DirecTV Customers – Cancel Now!

I was a DirecTV customer for 4 years. I would consider myself a former loyal customer who wanted the company to succeed. I felt they operated in a manner that cared about the customer and wanted the customer to be happy. For awhile, they actually practiced that philosophy. Today, DirecTV is out to ruin the customer and post charges to customer accounts without any notification or explanation. If you contact Customer Care within DirecTV, you should expect to be disconnected or flat-out hung up on. The DirecTV customer mis-management grows far deeper than I could ever expect. Cable operators in the United States are probably the most hated corporations on the planet. The simple reason – customer service relations. DirecTV is far too big for me alone to fight. If the people drop DirecTV, then DirecTV will finally realize they have a problem after their bottom line has been dramatically reduced.

I woke this morning to learn that DirecTV decided to charge my checking account $511.63 without my knowledge or approval. I reviewed my account settings on DirecTV’s website and found that the recurring payment option was in fact set to “off”. My final bill had a due date scheduled for 6/28. My final bill was a $250.00 early termination fee. Well, DirecTV decided that I never returned my equipment and they were going to charge me for it. Since they were already in the mood to charge, they also charged my final bill at the same time. I shipped my equipment back using the DirecTV returns process and the DirecTV supplied return boxes and waybills. The equipment was even shipped out of a FedEx Kinkos location to ensure that they would receive their property quickly. I even watched the Kinkos employee scan the tracking numbers into the system so it would show that they have been shipped back. Did DirecTV ever receive them? Who knows, but they sure claim they never did.

Instead of talking to someone in the billing department to attempt to rectify this situation, or even having some kind of escalation process, DirecTV wants you [the customer] to write them a letter. Are we still living in the year 1920? The DirecTV representative that I finally got to speak with and did not hang-up on me (no, I was not yelling or cursing at them) stated that they would try and credit my account, but it would take approximately 3 weeks to process. Want to know why DirecTV has service agreements like wireless phone operators? Simple – they are losing customers faster than they are receiving. Comcast doesn’t require any kind of service agreement. Comcast also offers far more HD channels and a superior service line-up. Comcast also has escalation paths and a decent customer service department.

Learn from my 4-year, $5000 mistake, – drop DirecTV and switch to someone else.