DirecTV price increase.

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by JBStephens, Mar 8, 2018.

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  1. JBStephens

    JBStephens I don't "like", "share", "tweet", or CARE. In Memoriam Thread Starter

    Location:
    South Mountain, NC
    My DirecTV bill just went up when I had a 24 month price guarantee that says it would NOT. Chatting with AT&T was absolutely no help at all. All they told me was screenfuls of WHY the price went up, they didn't tell me why my price went up when I have it in writing that it would not. And I couldn't get them to lower my price to the old rate. So, if I break my contract with AT&T, there is hell to pay, but if AT&T breaks its contract with ME, that's okay.
     
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  2. Erik Tracy

    Erik Tracy Meet me at the Green Dragon for an ale

    Location:
    San Diego, CA, USA
    I feel your pain.

    Wrecktum keeps restructuring their cable channel tier lineups - I've slowly had channels taken away to be grouped in different tiers that I'd have to pay more just to get them back. They are also adding on nickel and dime uppers to rented DVRs and modems. Our 'bundle' special is about to end, so that means yet another increase of $20/month.

    Hence my motivation to cut the cord.
     
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  3. Jrr

    Jrr Forum Resident

    Go the the cord cutter thread to see what they just tried to pull with me. It's like they are doing everything they can to chase business away. I am so angry I signed up with a service again. If you don't watch your bill, and I'm assuming many don't since they keep pulling bill rasing stunts on people, you will get royally screwed over. I can't stand this industry.
     
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  4. jason88cubs

    jason88cubs Forum Resident

    Location:
    Us
    DirectTv is the worse. I was so glad when my contract ended
     
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  5. JBStephens

    JBStephens I don't "like", "share", "tweet", or CARE. In Memoriam Thread Starter

    Location:
    South Mountain, NC
    Yep. Come July, they're done. Of 100 channels, I watch three. Here in western NC, I get 45 channels OTA. And I've already recorded everything TCM has to offer. And it's probably not DirecTV's fault. I blame the congomerate media barons that provide programming to DirectTV. Dish Network probably isn't any better.
     
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  6. slovell

    slovell Retired Mudshark

    Location:
    Chesnee, SC, USA
    I've got Direct and I'm being robbed monthly. I have to pay for over two dozen religious channels and around that many shopping networks plus ethnic channels. I'm glad I'm out of contract.
     
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  7. It all depends on the contract. As bad as Comcast Xfinity is, if your contracts states a specific cost for 1 or 2 years (or whatever), they can only raise your rate when that contract expires, so when the rate goes up, you can call and cancel or just negotiate a better rate for another year or so. I'm surprised that an AT&T contracts last longer that the guaranteed rate period??? If that is the case, I would never be a customer of theirs.

    Again, I just got a new Comcast bill that was higher that I had been paying because the guaranteed year ended. So I called and actually got a better discount and they credited me back for the new extra charges.

    It is all abut RETENTION!
     
  8. Erik Tracy

    Erik Tracy Meet me at the Green Dragon for an ale

    Location:
    San Diego, CA, USA
    So, that's the thing - retention.

    Just yesterday, we called Spectrum to find out what our monthly rate would be for JUST cable - stating to the customer service representative that we were thinking of dropping phone and cable tv because of the rates and the cheap screwing we were getting on channel restructuring.

    The rep said that Spectrum doesn't have a Retention dept and that all questions/issues/deals can be done thru her (and her department).

    And when pressed for a 'deal' on our rates to keep us - it was no deal. We got the hard line; "it is what it is".
     
  9. Digital-G

    Digital-G Senior Member

    Location:
    Dayton, OH
    Your experience sounds exactly like mine about 6 months ago. DirectTV and ATT merged (?) and their customer service went bye-bye (not that it was great to begin with). Three months in a row our rate increased despite the "price guarantee" they had given us. After many phone calls and broken promises we said screw it - told them to cancel our contract - told them NOT to charge us a cancellation fee since THEY had actually broken the contract - and went back to Time-Warner (who I had sworn off about 20 years ago). Time-Warner actually goes by the name 'Rectum' now. I mean Spectrum.

    I swore off Time-Warner because every time I tried to change my service (drop HBO and Cinemax for example) they would tell me "there's a pending rate increase and if you drop those channels you'll actually be paying more". Ass hats.

    I've decided I'll just change service every 2 years now to get the best deal. No one cares about KEEPING you as a customer, all they care about is getting NEW customers.
     
