Another Tale of Frustration: Dealing With DirecTV

On our last visit – I shared with you some of the frustrations that I have been having and I promised that I would share my frustrations with DirecTV and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.  As many of you know – and even the casual reader of this blog can easily figure out – I love TV – what I don’t like is when I can’t watch television because of an equipment malfunction and that’s what lit the fuse in one of my recent frustrating moments.

I live in an area that is not served by cable.  Even though Comcast has wired the area everywhere around where I live – they have not wired our street where I live – plus, I wouldn’t have the rat bastards at Comcast wire my home for anything.   So, if I want to enjoy television I have only two choices – hooking up an antenna (which isn’t a great solution because I am miles from a grade A television signal) or hooking up with one of the satellite television providers.  I chose the later.  At one time, I subscribed to Dish Network – but I changed to DirecTV after Dish took one of the channels that we liked and pushed it into the next tier of programming.

I instantly liked DirecTV from the moment that they hooked us up.  DirecTV comes across as a little more professional operation than the Mom and Pop approach that Dish has.  Plus -- with DirecTV we were able to get more channels than we had with Dish and they also provided us a DVR with our service.

I never thought that a DVR was that big of a thing – only because I never owned one – I always looked at it as a glorified VCR – boy, was I wrong!  The pause feature when you’re watching something live has been a godsend for us folks with aging bladders.  With our DirecTV DVR – we can pause through any one of the ka-zillion  prescription drug commercials on the nightly news so we can take a piss and not miss a moment of Brian Williams and the news.  Can the poor folks in some third world country pause the programming on their TV set – I don’t think so! 

Well, you can imagine my frustration on a recent Sunday morning when the picture went out on our DirecTV and my girlfriend went through all of the “do-it-yourself repair” fixes that they tell you to do but to no avail.  When the do-it-yourself fixes don’t work, I know that you have to get on the horn and talk to someone directly about your problem – which is what I did. I was hoping that there was a way to fix it, because I couldn’t bare the thought of losing everything I had recorded that I had yet to watch – such as –

1)                  The last six episodes of last season’s “Rescue Me”

2)                  The last three recent episodes of “Parenthood” and “The Good Wife”

3)                  About a week and a half worth of “Conan” and “The Late Show With David Letterman” (including the episode of Letterman where he admitted having sex with an intern)

4)                  A few movies that I had yet to watch such as “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and “The Dark Knight”…..

Plus, I had recorded a bunch of different episodes of “Dora the Explorer”, “The Cat in the Hat”, “Angelina Ballerina” and “Thomas the Train” for the grandchildren for when they come to visit.

DirecTV is like every other company that you call in that you have to deal with a bunch of recorded prompts to get you to a live person (who can be anywhere from in your own hometown to Bumfuck, Egypt – luckily DirecTV’s representatives are right here in the good ole USA) And just like every other company’s recorded prompts – you usually end up yelling into your phone receiver because the “prompts” didn’t catch what you told them and you have to go through the whole process again….but 4eventually you will reach a live human being.

When I finally reached a human being on the other end of the line and I told her what my problem was – she went through the whole process of what I could do to fix my DirecTV receiver.  I explained to her that we did everything but put our finger on my head and twirl around the living room and the receiver still didn’t work to which she explained that she would send us a new receiver – this is where the real fun begins.

“Mr. Frost, we can ship a new receiver to you and you can have it in a couple of days,” the DirecTV representative said on the phone.

“And will there be a charge for the receiver,” I asked.

That’s when she went on to say that there would be no charge for the receiver, but there would be a twenty-one dollar and some odd cents charge for the shipping and handling.

“That’s not acceptable,” I responded.  “You’re going to charge me shipping and handling for a receiver that I pay an additional fee for each month to receive programming that you charge me dearly for…I don’t think so.”

