My Letter to Directv

Ms. Filipiak,

I apologize for sending you this email directly, however I feel it may be best you know of my recent experiences with DirecTV customer service.

Full details of this can be found at a popular Satellite TV forum: http://www.satelliteguys.us/directv-forum/288473-i-need-little-help-dealing-equipment.html

I will paste the essential details here:

I have a HR21 in the living room and a HR20 in the bedroom

The 20 is the least issue, however its hard drive is getting so loud its starting to wake me up at night, I have had it since 2005/6

the 21... oh man

-I have to reboot it every 3-5 days because it locks up completely.
-I know you have to wait several hours before its usable again, but running a search on the box locks it up for 45 minutes MINIMUM, ive seen it take 90 mins
-changing channels - 2-5 minutes
-bringing up the guide or DVR list - 2-4 mins
-deleting recordings.... well I started deleting 5 episodes of top gear (SD) almost 30 mins ago... still going
thats all the big stuff

CSRs, called last tuesday, spoke to a guy, walked me through the troubleshooting, for 2 hours... most of that time was waiting for the thing to respond
he spoke to a manager/supervisor, then said they would be replacing it... confirmed the address, etc... he gave me a reference number but my dumb ass didnt write it down (I have only had this reciever for a year and last time it went smoothly)
Apparently he didnt notate the account or get an order in... I would guess it was a system flake but...?

So noticing no DVR today I call in to inquire.. nice lady answers and doesnt see me even calling in other than hitting the phone tree... wonderful... so I Am a little annoyed but nice to her, she starts walking me through troubleshooting... first step, swap the satellite cables... live.. ummm let me just send a voltage spike down the line... somehow it didnt fry anything thank god. of course that didnt fix the issues... next step... look at free space on DVR... 38% her words "that dvr only has 5 (not 500, and wrong anyway since it has 320) gigabytes of space, and it has to stay above 50% to work properly" i was befuddled, she even refuted my logic when I said the one in the bedroom sits between 3 and 5% free... she didnt get the fact that I dont set things to always keep... I know I need to keep some free space, but 50%.... noooope. She also went on to tell me that it is like a computer in that it has to have space to put things... I agreed, except that it deletes the oldest stuff when it needs to... so then she goes and I love this "well I Can offer you an upgrade for $200" my response was a belly laugh and a no, though I did press her for info on the model... an hr21-500... sigh.. I gave up and nicely asked her to transfer me to retentions...(this was over the span of the troubleshooting, a good 45 mins worth)

Enter Cancellations (yeah wrong dept, didnt realize it until later) I told the nice gentleman about my problems, asked nicely many questions about items available to me... best he could do to fix all my issues was to offer a 300 dollar upgrade to a hr34 and take the hr20 and replace it with a non dvr hd receiver... told him 300 was way too much (I would have taken 100 and possibly 2, I am not unreasonable, and havent had an upgrade in 5ish years) he said he could transfer me to retentions... oh crap... at this point I thanked him and got off the phone politely... 

So here I am asking for you guys thoughts and or help

Is there an executive escalations I can talk to (not retentions) I am not trying to get something for nothing, I am trying to be compensated for paying for service I am not getting, and willing to pay a little to get things resolved... seriously.

I am very willing to drop directv altogether, but I had dish in the past... didnt like the customer service... I can deal without the AMC networks. Other than that would be overpay for time warner... no way. If I have to suffer with dish for 2 years sobeit, but the hopper (yeah I know it has issues) would suit my needs just fine and is 99 dollars for everything I would need.

I would much rather stay with direct and either get 2 new/working good/properly DVRs OR go tot eh whole home HR34 and H(wahtever model) for the bedroom, I already have a H21 in my office connected to my slingbox and TV in there... I would move the bedroom receiver in the office but I foolishly didnt run 3 coax lines in here (1 is cable for modem) only 2.

I do not have DECA or SWM, I do have whole home over my Gig network (Directv is VLANed off)

I ahve done the factory reset about 9 times in the last year on the HR21.

And if anyone needs to know my background. I work in IT, I manage 2967 (actual number as of today) Servers (only about 900 are physical) for a large government entity.

Please help... anyone who has info on who I can call or email... I am going to attempt to refrain from calling tonight because I am very aggravated... 

I know it is just TV, thats why I am trying not to get too worked up about it.

That was my first post.  MY first call on the issue was July 3^rd

I took a few days to cool off and get all my ducks in a row, I called Friday the 13^th to find out if I was in contract, then spent the day Friday talking to dish sales and time warner sales.

Saturday the 14^th I called in to DirecTV to cancel.  Spoke to a very nice lady in retentions, after 30-45 minutes on the phone with her she managed to retain me, on one condition, that I get good working equipment.  She gave me all kinds of credits and even charged (then credited) 2 “Upgraded” receivers.  The basic gist of our conversation was that credits are great, except they are pointless if the equipment frustrates you to the point where you can not enjoy your entertainment.  She agreed and said she would do what she can to get 2 new receivers sent out.

Fast forward to Tuesday night (17^th) I got home from work, and there were 2 boxes from Directv on my stoop.  I opened the first one, an HR21, then the second one another HR21.

