Mr Blog » DirecTV

DirecTV reports strong Q4, but many long time customers ticked off

MrBlog — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 01:27:25 +0000

Last month, DirectTV reported that their profits had risen to $1 billion for the quarter ending 2007 and they reported 275,000 net subscriber additions in the US.

At the same time, there is a growing wave of customer dissatisfaction. Take, for example

I was scheduled for a free upgrade. I was told that my account would be charged $199 plus tax but the same amount would be credited. I told her that others on this forum has been promised this, but the credit was never made. She said a call back should correct the problem if it occurred. When I checked my account later, the charge was made but there was no credit. I called back and went through it again. When I was told that no free upgrade was possible despite what I was told earlier, I canceled the upgrade. As a long standing subscriber to Directv’s top programming package, I am very disappointed to be treated like this. I have wanted to believe that the horror stories I have read here were not the norm, but now I believe they are.

Or DirecTV Dumps TiVo, I Dump DirecTV:

I’ve been having various messages hit my HDTV DirecTV (DTV) TiVo (TIVO) over the course of the past month, that I’m going to need to do a required “upgrade” if I want to get my West Coast network TV channels after March 30, 2008.

Unfortunately, DirecTV’s upgrade will require me to lose my TiVo service that I love.

The upgrade is a joke. Although I’ve been relatively happy with my 4 tuner HDTV TiVo, DirecTV wants me to upgrade to a new *non TiVo* DVR that only has 2 tuners, not 4 tuners like my TiVo. It kind of sucks that they are forcing this upgrade after I spent over $1,000 on this DirecTV TiVo box originally.

My response to this forced upgrade? I just called DirecTV and canceled my service.

Sayonara DirecTV and Sayonara to your $87 a month albatross that has been hanging around my neck for the past 10 years.

Or this one:

I have a Directv branded HR10-250. Directv has been ruthlessly haranguing me with phone calls telling me I won’t get their new HD stations on it starting soon. they want to give their “free” DVR, which having had one, know for certain that I don’t want. Finally, one of the salespeople who’ve been calling broke down and told me that if I did accept their “free” DVR, that they would actually start charging me for the HD stations that I now get free (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, HBO). So much for free. He said I am “grandfathered in” getting these free if I let things stand. But now I get a “crawl” on certain stations saying that the network HD stations are moving channels. I just want to keep the deal I have and get the HD stations I get and keep my HR-10 250.

That pretty much sums up my take on it as well. DirecTV had a perfectly reasonable service and they decided to “fix” it and here’s where it goes awry:

Must lease the box – cannot buy it – adds to the monthly cost
Additional fees for channels users already used to get
2-year contract – With the service going down hill, the last thing people want is to get locked up with DirecTV for two long years.

It sort of makes one think maybe we should just wait for AppleTV or some form of on-demand or IPTV. The worst part for me personally is no HD football or other sports in the mean time.

DirecTV – all good things must come to an end

MrBlog — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 22:48:59 +0000

Until recently, DirecTV is one service I was mostly happy with. How many services can you say that about? Cell phone? Landline? Cable TV? Internet? When News Corp acquired DirecTV, I was worried and rightly so, it turned out; but when News Corp sold off their stake last year, I was optimistic again.

I’ve been a customer since the mid 90′s. I paid something like $1,000 for the initial setup back then. I have been a mostly happy customer all this time (even if I was “worried” at times) – but now with the forced migration to their DVR box, involving significant loss in functionality and reliability, this blissful situation may be coming to an end. Here’s what they are doing to a long-time loyal customer:

Forcing me to replace my TiVo-based HD DVR with a buggy DirecTV-designed DVR with a junky remote, terrible user interface, severe limitations, and reliability problems.
Forcing me into a two-year contract, even though I have been a customer for over 10 years!
Charging me an additional $4.99/mo. to keep HD channels I receive now (UHD, HDNM, etc.)
Charging me $20 for the unwanted swap.

I guess at this point my options are:

Keep the HD TiVo and wait until DirecTV stops sending it signals it can receive.
See if I can get HD Cable service with a stand-alone HD TiVo (this may not really be an option, since the cable company [Comcast] has told me in the past that service in my area is not very good and they don’t know when or if they will fix it).
Buy a DVR on Ebay and see if DirecTV will support it to avoid the 2-year contract? These are supposedly “lease-only” units, so this may also not be a practical option.
Accept the new DirecTV DVR with all the limitations and 2-year contract (What do I do then, if this new DVR really is unusable?)

I guess we customers are just not supposed to actually like the services we pay for — Cell phone, landline, cable TV, Internet service. And now Satellite TV too. Maybe they get their jollies by showing that we suckers will continue to subscribe to their crappy services, no matter how much they screw us over.

DirecTV loses 10 million subscribers

MrBlog — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 19:29:15 +0000

Well, that’s my headline for sometime in the next 12-18 months, or whenever Rupert forces his Tivo owners to switch to his “new” DVR.

Here’s what I’m expecting so far, based on all I’ve read about the DVR DirecTV is going to shove down our throats:

1. No more “peanut” remote. It sounds trivial, but that remote is very comfortable. If you haven’t used it, you can’t relate. And the new DirecTV remote supposedly doesn’t control the on/off or volume on many makes/models of TVs, so you you end up needing two remotes.

2. No multiple live buffer streams to select between. With TiVo DirecTV units we can jump back and forth between two live programs, with buffer. Supposedly not so with the new DVRs.

3. GUI sucks. Comments include “hard to navigate” “a whole new horror” “not intuitive at all” “It BLOWS” “It is a fancy VCR, but not a Tivo” “amazingly difficult to use” “All the software people should be fired” See examples here.

4. Lease-only going forward, means higher monthly fees.

The tech support line apparently has an automated voice that tells you “most problems are resolved by rebooting.” What does that tell you about the quality of the software (and DirecTV’s contempt for their customers).

I’ve been a DirecTV subscriber for over 10 years. When DirecTV abandons all support for TiVo it looks like I’ll be stuck switching to cable (which totally sucks around here). Apparently I won’t be alone. Nobody that’s used TiVo for more than a few months is ever going to move as far backwards as DirecTV is trying to send us. It’s looking like it will be a mass exodus. What an effective way to take perfectly happy customers and send them straight to your competitors.

News Corp Screws TiVo

MrBlog — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 00:12:13 +0000

A lot of us feared this would happen. DirecTV officially dropped TiVo. News Corp, the parent company, owns a firm that has their own DVR, so that’s what DirecTV is getting stuck with. Of course it is going to be garbage compared to TiVo, but it doesn’t matter. Users will be stuck with it just the same. According to the LA Times, two-thirds of Tivo’s 3.3 million subscribers are from DirecTV and 77% of TiVo’s new subscribers are coming from DirecTV.

As I mentioned when News Corp first acquired DirecTV, this is not unexpected. For my part, I’d say it’s bad news for us DirectTV subscribers. Cable (Comcast) where I live is awful, so my options are limited and I have no idea what my TV experience is going to be like in the next few years as our TiVos start to die off (or be killed by DirecTV).

News Corp buys DirecTV

MrBlog — Sat, 20 Dec 2003 17:38:49 +0000

News Corp is the parent of Fox and yesterday the FCC and DoJ gave their stamp of approval to the $6.6 billion takeover deal. As a DirecTV and TiVo subscriber, I have a very bad feeling about this. I have no idea how they will mess this up, but in my experience, when Rupert Murdoch’s Fox moves in, things tend to get stupid.