I think Direct TV is slipping

[Scott]

I'm a ten-year DirectTV guy, but it's been an ugly month in our relationship.  My sense is they are getting bigger, more powerful and less customer friendly.

I started two-months ago with an upgrade to the 5lnb dish and two hd-dvrs.  I've now battled the following:

a) DirectTV dish installer who forget to bolt in the struts on the new dish.  So that was a mess during all the snow as the thing would go in and out of alignment.  I had to get on the roof to fix it myself once I noticed the guy forgot the bolts.

b) DirectTV telling me they would give me one "free" HD-dvr if I turned in one of my tivo units that I "owned" under the previous structure.  I gave them my SD Tivo unit.  They then promptly billed me $300 for the HD-DVR I was supposed to get on "trade"

It took a lot of yelling with the manager to even get a 12-month/$10month "credit" against the $300 they nailed me with.  The manager first told me he had no record of the guy who took my order agreeing to the trade-in credit (which was the deal I cut when I ordered it).   Then he said, well, you gave us back an SD unit and we needed an HD unit.  This of course was after 20 minutes of denying they did any trade in deals period.  And that was 20 minutes after I had to argue with the initial customer service rep who told me that I couldn't possibly "trade-in" my Tivo since people aren't allowed to "own" those.

c) The manager while looking at my account to give me the $10 credit noticed that I "illegally" had the national Fox HD channel access, so he said he was under "FCC law" to remove that from me immediately.   I think he was so mad from the earlier part of our discussion he was going for it.

d) I started to enjoy the HD channels and was taping and watching a number of movies on HDMN and a couple other HD movie channels.....then around x-mas such channels got blacked out.  DirectTV told me they decided to move 5 HD channels to a "premium HD tier" which would cost me another $5 a month if I wanted it.   Of course I had paid that damn $10 a month for that original HD tier since 2003 for what was then a bunch of crap, but they didn't care.

e) Lastly, the HD Tivo's with dual buffers were great units.  These new Direct TV units which are presumably more profitable for them since they don't have to pay Tivo a license just aren't as good.  No dual buffers...hard to understand controls.

I feel like my longtime best friend has screwed me over.....up until this point I was treated great by DirectTv.....very different situation now at least in my circumstances.

[syrett4]

I'm a ten-year DirectTV guy, but it's been an ugly month in our relationship.  My sense is they are getting bigger, more powerful and less customer friendly.

I started two-months ago with an upgrade to the 5lnb dish and two hd-dvrs.  I've now battled the following:

a) DirectTV dish installer who forget to bolt in the struts on the new dish.  So that was a mess during all the snow as the thing would go in and out of alignment.  I had to get on the roof to fix it myself once I noticed the guy forgot the bolts.

b) DirectTV telling me they would give me one "free" HD-dvr if I turned in one of my tivo units that I "owned" under the previous structure.  I gave them my SD Tivo unit.  They then promptly billed me $300 for the HD-DVR I was supposed to get on "trade"

It took a lot of yelling with the manager to even get a 12-month/$10month "credit" against the $300 they nailed me with.  The manager first told me he had no record of the guy who took my order agreeing to the trade-in credit (which was the deal I cut when I ordered it).   Then he said, well, you gave us back an SD unit and we needed an HD unit.  This of course was after 20 minutes of denying they did any trade in deals period.  And that was 20 minutes after I had to argue with the initial customer service rep who told me that I couldn't possibly "trade-in" my Tivo since people aren't allowed to "own" those.

c) The manager while looking at my account to give me the $10 credit noticed that I "illegally" had the national Fox HD channel access, so he said he was under "FCC law" to remove that from me immediately.   I think he was so mad from the earlier part of our discussion he was going for it.

d) I started to enjoy the HD channels and was taping and watching a number of movies on HDMN and a couple other HD movie channels.....then around x-mas such channels got blacked out.  DirectTV told me they decided to move 5 HD channels to a "premium HD tier" which would cost me another $5 a month if I wanted it.   Of course I had paid that damn $10 a month for that original HD tier since 2003 for what was then a bunch of crap, but they didn't care.

e) Lastly, the HD Tivo's with dual buffers were great units.  These new Direct TV units which are presumably more profitable for them since they don't have to pay Tivo a license just aren't as good.  No dual buffers...hard to understand controls.

I feel like my longtime best friend has screwed me over.....up until this point I was treated great by DirectTv.....very different situation now at least in my circumstances.

WOW I just added a box tonight and although the hold time was a little long (20 mins) I had a picture on my screen about 2 minutes later.   Another great experience with DTV customer service.  If you think DTV is bad....switch to cable...you'll think differently.

[gparris]

Scott: Sorry to hear you had difficulties, but my brother did swapouts, new Slimline dish, upgrade boxes and just about everything I can think of with his residence and his rental unit and not had an issue I can remember for over ten years.

He had an issue, however, when his new-wife's home was rented out, following a renovation and their new renter wanted cable service:
As a comparison - this certainly was: TWC is no Directv, unfortunately, for payTV service.
He couldn't believe the "phone fun" with the TWC CSRs and the upfront installation charges, just to get it.
I got a call from him (or two) and I could hear his dismay as to why the renter wanted cable at all.