    Last edited: Mar 8, 2018
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  10. GlamorProfession

    GlamorProfession Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tejas
    yeah it's a price guarantee, not counting the price increase (that they have every year). it's in the fine print somewhere.
    it's a racket and i think at this point they are just trying their best to milk it for all it's worth because there is a whole generation coming up that doesn't subscribe to cable/satellite plans.
     
  11. mdm08033

    mdm08033 Senior Member

    A coworker told me about a neighbor who bought into TiVo with lifetime plans about seven years ago. The co-worker told me they had Verizon Fios or Comcast come to the house and swap cable cards every two years when the teaser rates expired. The only issue they endured was the lack of on demand. Now that most of the cables channels offer a Roku or Apple TV channel it really works.

    My personal advice is buy an slightly old TiVo Roamio, the best rooftop antenna WITH installation and a Roku. Unless your locked into a local professional sports team, over the air HD and streaming from Amazon Prime and Netflix is a great way to be entertained.
     
  12. JBStephens

    JBStephens I don't "like", "share", "tweet", or CARE. In Memoriam Thread Starter

    Location:
    South Mountain, NC
    I have a broken Blueray player which gets Netflix, and a Roku which gets Hulu. Here in western NC I get 50 channels OTA. So I didn't NEED DirecTV, I just got it because it was a "deal" if I moved from DSL to Uverse. Maybe I'll call them instead of getting the canned responses I got from the "chat" window. But if I cancel Direct TV, I feel I should not have to pay an early cancellation penalty, since THEY broke their contract with ME by raising my price.
     
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  13. Digital-G

    Digital-G Senior Member

    Location:
    Dayton, OH
    That was my take on the situation as well.
     
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  14. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member

    Location:
    USA
    I'm sure if you look over your paperwork there's legal wording that says they have the right to raise your fees at any time as their discretion.
     
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  15. Another reason app based channels are taking off for Apple TV, Roku etc. No long term commitments . You can pay a month at a time then quit and start again.

    The future is now.
     
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  16. eric777

    eric777 Astral Projectionist

    This is why I refuse to go with cable or satellite. All of these companies do this. Then they lock you into a contract so you are stuck with either paying the increased charges or paying a disconnect fee.
     
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  17. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I have to say, I wish they could do an "ala carte" system where you only had to pay for the 2 dozen channels you actually watched, vs. the religious channels, the home shopping channels, and the foreign channels you would never, ever watch. They hate this idea for a lot of reasons.

    What's really unfortunate is that none of the cable services or DirecTV or Dish are making much money today, and they're driving the few customers they have left away by raising prices. It's an endless spiral. I put up with it, but I'm not happy about it.

    I totally agree with you. I'd be curious to see how they try to defend this when you get a live person on the line.
     
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  18. AndrewS

    AndrewS Senior Member

    Location:
    S. Ontario, Canada
    A similar thing happened to me with my local cable provider. They gave me a rate for 1 year, with the requirement that I was bound to the service for that year.

    I heard rates went up for some people, but figured I wouldn't be affected. I was wrong. It turns out that what they guaranteed for that year was the "discount" rather than the actual price.

    I was pretty annoyed, but it was only a couple of dollars and still a huge savings over what I was paying previously.

    Our providers were mandated to provide a la carte in our cable programming. They did. However, they made it prohibitively expensive to get the channels you would typically want.

    It seems you can't win with these folks.
     
  19. Well to be a bit fair , every cable channel charges different prices to the cable Companies. You can’t expect HBO to charge them what the Hallmark Channel does so the cable companies bundle packages to resell content.

    I’m sure they hate that HBO , Showtine and ithers have their own apps now.
     
  20. tommy-thewho

    tommy-thewho Senior Member

    Location:
    detroit, mi
    You have to be willing to cancel and then they will negotiate a better deal.

    I've played the game for a while with Xfinity.
     
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  21. Jrr

    Jrr Forum Resident

    I would to. What I have found is the more right you are, the more defensive they become, and the more absurd the comments they make. They will typically tell you that you did something that caused the issue. Like of refunding you because they made a mistake, they will tell you that you should have caught it sooner so they don't have to. That's what Comcast said to me not too long ago...yes, we should not have raised your bill so we will credit you this month but you should have caught it sooner so we won't credit you the other months. So, they made the mistake and admit to it, but it's my fault so I don't get my money back. As if I would ever sign up with them again (I cancelled that day, telling them that was the last money they would ever get out of me...had they just refunded me, they would have got it all back within two months). They definitely did not see the business side of the point I was making and let me go. And if you escalate to an supervisor, they are worse lately. You get the sense the deal with this all day long and are pissed that you asked for them. They are more stubborn and rude nowadays than the ground level customer no service rep, which didn't used to be the case.

