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.
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 3rd
I took a few days to cool off and get all my ducks in a row,
I called Friday the 13th to find out if I was in contract, then
spent the day Friday talking to dish sales and time warner sales.
Saturday the 14th 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 (17th) 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 20th, 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
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