DirectTV. How is it?

[dr150]

I did. Opened a trouble ticket yesterday. A tech was supposed to come to the house. No one showed up. When I called last night I was on hold for 20 minutes, then they could not find my account. Finally did and they told me that techs are in the area are working on the problem. The rep made it sound like we are not the only ones with this problem. Don't really talk to the neighbors so I can't verify that. My trouble ticket is still open and I am in live chat with them to find out the status. However I think they dumped me after waiting from queue position 290. With Verizon they had a local store I could take my equipment in and change it out. Frontier does not have that. I think there are 8 stores for the entire state of California.

I think Frontier is in way over their heads.

That sounds like pretty damn horrible service. LOL.

If you're not under contract, sign up with someone else.

I've moved back and forth between DTV/DISH within 24 hrs of making a call. For internet, go with Comcrap....it's the only thing they're good at.

 

[Stopsignhank]

So the chat dropped me. I had to try again and was only #213. Said F it I will call. Talked to a nice high school student in the Philippines who was reading off the charts and said that my service call had been rescheduled for 4/16. Nice of them to tell me. When I asked what time she said between 8:00 am and 6:00 pm. So now I am supposed to sit at home all day Saturday waiting for some guy who may or may not show up?

I am under contract but it is $150 to get out of the contract. That is not a problem at this point.

 

[Homerboy]

Our neighbors just got it installed -- big ugly dish right on the front of their house. No idea why they switched (will have to ask) We actually have options here (TW and UVerse) so there's some competition. With WI winters and snow, makes no sense.

 

[KentState]

Have had DTV for a number of years and can count on one hand the number of times we completely lost TV. Typically, if a storms that bad we are not sitting in front of the TV anyways. Majority of the times, the HD channels will have issues and I just fall back to SD. That maybe happens for a few minutes a handful of times a year.

Interestingly, Comcast TV is far less reliable and has had more outages in our town.

 

[Stopsignhank]

This is from Frontier.

Adalberto] JEOPARDY NOTIF SENT (AUTO) - DATE TO: 04/16/2016 17:00
A jeopardy is a situation to where field technicians are able to fix other equipment that caused your equipment to stop working.
[Adalberto] Without the equipment that controls yours out of service, a repair to yours is not going to happen til then.

I am not sure what this means?

Me] So a technician will be out on 4/16. Do they have a time scheduled?
[Adalberto] It would end up an all day appointment due to a push back of the tickets while we fix what is in Jeopardy.

I called DirecTV to get some pricing and information. Talk about a hard sell. Since we have 5 rooms we would have to buy one of the boxes for $50. The guy wanted me to pay for the box before he would e-mail me the details about the plan. Then he would not let me get off the line. It was gross.

 

[shortylickens]

In Northern Virginia FIOS seems to be really damn good and DirecTV was shit.

We got rid of it a long time ago, and their ridiculous price hikes. Verizon has been not only super reliable but a good bargain for the money, if you consider speed.

I think this is one of those issues thats more about location than the company overall.

 

[Sonikku]

I've had TW, Dish Network and DirecTV and I would describe the latter as the lesser evil. My mother was paying $85 a month but when I tried to cancel it I got a package that had everything but Adult Swim and some other channels we never watched for $45. It's passable, considering part of that price includes the dvr fee.

 

[JulesMaximus]

JM, so that is $80 per month for just TV? No internet?

No internet. I need to check again, it was up around $100/mo but I called and got it reduced. They have a tendency to add fees over time with no explanation so pay attention to your bill.

Still, I'm pretty happy with the service.

 

[Charmonium]

I had dtv several years ago and it had to be a pretty bad storm to affect the reception so much that you got pixelation. Never had it actually go out on me but I only had it for about a year.

I don't know about other cable companies but Cablevision/Optimum/Altice has had a streaming 'dvr' for a few years now. You can record up to 10 shows simultaneously. Except the recording happens at the main office and then gets streamed to your tv. You won't find anything like that in a dvr with a hard drive since you would need 10 separate tuners. I assume that other cable companies are trying to do something similar so that's what I would go with if it's an option.