And that’s when I was put on hold – which eventually lead to me getting disconnected and hearing a dial tone on the end of my telephone receiver….which meant another phone call back to DirecTV and another ten minutes or so getting connected to a live person and telling that person the whole story.  And like the previous DirecTV representative – they were a little startled when I told them that I wouldn’t pay for shipping and handling for a new receiver….to which I was put on hold again.

When the DirecTV representative returned to the phone, I was informed that they would waive the shipping and handling fee and that I would receive the new box in a couple of days and I could hook up the new box.— to which I confronted them the fact that I would not hook up this box  and couldn’t they send someone to my home to hook it up for me.  I was informed that the instructions to hooking up the receiver are easy and I responded that I don’t care how easy the instructions were – I wasn’t hooking up their box.  I’m of the opinion that for the money that I pay DirecTV each month for programming, it only behooves them to hook up a god-damn receiver for one of their customers.  This DirecTV representative didn’t see it that way – so, I told them that they could disconnect their damn service and I’ll just get my satellite TV programming from Dish.  I was put on hold again….but not for long….but when the “voice” returned – it wasn’t the same person that I was talking to and I had to go through the whole story all over again.

So – the story was retold again for the third time.  My box doesn’t work.  I’m not paying for shipping and handling for a new receiver and I’m not going to hook up the new receiver myself – you can send a service person to hook it up or you can disconnect my service and I’ll go to Dish.  Plus, I added another wrinkle to my frustration – I had been on the phone nearly two hours with them and had been disconnect once and redirected to two other people – with me having to retell my story each and every time.  If I can’t get any satisfaction from you people at DirecTV – cancel me out and I’ll call Dish. 

I was put on hold again – but not for long – and I was forward to another department – the name escapes me right now, but this is the department that they send people that are extremely pissed and only people in this department has any authority to make it right.  This DirecTV representative apologized for all that I went through and told me that they would send a service person to my house the next day and that there would be no charge for the box or the service call – because I have been a loyal customer since 2008.  When I asked him why the first person that I talked couldn’t do what he was doing for me in the way of customer service – he didn’t have any real answer – but he apologized for all of the hassle and the inconvenience.

The next day – a local DirecTV service person arrived at my door with a brand new receiver – complete with a new remote that actually works with the flat screen television that we bought last year….and like all good stories – “and they all lived happily ever after.”

(It should be noted that my DirecTV service is bundled with my telephone service and the day after we received the new box from DirecTV…I noticed something on the DirecTV portion of our phone bill.  A week before all of my hassles with them – they decided to give me three months of Showtime, Movie Channel and Sundance as a “loyalty gift”.  Nice, huh?  If only they had some decent movies on these channels!)

Just Say No To.....Verizon

Bundling.  Everyone’s doing it.  Phone companies.  Cable companies.  Even people who want to sell you large quantities of meat.  It’s suppose to save you money and make things a little easier for you – but over the last two and a half weeks, I have discovered the dark side to “bundling” and if someone wants you to “bundle”….remember these three simple words:

DON’T DO IT!

I was introduced to “bundling” about two and a half weeks ago – when I called my phone company (Verizon) to get them to extend their payment due date because I was having problems accessing their website to pay my bill online.  A very cheerful voice on the other end of the phone had been looking at the services that I got from them and like some drug dealer in rain coat trying to get me to drop a dime on today’s best buy – she explained to me how I could save money on my DirecTV bill if I would allow them to bundle my satellite TV service with them.  The deal that she was offering me sounded too good to pass up – so, I agreed to it.  I originally called them for one thing and I ended the call doing something completely different…I agreed to become a Verizon Bundled Customer and instead of paying two companies – I would pay one and the combined cost would be less than if I would pay for them separately.  .  My life wasn’t going to change that much – oh so I thought.

