Less Than Stellar Customer Service

Last Monday DC had a little snow. Accent on a little. It was pretty. On some grassy areas there was a small amount of accumulation. This gives you the weather conditions for what happened next with DirecTV.

I came home from work. Turned on the TV. I wasn’t able to get all of the stations. I got a blank screen with a message saying searching for satellite signal. I was able to watch a little TV. Then the screen froze. Suddenly I couldn’t get any station to come in.

There was still a very small amount of snow coming down. But not much. I thought I would try and reset the receiver and maybe I could get the signal back that way. I hit the reset button and it starts. But when it gets to the part where it is accessing the station line up I get the searching for signal. I try to reset again. The same thing happens.

Now the fun really began. I called DirecTV for help.

It actually didn’t take all that long to get someone on the phone. The conversation started with me explaining the type of weather we had. As described above it wasn’t all that bad. The women from DirecTV asked if the dish was covered in snow. I said it was on the roof so I couldn’t see it but I added I doubted if there was much snow on it since we didn’t have much snow.

We then went through a series of tests to see if the receiver was properly connected. Then we ran the reset again. And received the same searching for satellite signal. The woman said well the problem could be the “bad” weather in DC. (Yes all that snow and that thick cloud cover that sure would be a good reason to loose the satellite signal.)

The upshot was that a technician would be dispatched to “fix” the problem. Before I could find out what day someone would be out I had to decide on two for lack of a better way of putting it payment options. The first was a monthly $6 fee which would cover any problems I would have with the receiver or dish or whatever. The other was a $50 one time fee. Actually it was a visit fee if there were any other problems found they would be extra.

I opted for the $50 fee. All of the times conflicted with when my friends were going to be here for their visit. So I said I’d call back. About an hour or so later I tried the TV again and everything was up and working.

I’m working on what to replace DirecTV with. I’d hope to do Verizon. Hoping that FIOS would be available in my area. No such luck. The areas that don’t have FIOS, Verizon partners with DirecTV. Well so much for that. There is the possibility of Comcast but I’m not a huge a fan of them either. I will continue to look into getting something else.

Hopefully in the next few months DirecTV will be a thing of the past.