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

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We have had problems with Direct TV, as well. We had one receiver go bad and had to pay $19 for S&H and this was within 6 months of having service. Shortly thereafter all our receivers went bad and they wanted to charge for a technician to come out. We had four receivers.

We were not satisfied with the fact that their receivers were junk and would have to pay for a technician visit and who knows what else.

When we opened the account we read the fine print and saw nowhere any stipulation on how long we had to have the service, only a $15 cancellation fee or less as determined by law.

We ended up getting a charge of $180 for early cancellation.

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YES. I would like to join a class action lawsuit against Direct TV. All that has been described in these emails has happened to us as well. Add this to your list:

We have been charged for the last 9 months for NFL Ticket Sunday, EVEN WHEN THERE WAS NO FOOTBALL SEASON!! We have tried cancelling it, we have called at least 20 different people, and even not paid it. They have sent us past due bills for the amount, said the would refund it, and even promised us they have removed it from our bill. But it contiues to be on our bill and we are up to 300.00 of false charges that we cannot get anyone to fix!!

I don't know what else to do. I'm ready to ban with others and shut them down.

Jennifer in Charleston, SC

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Hey everyone,

My husband and I have had the worst experience with them since we've signed up with them back in February. To make a long story short- we've had 3 techs and 2 tech supervisors out here. We signed up w/ DirectTV because they advertise they have more HD channels than anyone...period, on their website. We wanted HD service- the 1st tech came out here when we had 3 ft of snow and said he couldn't get up on the roof due to the snow but would hook us up for now and we'd have to call to get another tech out to set up the HD service once the snow melted. A month goes by and we receive our 1st bill which included the HD receiver we didn't have at a $99 charge, plus all the other options that go w/ the HD service (half of which we didn't have). My husband calls and is on the phone w/ them for almost 2 hours trying to get it straightened out. The snow melts- we call DirectTV to get another tech out to install the HD and bring us the HD receiver we were charged for. The 2nd tech said it was impossible for us to get HD service from the roof (where the dish was when we bought the house). His supervisor comes out and takes pics and says the same thing. We cannot get the service because of line of sight- we have some humongous tress in our back yard that we had priced out at $1200 to remove. The next suggestion from the 2nd tech was to install the dish out on the treeline and run the line to the house. We had to get permission from the town to do this because it's on their property. In the meantime, my husband called DirectTV while that 2nd tech was still at our home and argued with them for another almost 2 hours about cancelling our service because they cannot provide what was promised or advertrised or charged to us. The told my husband they were going to charge us a cancellation fee of almost $465 because we only have 48 hrs to cancel after we receive service (by this time it's a month and a half later). Here's the catch: DirectTV advertises that you can view their service terms and conditions on their website or on your 1st bill. If you go on their website and view those conditions- no where does it state a time limit on cancelling their service- it only states that they can charge you anywhere from $15 up to the maximum allowed (whatever that is). By the time you receive your 1st bill- it's a month later. On the back of your bill, the terms and conditions state that you have up to 7 days to cancel your service or they charge a $495 fee.

?????

My husband called again this past Sunday to get out bill cleared up yet again because it was incoorect. He spent another 2 1/2 hrs on the phone with them- he got bounced around 4 times before he could even speak to a manager. The end result- another $199 charge to our account for an HD receiver we did not have. Why did they do that you might wonder? We're clueless, too.

So, needless to say, we got permission from our town to try and put up another dish on the treeline. The 3rd tech came out this morning and said there was no way they could do that either because the line they would have to run to the house would be too long and would burn out the HD receiver. We would have this problem continuously and would have to keep buying new HD receivers (remember at $199 a pop- we were charged $99 because of a sale at the time we signed up for it).

I called them this time... you probably don't want to know how it turned out- but the end result was they wanted to charge me $360 this time for a cancellation fee. I love how they make up their own fee price everytime we call. They also change the rules whenever they feel like it. We are now going to seek out a free consultation lawyer and send a complaint to the Better Business Bureau. If you know anyone who has had a similar experience with this company, I would like to know. I would like to get a class action lawsuit going against this company. And for word of mouth- please pass this story on to those who either have or are considering getting satellite or HD service from DirectTV. At this point, it's no longer about the money- it's the point.

How many other people have they done this to?

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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

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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.

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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