    Vidiot, I wonder if you know anything about this....they do everything they can, practically dare you, to leave. And this sort of thing happened to my dad, and enough people here, that I know this is just the way all these cable companies do business. I wonder if you know why? The churn rate must be incredible...it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and breaks every business rule I know. Even if a lot of people don't notice and just pay the extra fees, could that possible make up for those that leave? Direct TV just signed me up for HBO and Starz for $55 a month, which more than doubled my monthly bill, as if I wouldn't notice. Do you know what they said when I called? That they did this as a "courtesy" for me so I would have the service. Can you believe that? I wanted to scream! And they would not credit me for the previous two months they auto debited my card. When I told them I would dispute it, they told me to go ahead. Five minutes later AmEx gave me a refund. I mean, what the heck?? Why would I stay with Direct TV when my deal is up?
     
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  22. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I think it's desperation from much higher up the executive chain. I think the VP-level people are freaking out that they're losing thousands of subscribers a month, so they're forcing the underlings to pull every trick in the book to force subscribers into spending more money and adding channels they didn't necessarily ask for. I would bet the lower-echelon and middle-management don't like it, but they just want to hang onto their phony-baloney jobs and they're not in a position to argue. Classic business SNAFU.

    AT&T Warns Investors of Heavy Q3 DirecTV Subscriber Losses
     
  23. Jrr

    Jrr Forum Resident

    Well, you seem to often know things from a different perspective and I know we appreciate your insite. It's amazing how in this country top management starts doing things like this, they then destroy said company, they parachute out and everyone below them are out if work. If the cable companies had treated people right, there woyld not have been all the pent up anger which compelled so many to bail out the moment it was possible. I know it was ultimately inevitable, but people wouldn't be leaving in droves had they handled things in a professional fashion. As you said, their actions just scream of desperation and they are making their situation far worse. The thing is, they have the programming. They really could have huddled together and figured out how to make this work for their customers. Arrogance blinded them, like it did the music industry and by the time they realized it, it was too late. There is something really wrong when people like me are actually happy to see the cable industries ground sink beneath them. You really have to piss people off to get to this point. Just a few months in I already can't wait to tell Direct TV to stick it.
     
  24. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I think if the economy were better and average people had higher incomes (and more discretionary funds), people wouldn't care as much about an extra $30 or $40 a month on cable or satellite. But there is a move for many to "cut the cord" and get everything completely from the net, and this will screw the cable companies, the satellite companies, and the over-the-air stations.

    I'm not quite ready to kill DirecTV yet, but I have noticed the costs slowly edging up and it does piss me off a bit. I'm busy enough that the higher fees don't kill me, but if that changes I'll definitely consider telling them to stick it as well. (And I'm paying for 3 different boxes and 3 sets of service for 3 people in my family.)
     
  25. Jrr

    Jrr Forum Resident

    And that's crazy. Before I stupidly switched to Direct TV, Century Link raised the price despite a contract I had, like others here. Auto debit of course. I didn't bother to open my bill and check it for three months. I had a contract. Well, stupid me. I was also paying $50 for internet. All fine. I call them and they credit me the current month, but tell me I should have checked my bill and since I didn't, the other two are my fault. Huh? So, though I'm willing to pay the contracted price, and the $50 for internet, they instead accept my offer of cancelling the entire service. You'll love this: they offer to give me interent service for $25 a month if I commit to a year. I was fine with the $50, and fine with cable had they just credited me the overcharge!

    I took them up on the offer, and they honored the $25 for the 12 months. I would love for someone to show me how this makes any sense. It's so senseless it drives me nuts as a business owner. They would have broke even had they just kept me on, left the package as is, and got me to pay the next two bills. And, I would not have cancelled later on either. This way, they lost $25 a month for 12 months because they didn't want to credit me back around $75. What a bunch of complete idiots. So ya, sometimes it pays to just cancel but I don't get any of this. Went to Direct TV for a much better deal, but they are now screwing with me too. I'm out with everyone once my deal is up. I was stupid to give them another chance.
     
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