Let me pause here for a moment…  The HR21 is what I would call in the IT business the beginners box.  If you have never seen a different HD DVR operate it would probably be fine, for someone like my dad he wouldn’t even notice the slowness.  However for someone like me in the IT field (13 years of experience at this point if that matters for reference) the 21 line of DVRs are pieces of junk, they were slow when first released, but the new HD guide made them almost useless.  A search of programs should not take 45 minutes, nor should it take 3-5 minutes to change channel after the DVR gets more than 50 percent full.  There are some more in depth review of the 21 out there on the web, but there is a reason the warehouse is stuffed with refurbished ones

Back to Tuesday.  So I have 2 Refurb HR21s sitting at my house, first how is my “Paying” (it was charged after all, then credited) for an equipment upgrade of equipment I already have and getting the exact same equipment an upgrade.  I wouldn’t take your computer to my office dust it off, erase the hard drive, then bring it back to you and charge you for an upgrade.  But I digress, I will not install these, Slow Hunks of Junk, sure it will work fine for a day or 2, but once I record my usual stuff in less than a week itll be useless again.  I phoned up retentions again since there was a problem with my order through retentions.  Spoke to a nice lady who was surprised, at least she acted surprised, at the fact that not only did I not get new equipment, but that I knew what I was talking about.  After a few minutes of trying to figure it out she gave up and got a supervisor.  The nice gentleman spent almost 45 minutes trying to get me some newer equipment.  He, however, failed and sent an “escalation over to tech” and they should call me in 24 hours.  I was a little mad at this point but I did mention that this has been an issue for over 2 weeks and he said “if you haven’t received a call by Friday call us back”.  My response was that I would be for sure calling if I hadn’t received a call because I would be cancelling.

Today is Friday July 20^th, I have not heard a peep from “Tech”.  After my conversation with Retentions last Saturday I was glad to stay with Directv, everything would be ironed out right?  Wrong.  At this point I will be calling retentions this afternoon to cancel.  I have been with Direct since 2004, have not had any real issues until now, and was only late on 1 payment (I was switched to paperless billing a few years ago without knowing and without a paper bill at the time no bills got paid).  I realize I am 1 in 20,000,000 but in my life I am unique.  I am not asking for more credits, I am asking for 2 things: 1. Something be done so no more customers slip through the cracks (feel free to contact me if you would like more perspective) 2. please get me NEW equipment or I will have to cancel this evening.

I do not expect a response, however I will leave my contact info below, thank you for reading and have a nice day.

Christopher M Van Leuven

Cell xxx-xxx-xxxx

Office xxx-xxx-xxxx xxxx

Home: xxxxxxxx

Work: xxxxxxxxx

Why I HATE wireless carriers, phones, et al

I finally switched wireless carriers this year, 11 years with Tmobile and I was sick of them...

I got Tmobile in 2001, actually it was powertel then, but they changed names quickly.  I was mostly satisfied with the service, except where it didnt work.  Back then it wasnt uncommon for carriers not to have service in places like London, KY or in Lawrenceburg, KY but that has changed, in 2004 I noticed I had signal in London, and when I was shopping for houses I had signal in Lawrenceburg, yee haw.  Then it was the coming of the smartphone, in 2005 I got a Tmobile HTC Dash, the phone was awesome, it had windows and a full keyboard, I was High Falutin.  LAwrenceburg only had GPRS data, Frankfort in some places had Edge.. okay, no biggie, there is Wifi at home and where I was working.  Then I got an android phone, a Motorola Cliq, I was upsold on it at the tmobile store, but Motorola phones are generally pretty good.  So 3 months later when it started randomly rebooting I got concerned, Called tmobile, they replaced the phone, 3 months later same issue... called tmobile, they got motorola involved, after 6 months of dealing with tmobile trying to get a working phone the thing would reboot continuously until I would pull the battery and let it cool down, then I could get it working to send roughly 3 texts before it would reboot.  it was a known issue of overheating.  So I decided to change phones and got the HTC Mytouch 4g.  It was a top of the line phone, had every feature I needed.  even had 3g where I was working.  This phone lasted 6 months before it somehow corrupted its OS and hung in a continual reboot.  Wonderful, so I call tmobile and get a replacement.  Its working again.  But android was annoying me to death.  I had to reboot it 3 or 4 times a day or it would get so slow it was unusable.  even fresh out of the box it would do this.  No one has an answer on that.  Plus the android random restarts at least once a week, inevitably while I need the phone.

During all this time I got a used original iPhone right when the 3g iPhone came out.  Hacked it, got it on Tmobile and all was well, it was used on my spare line.  Thing is, the phone never had 1 issue, it always just worked.  That fact alone tempered my judgement, could a almost-smart phone actually fill my needs better than tempermental android.  If there is one piece of technology I need to always work its my phone.  My Cell phone is my lifeline.

So I need an iPhone, great, waht phone doesnt Tmobile have?  yeah, an iPhone.  And since Tmobile doesnt work in my building at work... time to make a change, but to who?

it stars on January Second, my odyssey into madness.

I need to switch 4 lines over, ATT is out becuase not only are they high priced, but also ranked the worst in all other fields, I have more negative experience with ATT than any company ever.

Sprint, okay I had issues with an AirCard with Sprint, but it was mostly due to my former employer ACS.  I start working with sprint on pricing and such to get 4 lines moved.  Everything is set, until they run my credit and only approve 3 lines... wait what?  I have 5 lines with tmobile, never paid late, my credit is very good, I just refinanced my house and bought a car, so its not as good as 6 months ago, but still very good.  Sprint refuses to budge... no idea why.

Verizon, whatcha got?  More expensive plans, no unlimited data, a comparable discount through my employer as they had with Sprint... Alright so I contact Verizon, get a call back in less than 10 minutes and we get the ball rolling.  2 iPhones and 2 flip phones for my parents.  no problem, the rep runs my credit to check if a deposit is needed.  Approved for 5 lines no deposit... what the hell sprint?  So we get the flip phones and iPhones ordered, flip phones show up first, then the iphones (they were on backorder).  The port ins took (and I kid you not) less than 5 mins per line.

My bill posted to the account this morning, it is within 2 dollars of what my tmobile bill was.  So I have the phones I want, on the #1 provider, and the bill is basically the same.  works for me.