If you want real "fun", go to TWC - try it as it is without contracts, but you will cancel soon
- and flee back to Directv in no time!:D

[FiberOptic]

Scott: Sorry to hear you had difficulties, but my brother did swapouts, new Slimline dish, upgrade boxes and just about everything I can think of with his residence and his rental unit and not had an issue I can remember for over ten years.

He had an issue, however, when his new-wife's home was rented out, following a renovation and their new renter wanted cable service:
As a comparison - this certainly was: TWC is no Directv, unfortunately, for payTV service.
He couldn't believe the "phone fun" with the TWC CSRs and the upfront installation charges, just to get it.
I got a call from him (or two) and I could hear his dismay as to why the renter wanted cable at all.


If you want real "fun", go to TWC - try it as it is without contracts, but you will cancel soon
- and flee back to Directv in no time!:D

As a long time cable guy, you don't want to switch from DTV, I have had DTV for awhile now and couldn't be happier.  I just took advantage of a new AAA discount that they are offering.  For extending my contract a year I got $50 of my current bill and another $50 will come in month 13

[bubbaridesfast]

d) I started to enjoy the HD channels and was taping and watching a number of movies on HDMN and a couple other HD movie channels.....then around x-mas such channels got blacked out.  DirectTV told me they decided to move 5 HD channels to a "premium HD tier" which would cost me another $5 a month if I wanted it.   Of course I had paid that damn $10 a month for that original HD tier since 2003 for what was then a bunch of crap, but they didn't care.

You should have known about this one, it was not a big secret that on 12/15 the new HD pack started at $5/month but if you sign up the 1st 3 months will still be free and as far as I have seen, you can cancel after the 3 months are up although it sounds like you find value in HDMN and shouldn't have a problem with $5 since we all paid $10.99 all of these previous years for the same number of channels. It's probably a better value than paying for more than 1 HD DVR.

[smack]

I was a little upset with the new HD Pack as well.  I didn't get the specifics so correct me if I am wrong.

I am paying 10.99 for the HD Pack which I have been doing for years.

They take some channels away from it and want me to pay an additional $5 to get them back?

Like I said, I don't know the specifics, just that I called D* and they told me I would need the new HD pack and they would give it to me free for 3 months.  Should I still be paying the $10.99 for the original HD Pack or did that price go down?

I do not have a 5 lnb dish until spring.  The D* installer told me they could not go on roofs when there was snow.  Even though there is no snow on my roof.  Im not quite sure why they even sent them.

Still, I would not go back to cable.

What should I be paying for HD from D*?

[Matt Heebner]

a) DirectTV dish installer who forget to bolt in the struts on the new dish. So that was a mess during all the snow as the thing would go in and out of alignment. I had to get on the roof to fix it myself once I noticed the guy forgot the bolts.

Yep, just had an issue with an installer who put the support arms on backwards. Had to have another tech come out to fix because the alignment went screwy. Directv did try and charge me $70 for a service call. One phone call was all it took to get it straightened out.

b) DirectTV telling me they would give me one "free" HD-dvr if I turned in one of my tivo units that I "owned" under the previous structure. I gave them my SD Tivo unit. They then promptly billed me $300 for the HD-DVR I was supposed to get on "trade"

That is very, very weird. I couldn't GIVE my old Tivo HD or standard boxes back to Directv. They did not want 'em at all. The whole goal for Directv is start moving people slowly to their DVR boxes, and the MPEG4 HD boxes (all of the HD channels are eventually moving to MPEG4). Why a manager was argueing with you about it is beyond me since they are just going to 'junk' them out anyway.
You should have hung up on him, called back and gotten customer retention (speak, "cancelling service" in the voice system and you will immediately be hooked to customer retention) who would have handled this much better.

c) The manager while looking at my account to give me the $10 credit noticed that I "illegally" had the national Fox HD channel access, so he said he was under "FCC law" to remove that from me immediately. I think he was so mad from the earlier part of our discussion he was going for it.

We have a Owned and Operated FOX station here in the Milwaukee area which allows us the national feed of FOX from New York. Nothing illegal about it, it is allowed, but only in O&O  area's.  I have it, by brother has it, many people I know have it.

d) I started to enjoy the HD channels and was taping and watching a number of movies on HDMN and a couple other HD movie channels.....then around x-mas such channels got blacked out. DirectTV told me they decided to move 5 HD channels to a "premium HD tier" which would cost me another $5 a month if I wanted it. Of course I had paid that damn $10 a month for that original HD tier since 2003 for what was then a bunch of crap, but they didn't care.

Yep, this has been in the works for a while now, and I think it totally sucks too !! I remember Directv saying that the HD package for &11/mo was the only charge we would see for any HD stations they put on now and in the future, with the exception of HD Sunday Ticket (which is a whole other can of worms for me) Directv went back on this promise for sure.

Lastly, the HD Tivo's with dual buffers were great units. These new Direct TV units which are presumably more profitable for them since they don't have to pay Tivo a license just aren't as good. No dual buffers...hard to understand controls.

