Direct TV - billing problems - given wrong information by customer service

Complaints.com received the following consumer message on July 14, 2002:

From:

RE: Direct TV - billing problems - given wrong information by customer service

A few weeks ago I called to inquire on finding a way to have a cheaper service. I spoke to a young woman who unfortunately I did not get her name.

I asked her before changing any services if it would be on the bill coming up next or the one after and she told me the one after. She also offered me a $20.00 off a month for 6 months, due to my being a good customer who paid on time etc.

I advised her that we would be moving in month and no more than two months and at that time service would have to be discontinued. I asked her if this would affect this in any way and if there was any kind of a contract I would have to promise to. She told me "NO" which I trusted her on this. I said yes to both.

This past week I received a bill for $200.00 plus and I called about this and spoke to a supervisor who told me that I had been told wrong and they billed a month in advance and that the deal I was offered was a contract to keep service for a year. I explained to him and also told him there was a charge for disconnect of a service which I should not owe as I had been with Direct for over a year.

He told me that he would attempt to get that removed. I was only able to get this bill down to $160.00 after disconnecting the premium service which I have a feeling I will get another $25.00 charge.

I called back asking for a number to call and speak to someone as high as possible regarding my complaint regarding the Direct consultant and the false leading that she did with me and for something to be done about the apparent misleading within this company. I was only told I could have an address but no phone number was given.

I will be discontinuing service as soon as my husband is transferred to another town and never again will I deal with this company and I will never give a good reference to this company unless I am given some satisfaction to this situation.

I have also considered notifying the Better Business Bureau regarding this situation and if I ever have to contact them again, I will notify them I am taping the phone conversation as this was only a her word against mine and I am assured that I would never find satisfaction regarding the misleading that I was given.

I have been told by several others of similar situations with them but they had not pressed this issue, but I for one cannot sit by and not have people know what happened to me with this company. Patricia Neely

Comment On This

On 02/16/08 we phoned Direct TV interested in signing up for service...only if we had access to our current local Harrisburg channels like we do with cable. I was assured by "Sariah" in customer service that we would have access to Harrisburg channels so we signed up. If I would have known ahead of time that we would not have those channels, I would absolutely not have signed up. Now this brings to 02/26/08. The tech came out and installed everything no problems there other than it was a long process (4-5 hours). Late that evening we were surfing through our new channels and realized that there were NO Harrisburg channels, only Washington DC. Now we are in South Central PA which is over 100+ miles from DC but less than 50 miles from Harrisburg. DC is not even close to being local for us. DC channels do not show anything local for us. I emailed the customer service first thing the next morning. This is the response I received: "Just to inform you, we assign local channels by ZIP code based on Designated Market Area (DMA), as determined by Nielsen Media Research. According to Nielsen, your ZIP code has been assigned to the Harrisburg-Lancaster, PA local channel market and we cannot provide you with locals from any other city. Federal law requires us to use the established local market boundaries and these cannot be changed by DIRECTV." So I emailed them back and told them that's exactly what we want and could someone correct it.

Now on the evening of 02/27/08 we called Direct TV. My husband was transferred to almost every department including; customer service, Technical dept, programming & billing. Eventually he was transferred to a supervisor. Now he spent over 2 hours on the phone, no exaggerations. Almost an hour of that time was being on hold. We ate our supper & cleaned up dishes and were still on hold. Eventually the supervisor said she would look into it and call us back within 24 hours. Here we are 24 hours later on the 28th and no call. So we called again that evening and explained it to "Josh" another customer service agent. He filled out a "report" and stated someone would get back to us within 24 hours. Again, here we are 24 hours later on the 29th and no return call. This has been a big runaround already and we have only had the service for 72 hours. My husband called again on March 3rd and spoke with "Melissa" and again we were told someone will call us within 24 hours. Now I just called again this evening and spent over 45 minutes arguing with them about how crappy their customer service is and how fed up we are with their runaround. We've had the service a week and no longer want it. The only resolve they want to offer is for US to purchase an antennae to get our local channels. To me that's unacceptable since they misled us. They only other option is to disconnect the service and pay the $500 "Early disconnect fee". Then I can file a dispute letter to their billing department who do not have a phone number to be reached at. Oh gee, I wonder why? All this from the people who state they are #1 customer satisfaction. I don't know about anyone else but I don't have $500 laying around...who does? I would have no problems with being signed up for 24 months if they would have been truthful. Actually I wouldn't be signed up at all if they would have been truthful. Now so far I have contacted the Better Business Bureau & our "local Harrisburg" news station. Anyone else have any suggestions??

Jamie

Comment On This

Hi my name is Dionne Fournette I was done the same thing only my cable was not on due to them not showing on orginal date for reconnection. From 02/04/08-02/25/08 I didn't have any service and they gave me a credit for 30.00 at first than 10.00 more because the first guy i spoke with only gave me credit from 02/04 til 02/21 then they called on 02/26 for payment on the bill when I spoke with the 1st lady who said I could pay my bill by 03/16/08 thats when my billing cycle started again. I said I would bring them they're receivers tell me where to bring them so then they tell me that since they connected it yesterday now I'm on a contract and I would be breaking it by stopping services and would have to pay a fine to get out of it.

Comment On This

I have had Direct Tv service for over five years. I had my service moved and upgraded to my new home on Dec,7th.2007. The installation was very messy, they left wires hanging everywhere inside and outside the house, never connected the ground cable outside for electrical safety, and we lost signal every few minutes. I called and complained and Direct TV sent another tech out almost two weeks later. He stated the first tech was fired and he �fixed the service�. Within 15 minutes we began to lose signal again.

I called and e-mail Direct TV about this, offering pictures to prove the service was installed sloppy and didn�t work.

I e-mailed them several times, it�s easier because their call centers have people that can�t speak clear English and are very hard to deal with and understand. Finally I told them to cancel my service because they couldn�t meet there commitment to me and provide a working service. I also asked for a return autho# to send their receiver back to them.

Around a week later Jan 11th.2008 I received a disconnect e-mail and bill for 93.00 .I e-mailed them saying I had no service for that month so how do I owe them.

On Jan 18th.2008 a box with return instructions was delivered to my house for the receiver.

On Jan 22nd. 2008 I saw Direct TV was pulling $562.83 from my checking account.I took of work and went to my bank to stop this from happening, I signed a stop pay but my bank had to investigate it first. I was told to contact Direct TV and ask them to stop the transaction.

I called Direct TV several times, I was told the charges were for an early termination of service.I told them again I never had a working service to begin with.I got nowhere with the call center, the language problem was just to much, I asked for some one that could speak better English and I was repeated the same thing again. Direct TV used a check card I had used before to pay my bill on-line and charged my account without my authorization $562.38.

When I got home that evening I received a bill from them stating what the charges were and it was due immediately.

No one that speaks good English will talk to me from Direct TV, THEY broke the law pulling money from my account without authorization, caused my account to bounce checks, left me unable to buy groceries this week for my family, I�ve lost two hours work as of today trying to clear this up.Tommorrow I have to go to my bank again and to an attorney .

What a nightmare, please pass this on to everyone to warn them about direct tv�s practices

Richard C. Morrison

Boatdoc1963 AT yahoo.com