Direct Tv
Return Kit Sent to Wrong Address, $800 Charged After Cancelling

I was sorry that my new house lacked "line of sight" and so I was unable to continue my DirectTV service - especially because I like their product and the way their DVR works. After the installer turned in his report the nightmare began.
The whole story is longer than anyone would want to read but here is the gist of it:
-It took several attempts and several calls to get them to send me the return kit for my receiver. Each time they sent it to the wrong address, it never showed up, or in one case the rep just changed my address and sent nothing. On each occasion I was told that I would not be billed as long as I returned the equipment - and they understood it would take longer because of their errors. Around the 4th attempt - when they told me the incorrect address that they sent it to again I just went to that address and asked for the kit. If I had not been on top of this I would not have been able to return the equipment and they would have been justified in charging for it.
-When I got my CC bill I found almost $800 in charges from DirectTV - an early term charge (that per their policy is not assessed when there is no line of sight) and a charge for the equipment - which had been returned and they had more than sufficient time to process the return.
-Although they admit that they should not have made the charges they made is super hard to get them reversed. The rep was unable to refund my card and put me in some queue for so other person to address and call me back in the future. So their solution was that they get to have (and I get to pay interest on) $800 until some person at their end decides to do something about it. After much time and frustration to get a simple return kit into my hands I had little faith in any solution that they proposed. I told them that I did not want them to charge anything more to my credit card and the rep said something about the customer agreement and how they could charge my card (He may be correct, but that does not mean they can charge amounts that are not due to them to my card.)
-I called the CC company, disputed the charges and was assured that they would block future charges from directtv
-Got notice that the dispute for equipment return was denied and at the same time direct TV refunded my credit card for the equipment.
-Got a bill from direct TV for a strange random amount.
-Had to call again - was told that a credit was issued to my account but that it was not applied to my balance. In other words directtv actually owed me a small bit of money back - but was still billing me because some manual process is required to net the credit and debit balance in a persons account to arrive at a total owed or due and thus stop billing. Seriously???
-I estimate that I called DirectTV between 6 and 10 times in total to resolve this and spend well in excess of 2 hours on the phone.
This seems to me to be cut right from the health insurance companies procedures - Direct TV made lots of "mistakes" in their favor (meaning charges that never should have been assessed or errors that could otherwise lead to them charging me) and then makes it a super frustrating, time consuming, and confusing to address the issue. At the end of the day I am waiting 6-8 weeks for a small check from them - it is not a rip off exactly - I think the charges were sorted out once and for all and they assure me that a small check is coming - but the time - the frustration - I believe that having highly failure prone processes that require constant customer interaction to perform a simple function is in itself abusive when it reaches a certain point.

Company: Direct Tv
Country: USA
State: California
Site: directv.com

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