Direct TV Hell

I hope this complaint will prevent people from getting Direct TV.

The apartment that I moved into was already pre-wired for AT&T Home Entertainment in which they rent the signal from Direct TV or Dish Network. The difference between AT&T H.E and Direct TV are the prices, AT&T charge you a lot more than Direct TV, well that's what I thought at the time.

The differences are: AT&T charge you an installation fee of $41.99 plus tax, Direct TV charge you nothing for installing. Okay. AT&T charge a little more for programming and rental costs and such.

So I decided to go with Direct TV.

I made the appointment and ordered one HD DVR and two standard receivers.

I was at work when the installer came, he was a nice guy but really messy. My brother was home to keep an eye on the installer.

He put the dish up and all TV's worked and everything was fine until he insisted he be tipped $100 for his work because he said (in really bad English), "i missed another appointment because this one took me a long time". So my brother being the idiot that he is handed him over the money because he felt for the guy.

So when I got home to inspect the install I almost went through the roof. There was dust everywhere from the drilling, dirty foot marks all over the carpet, there were empty receiver boxes were everywhere and the Dish was installed improperly.

My question is when these incompetent people are hired by Direct TV to they go through training and who oversees the installations to ensure that they are done properly.

So fast forward about one week, I am sitting watching TV and it is a little windy outside and hear this loud bang coming from my balcony, so I run out and the Dish is hanging by two wires that are connected to the receivers.

I call Direct TV and they told me that earliest that they could have someone come out was in ten days. That was unacceptable so I spoke to a manager or whatever they call themselves and they bumped it to seven days. So on the sixth day I get that automated call from DTV to let me know that someone will be out the next day between the hours of 8am and 4pm (Sunday). So I get up early and at 5pm nobody from DTV has called.

I call DTV at 5pm and they told me that my appointment was not for today it was for next week, so this is where I completely lose it.

After my frustrating time on the phone I wrote this big long letter of complaint via email to DTV, but before that I forgot to mention when I first ordered DTV I ordered a HD DVR but when I went to hit the record button nothing happened and I realized that the installer installed the wrong receiver, but in the meantime they were charging me for it ($100 extra plus rental). So included this in email to DTV and they got back to me stating that were sorry and they would credit me $100 for the inconvenience.

I called them back saying that you guys are already charged me and extra $100 for the HD DVR that I never received in the first place so they took the $100 for the inconvenience e-mail and put that towards the HD DVR that was never installed.

So, I called them back again to refresh their memories and they said that they had no record of the email. I told the lady that I had the email in front of me. I read her the name of the person that sent it to me, I read her the email confirmation number, date and time. Her response was that she had no way accessing the information that I was giving her.

So; now I am moving and of course where I am moving to has no line of sight to put a dish up. I called them up and told them my situation and they said well if you cancel your service you will owe us $380. I told them that the building has Direct TV through AT&T and they said that if AT&T are not willing to absorb the cancellation fee then I will have to pay for it.

I would rather watch DVD�s for the rest of my life than give Direct TV any more money.

Please Help!