DirecTV - All Purpose Complaint Thread!

OK, a little background....

I've been a DirecTV subscriber for at least 15 years. Before that, several years with DISH. Up until recently, been always happy with DirecTV quality, and thought their customer service was excellent. Started seeing a dip especially in customer service about a year ago and like many, really disliked the new User Interface Menu on the boxes. Now that they've been fully integrated into AT&T, prices have shot way up, no efforts at customer retention and they've even started charging $5 a live phone call, trying to drive people to use the online portal for all customer service.

The kicker was we recently got a CC charge for $60 from ATT that seemed to be from a local ATT store but was actually a charge for a partial DirecTV bill (we overpayed a previous month's DTV bill thus had a small, odd balance due for the next month). We had no idea what the charge was for, called the CC company who said it was likely fraud (there was no reference as to what the charge was for), canceled the charge and issued new CCs. A week later, our DTV was shut off without notice. We found out that DTV is now billing through ATT. Although it was quickly rectified, the whole experience left a bad taste and we're looking at other options.

So now we tried Hulu... it sucks, HD quality is iffy, often buffers, primitive user interface and the so-called cloud storage seems unreliable even though we have a solid 5G network/150MB+ download speed. I watch very little live tv except evening local and world news, but my wive watches a ton of night time shows and recording those shows for later viewing is a must. Much of what I've read as far as other streaming options seem sub-standard in one way or another and I'm not sure I want to deal with bundling our current internet service (Spectrum, which also is beginning to really get expensive) with tv.

What are my options? Is DISH worth going back to at this point?

 

I predict Dish will be swallowed by DirecTV eventually. It often has to black out channels because it can't come to terms with (HBO just went dark on Dish for the first time) some channel or another.

Ive been a DirecTV customer for as long as I remember. Ive always been happy with their customer service. But to be honest I don't require their help that often. I have learned that it's always an AT&T customer service person that answers first. And (even if you lie and say you need to talk to a DirecTV rep for technical assistance) the sooner you get a DirecTV person on the phone, the sooner you'll get help.

Their new interface does indeed suck. But that's really splitting hairs because I don't care about it so much. Accessing my DVR content has been spotty of late, but they say they're updating it and told me how to get what I want from it.

Also... if you've really been there for a long time, as I have... i call them every six months to say it's time for me to cut down on my premium channels to better meet my budgetary restrictions. They look me up... see how long I've been with them... and say...I tell you what... you can keep all of your premium channels... and we'll knock $50 off your monthly bill for 6 months. I accept that and they thank me for being a long time customer.

They've always been pretty great to me.

 

I think their picture quality is great. Their progressive charges and the need to constantly haggle for best price, however, sucks.

This is why I have Sling, Hulu, Netflix, Prime Video, HBO Now, etc; I'm a streamin' demon, and this is my story.

 

We keep our DirecTV subscription going, but I have to admit I'm beginning to use Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV, CBS All-Access, and Hulu more often.

I agree that the DirecTV DVR user interface has never been worse than it is right now.

 

Yeah, I’ve done that as well every year or so. However, this latest incident, the best they’d offer was actually adding Showtime for “only” $6 a month. And they wouldn’t waive the $5 charge for talking to a live person.

 

I was a DTV user for about 15 years until they tried to force me to use one of thier new crappy boxs!! (Which was slower and disgusting compared to my RCA I had)

I got rid of them..I was paying over $50 a month and hardily watched a thing!!

 

One major thing that still keeps me tethered to DTV is recording and saving shows.

Is there a stand-alone set-top box that records in true 1080p HD with multi-channel sound that doesn’t save to some idiotic proprietary file format (so I could transfer program files to say, my PC).

 

Dish customer for years. No complaints. If it is an absolute downpour it goes out. Does not happen very often. I had cable but when I wanted to drop my home phone that got all weird about it. Insisted that I keep the home phone or at least pay for it. I told them to come get their equipment and called Dish. Never going back to cable. Couple of my kids have Direct and they are satisfied.

