Let me start by saying I am not an angry guy or a pain in the rump customer. While I can get frustrated, I do not go off on people who do not offer good customer service nor do I ask to speak to the manager but today pushed my limits.
After being a Direct TV customer for 5 years, I wish I knew then what I know now and never gave them my business or any of my money.
Last Febuary, we were having some problems with the Tivo so Jenni touched base with them. They said that our unit was old and they would just send us a DVR to replace it and all we had to do was cover the shipping. Sounded good.
From the start, the DVR never worked well. It had less features than the Tivo, it wouldn’t record some of the shows we had set up, it would freeze when trying to fast forward or move back, just never quite right. Jenni tried to work with thier troubleshooting and tech support but no results.
Then we decided to investigate going to high definition TV. Dish Network has a really good deal right now but didn’t want to leave Direct TV so I called them. I was talking to sales so just talked to them about possibly upgrading our account and what Dish Network was offering. Let’s just say I got no feeling from them that they appreciated me as a customer or wanted to keep my business (my father-in-law got the same thing when he called them with a simular question last night).
So I called Dish Network and the customer service was night and day. They really went the extra mile including extra services, extra channels, and can you believe it….respect! That’s not all, I will be saving money each month even though we are getting more. What will I do with this extra cash?
I’ll tell ya what I’m doing with it…. giving it to Direct TV! I called them to find out what it will take to cancell and guess what… though they did not tell us, once we plugged in the new DVR that doesn’t work that they wanted to send us, not that we requested….. that started a 24 month committment that we didn’t agree to. I guess it’s listed on some piece of paper we got 5 years ago? After 1/2 of talks with two different people expressing my concerns and frustration, I got nothing but a brick wall from them (My wife got the same response after talking to three more reps). On top of the $300 fee, we have to send back the unit or else they will charge us $280. Not a problem since it never worked anyways.
So do we go with Dish Network or stick it out with Direct TV? Well, we don’t have the money to pay Direct TV but I do not do buisness with people who do not respect me as a customer. The lack of respect and unethical policies (as far as I’m concerned) means I will find the $300, give it to them, and NEVER do business with them again.
Now I bet you can share a story or two about Dish Network. I know one of them from a close friend. However, so far, in my experience, I will go with them over Direct TV who will never have our business again. I am simply blown away the way I was treated today and that no one will work with us.
If you feel like switching to Dish Network , contact me. I can give you the low down on some of the things they did for us and maybe the referral program (which benefits you and us) can help us dig out of a $300 hole.
If you are with Direct TV, make sure you ask alot of questions on what you are committing to if you accept any new hardware pieces or make any programming changes.
These are my opinions and my experience. Take it for what it’s worth….
The joys of sales. In all honesty, the best route with Direct TV is to go through an independant agent. They are usually sub-contracted to do the sales. You are their customer and not Direct’s. That is why they can manage decent customer retention.
(From a lacky that used to work in the industry)
I left Direct TV to go back to cable at one point because their customer service cheesed me off. When I did that they threw some contract cancellation fee in my face like they did to you. I never paid it. They send me a letter in red with some kinda threat on it….and that was the last I heard of them and there is nothing in my credit report regarding the manner.
[…] Yes – Dish Network; No – Direct TV […]
Just for the record, they took my money out of our account and a couple weeks later, I got it back….
I ended up reporting it to the BBB. The first round, Direct TV responded with thier same old, same old crappy answers that this was the agreement, that they made us aware of it on some small print on a piece of paper a month after we got the DVR, that on another piece of paper on small print that they informed us they had the right to take any money at any time from our credit card, ect and so on……
I offered my same rebuttal that if we did not agree to it than you can’t call it an agreement, that we were very clear when we canceled the account that they did not have the ok to charge our card, and that small print, sneaky communication is no communication at all.
Thier second answer did not concide any of the points but they did decide to refund our money which showed up in our account this morning! Thank God for small battles won =)