 

[Stopsignhank]

Thanks all. I called Frontier ready to go nuclear on them. Long story short I got a hold of a tech guy who knew what he was doing. He said that our video service had been disconnected. He clicked the box and our TV is back on. Why the other 2 techs did not catch that I don't know. I kept telling my wife I thought it was something like that. Somehow our video service got turned off.

My son is so relieved right now. As a matter of fact I am too.

I am still thinking about switching, but damn that sales guy I talked to at DirectTV was so slimy I don't want to deal with them.

Right now my son is happy and that is all I was after

 

[spacejamz]

been flipping back and forth between Time Warner and DTV for the past 10 years....I just switched yesterday back to DTV...I called yesterday morning around 9AM and they had an installer come out at 2PM which was awesome...still had the satellite dish from my previous install and they used the existing TWC coax runs (they just installed a new splitter though) so he was done in less than an hour...

was paying $130/month for 2 HD boxes and DVR on TWC...now paying $65 for genie/mini genie (after $10 discount for bundling with ATT wireless and and I also get a $200 gift card...I had to select Choice for $29/mon to get Sunday ticket for free this year...goes up to $87 for months 13-24.

 

[Demo24]

.

I called DirecTV to get some pricing and information. Talk about a hard sell. Since we have 5 rooms we would have to buy one of the boxes for $50. The guy wanted me to pay for the box before he would e-mail me the details about the plan. Then he would not let me get off the line. It was gross.

Yup, that's been my experience with dtv, terrible support and lots of pressuring to add more services, etc. My mom has it because she could get Att and dtv bundled together to save a bit of money (also no other options but satellite). She was in a contract for a long time and of course they started raising costs and adding stuff. For one TV with basic service it's pretty expensive.

On the positive the quality is pretty good and service doesn't cut out unless it's a particularly bad storm.

 

[gorcorps]

The day I cancelled DirecTV was one of the happiest days of homeownership.

Yes weather will affect service from time to time (not often, but it happens). I lost service once from what I could only guess was high winds as it wasn't raining yet. It's far and away the most expensive service I've ever had, so be prepared for that. They had a habit of calling to tell me I had a trial of a movie channel activated, only to charge me a month later when it didn't deactivate. If it wasn't for Sunday Ticket I would have never had DTV in the first place, and I was so fed up by the end of the 2 years I didn't care that I couldn't get all of my football.

They won't be getting any more of my money.

 

[ControlD]

We had it years ago and the picture went out every time a decent rain or snow came through. But, I am in Ohio and we get a fair amount of rain here. In drier climates I doubt this is much of an issue.

I ended up switching to TW cable to get bundle pricing (which has long since expired), and despite the ridiculous cost it has been a pretty reliable service.

 

[rudder]

Good service that is expensive.

This. It may start out cheap with some good deals... but costs can get out of hand. had directv for years and finally ditched them for Charter.

Service was fine. I had clear line of site for my dish and only lost signal in thunderstorms with heavy rain. Which of course happens alot in the summer.

 

[Stopsignhank]

Well we probably will not go with DTV. First there was the slimy salesman, sure I can talk to the guy at Costco, but not real sure about the internet options. Then if the TV goes out during the rain my son will worry about it each time it rains. Hey, as long as Frontier keeps the status quo that is all we need.

The real reason to go with DTV was for the NFL package, however they sell the NFL package to college students and my daughter is in college so she can buy it and we can watch all the Steeler games. We just have to watch them old school, we can't pause it or rewind the games. Just how we used to watch the games in the old days.

 

[Andy22]

I cannot do without NFL Sunday Ticket thus I can not do without DirecTV. I've been a customer for almost 20 years though so I know their good and bad side.

 

[slag]

I cannot do without NFL Sunday Ticket thus I can not do without DirecTV. I've been a customer for almost 20 years though so I know their good and bad side.

Sure you can. They are just football games. Wait 3 hours and watch the highlights on ESPN and get on with your life. It's just entertainment.