 

No cable or satellite provider is going to be perfect. They're all going to have their shortcomings. It's just a matter of which ones you're willing to put up with.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0089DVCT8/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&th=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001CN9GEA/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Seriously robust computer with huge, fast hard drives that are solely used for capture.

Save in your DVR and transfer to the computer...

 

They already tried, unsuccessfully.

They ran into anti-trust issues (my wife worked on the case for the State of California).

But the market has changed a lot since then, so who knows.

 

We were one of the early subscribers to DirecTV, and won the satellite, the box and a year’s subscription.

But we always had trouble with customer service. It was wretched. We finally quit, just before AT&T acquired them. A holiday was declared!

My favorite story is that my wife spent an hour on the phone with a customer service person due to some charges, and the disagreement was over whether there were 12 or 13 months in a year! Seriously.

Despite the fact that my wife is an attorney, she was unable to win the argument. So, every time I run into a sales person for DirecTV at Costco, I ask them how many months are in a year.

 

CBS is now gone and directv says sorry.

 

Wait... you mean the CBS that's available for free with an HD antenna?

I don't know how these things usually get resolved. But unless it's NFL season... there's nothing on CBS that is must watch for me.

I imagine TV viewing numbers are way down in the summer anyway. But how does any network benefit from not having their network aired?

 

On my list of the "Top 10 Things I Would Do with Lotto Money" is release my combo box that receives cable, satellite, off-air, and streaming video, records it to a simple format readable on any computer, and allows you to copy to any hard drive or portable devices. But they are very afraid and against this kind of idea. When DirecTV first came out, we interviewed one of the marketing execs at CES in 1995 (right after they launched), and I raised the idea of a hard drive recorder and a DVD recorder to make permanent copies. The lady violently shook her head, asked me to turn off my tape recorder, and said, "Hollywood would shut us down in five minutes if we did that." But she agreed it was absolutely technically possible. It was around that time that I realized that there was a big conspiracy to stop people from making permanent recordings of TV shows and movies off-air or from cable or satellite. If it were up to the studios, the networks, the record labels, and all the streaming services, you would have to pay a fee every single time you watched or listened to anything.

It is possible to record anything that winds up on an HDMI connector, but you have to jump through a few hoops in order to remove the copy protection and get the image into a computer. Forum rules prevent me from detailing exactly how, but suffice it to say Google will give you the answers.

 

My directv receiver took a crap yesterday, a HR24 so I will upgrade to a genie. Have had the HR24 for a good 8-10 years or so and other then it is slow and freezes once in a while I've had no problems. I hope the genie at least stops the freeze and is a bit faster.

 

I was a DirecTV subscriber for years, then switched to DISH. That was a mistake but I stayed with them until October of last year. Then it was Bye DISH! - Hello Roku Streaming Stick+.

Hulu, HBO, Prime and a lot more for waaaaay less. Lot's of free programming. No degradation in picture quality, no buffering.

 

4K? Local channels?

 

I've tried most of the other options, chief being a Roku stick and while we have probably top tier internet (500+MB DL speeds), we still get far more freezes, lock-ups, etc then we do using DirecTV. I've tried everything fomr using WiFi extenders to running a cable directly into my Oppo Blu-ray player w/Roku and it's still not near 100% reliable.

As I mentioned in my original post, my problem is less technical and more customer service and pricing, especially since ATT gobbled up DirecTV. We've paired down our service to the absolute minimum package and just use Roku/Amazon Prime and occasional pay channel preview offers for other viewing.

 

I switched from DirecTV to DISH. HUGE mistake.

 

I've read so it may or may not be true that AT&T could just dump direct. Seems costly unless they are minus by a lot I guess.

 

They have been loosing quite a large number of subscribers in the last few years and continue to do so. It’s not looking good for them. Look at the numbers when they report earnings later this month or next. Unless due to covid they actually gained a few which I highly doubt due to their pricing. I expect them to have lost even more customers.

 

And to think Dish is starting a cell phone service company now too...

 

AT&T seems to be the problem, difficult to deal with, customer satisfaction a non-starter and overall unfriendly.

 

That’s been AT&T’s way of doing bad business for quite some time now now matter what business they run. Yet people that have a choice still do business with them...