At the end of November I contacted DirectTV by telephone to order a sports event - an international Cricket series, England vs Sri Lanka. The DirectTV web site shows that the series can be purchased Ala Carte for $49.99 rather than having to purchase the season ticket, which they call the "Cricket Ticket" and which costs $250.
During that phone call the customer rep wasn't certain that the event could be purchase Ala Carte and put me on hold to check. However, when he returned he informed me that I could indeed purchase this event by itself and it would cost $49.99 - which I then agreed to purchase. I asked the rep if he could tell me what channel and time the event began which he spent some time looking up and eventually gave me the wrong information - wrong channel, wrong time, and wrong day, which caused me to miss the first day of the event. After an annoyed phone call, a different rep agreed to refund me $15 over a 3 month period. Here it gets worse...
The following day when I tried to watch the second day of the event it was still locked. After a good deal of time on the phone, they were still unable to turn the channel on, until I got to speak to a supervisor, who informed me that this particular event cannot be viewed without the Cricket Ticket and she would be happy to turn the Ticket on for another $200. I argued that I had already been caused a good deal of aggravation over this and I suggested that since this was all their fault, they should turn on the Cricket Ticket without charging me further. We argued a bit, and the supervisor finally said "Well, I see you have been our customer for 10 years, so I'm going to turn on the Cricket Ticket and you will not be charged."
I watched the event for that weekend, but the following Monday I checked my DirectTV account and found that they had charged me $250 for the Cricket Ticket (AND the $49.99 for the Ala Carte selection also!)! No subsequent calls, no empassioned argument, no reasoning, has succeeded in getting the charge of $250 removed, a charge to which I never agreed. They claim that because the supervisor made no note in their system of the waiving of the $250 fee, that there is nothing they can do!
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