Nothing, and I MEAN NOTHING will ever replace the dual live buffers that I LOVED with my Tivo. GOD I miss them   It's not that I don't like the Directv boxes, but I really REALLY REALLY miss the dual live buffers....especially for football season. I have heard rumours that Directv is looking into adding this with some firmware updates......doubtful but it keeps the hope alive......

[LowSignal]

I noticed on TWC that the DVRs with the blue software  have dual buffers now, maybe Direct tv can do a software upgrade too.

[Army82ndAB]

I had an unpleasant welcome back to DTV in late October after switching back over from Dish Network...

I had an appointment to have the Slimline Dish put up, an HD-DVR in the living room, and a regular HD receiver in the bedroom. First of all, I had all of the lines ran for them minus the bedroom so starting off it should've been an easy job right? Wrong. The installers show up and I can barely understand them because neither of them speak fluent english, but I managed to communicate for the most part so not such a big deal there. Then they ask me why I just ordered a Dish to be put up and no boxes??? GREAT! They called DTV and 30 minutes later they walk in with my boxes and told me that "this happens all the time with stupid DTV."

They come in and inspect everything and after 15 minutes come to the conclusion that I only need 1 more line ran, even though I spent the entire time trying to tell them that in the first place. One of them starts to run the line while the other goes to set up the Dish. After about 45 minutes they have the lines ran and the Dish up and I had hooked up all the cables to my systems. Well during set-up the only lines that were working go figure were the ones that I ran, lol...So they had to go figure out why their line didn't work which took them another 15 minutes.

Okay. So they set everything up and at this point I just wanted them gone so when they set the boxes to 480P I didn't say anything. Finally they were gone and out of my hair! I then set the boxes up properly but noticed the only channels I had were the HD Pack of what 5 channels???

I'll spare the specific details but it took no less than 5 more phone calls and 4 hours of waiting for them to finally get everything working 100%. It was very tempting to cancel the whole thing right then and there, but as of today I'm very pleased and glad I am with DTV. That was a Saturday afternoon that I'll never get back though

[Tom Snyder]

DirecTV subcontracts Premier Communications to do their installations. It's still hard to maintain quality control when you subcontract that stuff out. I wonder if that contract is let out for bids periodically. If they were smart they would.

Anecdotal experience is always hard, because they could have a million great installs, and 10 bad ones... the 10 bad ones will be the ones that get posted.

For the record, I'm 5 for 5 positive with these guys...

[Army82ndAB]

Oh I've had good experiences too, this was just the latest one since I switched back and unfortunately it was bad. And honestly, I would blame my poor experience more so on DTV because of the hours of phone calls I had to make after the install, and for them having my job order being listed simply as putting a Dish up, lol...

But like I said I'm definitely happy now and thankfully the Dish was mounted superbly unlike some others have had...

[Dan the Man]

When the installation sub-contractor showed up to install my DTV install on Oct. 31, he showed up right near the end of the "install window" they promised. It was supposed to be between 1-5 and I think he got there about 4 PM or so. I figured no big deal, I had a simple install and thought he would be done in 90 min. or so. I only needed the 2 runs pulled to my DVR on the first floor, install the dish and the 3 boxes (one of which I already owned). Well 3 1/2 hours later he left, and I even had to do the set-up myself on 2 of the 3 receivers since he wasn't all that familiar with probrammign them. He could have got then done, but I wanted to speed things up at that point. After he left, I noticed he didn't clean up all that well, and later on I found that he hed left a few nuts of of the dish assembly. It's not that he did a horrible job, but it could have been better and faster.

I talked with him quite a bit (yeh, that probably slowed things down a little) about DTV and TWC. He had worked for TWC before leaving to work as an installer for DTV. I don't think he worked for a separate sub-contractor, it sounded like he had his own direct contract with DTV. He said that DTV paid better per job, but he had to purchase all the materials and cover mileage, etc. on his own.

Bottom line, DTV really isn't dong the installs, but that still make them responsible and they need to make sure the subs they hire do a quality job. DTV called me about an hour after he left. I gave the installer a pretty good review, but in hindsight, had I seen eveything he left behind and the fact the dish was missing some bolts, I probably would have been more critical and complained about the quality.

Hopefully the bad installers don't stick around long.

[Scott]

I wish I knew why these guys are leaving bolts out?  It's almost like they lost a few on a roof on one job and then are robbing them from other dish kits they have in the truck.  

In regards to Matt's post on Fox6 being an OO station, I told that to the Direct TV supervisor and explained to him that our market was allowed that national Fox feed.   He told me that was old news and that some 2004 law required them to remove access from all accounts of that channel but that they manually had to do it, since their software couldn't search it out.

In regards to the dual buffers, to me the whole issue is that TIVO has a superior product but DTV didn't want to pay the licensing fee, preferring to keep that profit for themselves.  But the DIRECT tv recorders are an inferior product IMO.  

Guys...I'm not saying TWC is better.  I realize it isn't.  But I just think DirectTV now has more subscribers than they can handle and the powers that be are turning the screws on customer service while turning up the profit spigot at this point.  What once was an entreprenurial customer service culture is morphing towards what we are used to with the cable monopoly.