Limits feature to restrict the purchase of pay-per-view movies, as instructed by DirecTV, in order to prevent my mentally-disabled adult son from making unwanted purchases. My husband is an engineer and I am a technical writer, so we are technically competent and believe we set up the controls correctly.
When we received our cable bill, much to our surprise a number of adult movies had been purchased, that neither my husband nor myself ordered. We contacted DirecTV, who agreed to block movie orders by remote and reduce the unauthorized charges to half, but refused to allow us to cancel our contract or refund the entire amount.
Initially, we assumed that my son had made the purchases, by somehow stumbling on a bug in the Parental Controls. Now, I'm not so sure. After doing some Internet research, I have discovered a number of instances where consumers were charged for PPV purchases they did not make through DirecTV. Several accounts are listed at the URLs below.
Http://www.consumeraffairs.com/cable_tv/directv_porn.html
/Satellite-Companies/Direct-T-V-And-Bck-C/direct-t-v-and-bck-communicati-EF9CC.htm
Regardless of whether the charges were fraudulently placed on my bill or whether my mentally-disabled son was able to circumvent DirecTV's user interface, I don't feel that DirectTV has upheld their side of the contract. Has anyone else had a similar experience with DirecTV?
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