Personal Story
DIRECTV Loses An HDTV Customer
Comcast makes an offer your author can't refuse.
By Swanni
Every morning, I come by to see if he's okay or needs anything in particular. Which is why I was distressed to hear yesterday that his DIRECTV HD DVR was "acting up" -- again.
This is his third HD DVR from DIRECTV in less than two years. In the past, the set-top failed to record shows or deleted them after they were recorded for no apparent reason. (DIRECTV sent replacements; more about that later.)
On Sunday, the current one was displaying the dreaded "Searching for Satellite" message almost every time it was tuned to a high-def channel.
He said the message had been popping up for the last several days.
"Why is it doing that?" he asked.
My father had previously complained that recordings on the current HD DVR sometimes failed to play -- and he was right. I witnessed it four times myself.
Swanni's Dad: A new subscriber to Comcast.
So, enough was enough.
(It also didn't help that two months ago DIRECTV tried to bill my father for an extra month of programming; they said he hadn't paid his bill and were threatening to terminate his service in one week.
Of course, he had paid the bill -- so I sent DIRECTV a copy of his cashed check. After -- get this -- two weeks, DIRECTV finally admitted their error and credited my father's account. But they never apologized for their mistake -- and making my 86-year-old father think he hadn't paid his bills.)
Sensing my father's frustration, I immediately called DIRECTV, intending to cancel his service once and for all. But I also wanted to ask DIRECTV why his HD DVR was so buggy. After a few tests, the DIRECTV Customer Service Rep (CSR) determined that it was indeed the set-top -- and not the dish.
"There's nothing wrong with the signal," she said.
She said DIRECTV could send another HD DVR -- yes, a fourth one -- to my Dad. But I told her that I wanted to cancel the service because this had been such a frustrating experience for my father -- and myself.
After consulting my father's records, however, she said he still was in the middle of his "two-year commitment" with DIRECTV.
Click to read Part Two of this article.
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Swanni (Phillip Swann) is
president and publisher of TVPredictions.com. He has been quoted in
dozens of publications and broadcast outlets, including CNN, Fox
News, Inside Edition, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The
Chicago Tribune, The Financial Times, The Associated Press and The
Hollywood Reporter. He can be reached at
swann@tvpredictions.com
or at 703-505-3064.
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