First – I get the warning that my first bundle bill probably won’t come until after two billing cycles and I should pay my bills as such until the bundling package kicks in.  Ok….that’s not a big deal.  My next Verizon bill comes and looking over the bill I see that I’m only being charged for my phone service – DirecTV has yet to kick in.  I go to DirecTV and look at my bill online and according to them – I don’t exist to them anymore – they handed everything over to Verizon and I would have to wait to be billed by Verizon for my DirecTV service.  Again, that’s cool – it just means that instead of being billed for one month of DirecTV service, I’ll be billed for two months when Verizon finally gets me “all bundled”. 

So, while I wait to be bundled…I thought…I’d pay my monthly Verizon bill on line.  I pay most of my bills online, because the United States Postal Service has yet to improve on the pony express model in this area.  It’s not usual to find our neighbor’s bills in our mailbox and the magazines we subscribe to never arrive on time and the odds are pretty good that some postal employee in the local branch here has gone through the pages during their lunch hour trying reading why Kirstie Alley is so god-damn fat and Jesse James is a jerk.  So, if we can’t get stuff mailed to us on time – imagine how long its going to be for the stuff that we mail out to get to somebody and that’s the reason I pay my bills online.

When I go to the Verizon website to sign in to pay my bill – I come face-to-face with the same problem that I had before they sold me on bundling – it will not let me sign in and access my account.  I exhaust everything online trying to get on to the website.  It would show my bill – but it wouldn’t let me pay.  I click on to their “online representative chat” and that person listens to my problem and says that they can’t help me…I would have to call in to their tech people on the phone. 

Have you had to call a phone company or public utility company lately?  If you don’t have to do it – please do not attempt to do it for recreational purposes – because you’re only going to end up frustrated and when you do get to talk to a real human voice on the other end of the phone – you might start venting things to them that they really shouldn’t hear.  It’s ok to tell them that you have been frustrated with the service that you have been getting from the company to get your problem resolved…but you know your comments about the company are going to get worse when the problem doesn’t get resolved with one or two calls.  In my case – it took maybe ten to twelve calls to Verizon and I can’t tell you how many wasted hours in front of the computer just trying to access my account and pay my bill.  My frustration almost got to the point of telling the rep on the phone that Verizon was pretty close to being hanging partials of poop on the scrotum of a diseased yak – but I held my ugly comments in.

After about the twelfth call to Verizon – I finally came in contact with someone who actually knew their job.  They explain to me that some of my problems have come about because of the changes made by the bundling that weren't resolved when they signed me up for the program.  To solve the problem they're going to transfer the information in my account to a whole new account.  We decided on a new sign-on ID to enter the website – because the old sign-on was now dead and it can’t be used – so we decided on something similar sounding to the old ID.  Then – they gave me this computer generated password to use and when I got on the site, I could change the password to something I would remember.  Sounds cool.  I thank this person and now it was time to find out if this attempt at resolving my problem was finally going to work.

I sign on the Verizon website with my new sign-on ID and I put in the computer generated password and lo and behold – I finally have access to my Verizon account and I can pay my bill.  And unlike previous attempts to get them to accept my payment (the reason that I called them before they sold me on bundling) – it finally accepts my payment.  When it went through – I could actually hear angels trumpeting overhead and you know they say – “every time that you hear an angel trumpeting, it means another Verizon employee gets their wings” or something like that. 

With my bill paid…I now have the task of changing my password.  I thought that I would put in my old password as my password – because I have a new sign-in ID and I thought that the old password would work – well it didn’t.  I’m back to getting frustrated again.  It won’t accept my password now – well, it’s time to get even – I’ll vent my Verizon frustrations with my new password and I typed in the first word that came to my mind.  It work.  So brace yourself -- my new Verizon password describes the “Verizon Experience” in just one word: “Assholes!” 

So….all I got to say is this.  If you don’t want to feel your blood pressure rising and you want to avoid feelings of frustration and anger at a company that doesn’t give a shit about you anyway – don’t let them bundle your services – because they’re going to find some way of screwing things up for you before you ever see the benefits of their grand plans…and it just ain’t worth it.