DirecTV Customer Service Nonsense (UPDATE post #28)

[kdonnel]

Sort of like how "newspapers are dead"? "Terrestrial radio is dead"? There are many parts of the country where satellite is the ONLY way to reach them... whether for television or internet (and satellite internet is not a good solution for streaming).

Both Dish and DirecTV have said they are done launching satellites. The existing satellites have a lifespan before they must be decommissioned. There is 10-15 years life left. Satellite is dead.

 

[dclpluto]

We can’t get cable out here in the country. My Mom lived in town and had Charter service, it went out often. Wouldn’t even want that if we could get it.

How do you stream? My parents can’t stream because they can’t get cable. They have a dish for internet but it’s way too slow to stream. Maybe you can help out my parents.

 

[ljcrochet]

I hate directtv customer service. We moved from NY to florida last year. DH wanted to watch the Giant's games so we went with Direct tv instead of one of the streaming services.
Our year of cheap pricing is up so our bill doubled which I knew would be happening. I called them to see what our options were. All the cs wanted to do was sell me on adding premium channels and getting internet.
I actually asked how much to break my contract. Amount wasn't bad, but i want to find my contract and confirm she told me the correct amount.

Funny thing was I went online and downgraded my package saved about $40 a month to lose ESPN, GSN and cooking channel. I'm sure there are other channels but not sure which ones. My bill which is due on the 23, was listed as autopaid. I had just lost my $5 discount for auto pay which I hates since my emailed bill summary always had no info since it was paid before bill was printed. Directtv shows me having a credit yet they hadn't charged me yet. Of course when they did it was for the full amount.

 

[tvguy]

Please don't take what ONE station is doing and equate it to multiple (or even anywhere NEAR a majority) stations.

51 stations in my group, 26 in my wife's corporate owner. HUGE issue. Which is why there is a back log of orders for translators.

 

[tvguy]

Could you have a little chat with the tv stations in my area? Reception here is mediocre at best. Better than nothing for sure - but tons of lost signals and pixalation.

No need for a chat. They know.

 

[tvguy]

Follow the investment dollars.

Telcos are investing $0 in their legacy copper plant. All their investment dollars are doing to Cellular and providing data circuits.

Telcos money is all going into fiber upgrades to their copper networks. You should see the construction here the contractors are doing for the fiber upgrades for data and TV,

 

[kdonnel]

Telcos money is all going into fiber upgrades to their copper networks. You should see the construction here the contractors are doing for the fiber upgrades for data and TV,

Data circuits.

AT&T plans to kill off DirecTV and UVerse in favor of their multiple streaming options.

AT&T has an internal initiative to turn off their copper plant as soon as possible. What is not over laid with fiber will be serviced with cellular or will be sold off to wind stream or frontier. They have been trialing the needed technology in parts of Georgia for a couple years now.

 

[tvguy]

Data circuits.

AT&T plans to kill off DirecTV and UVerse in favor of their multiple streaming options.

AT&T has an internal initiative to turn off their copper plant as soon as possible. What is not over laid with fiber will be serviced with cellular or will be sold off to wind stream or frontier. They have been trialing the needed technology in parts of Georgia for a couple years now.

They have been experimenting with 5G here, got an exclusive deal with the city. Not my area of expertise but the local paper says it is stalled, and 5 years behind already! Takes far more equipment than they expected.

 

[luvsJack]

Data circuits.

AT&T plans to kill off DirecTV and UVerse in favor of their multiple streaming options.

AT&T has an internal initiative to turn off their copper plant as soon as possible. What is not over laid with fiber will be serviced with cellular or will be sold off to wind stream or frontier. They have been trialing the needed technology in parts of Georgia for a couple years now.

So basically you are saying that AT&T plans to make it so that a great deal of the country can't watch TV? Or well, maybe we can but we are just going to go backwards many years to a antenna (IF I can find one that works at my house) and the few local channels.

Frontier and Windstream are not available here. Comcast is not available here. ONLY satellite internet or AT&T (if you are one of the lucky ones that have it available. My sister has AT&T. She lives close enough for me to yell and talk to her from my yard to her yard. They tell me its not available for me)

If this is the plan, someone needs to seriously step up and get coverage where there is none.

 

[kdonnel]

They have been experimenting with 5G here, got an exclusive deal with the city. Not my area of expertise but the local paper says it is stalled, and 5 years behind already! Takes far more equipment than they expected.

5G is not needed to replace people’s home internet.

The Georgia trials have been 4G LTE. I regularly get in excess of 100Mbps down and 25Mbps up on my 4G LTE cellular network.

More then enough to support a streaming family.

People greatly over estimate how much speed they need for streaming.

 

[kdonnel]

So basically you are saying that AT&T plans to make it so that a great deal of the country can't watch TV? Or well, maybe we can but we are just going to go backwards many years to a antenna (IF I can find one that works at my house) and the few local channels.

Frontier and Windstream are not available here. Comcast is not available here. ONLY satellite internet or AT&T (if you are one of the lucky ones that have it available. My sister has AT&T. She lives close enough for me to yell and talk to her from my yard to her yard. They tell me its not available for me)

If this is the plan, someone needs to seriously step up and get coverage where there is none.

It is much too expensive to upgrade the outside plant for rural areas to support 25Mbps symmetric internet connections.

Those areas will be serviced by wireless.

The future is now.

 

[luvsJack]

It is much too expensive to upgrade the outside plant for rural areas to support 25Mbps symmetric internet connections.

Those areas will be serviced by wireless.

The future is now.

The only wireless available right now here, is a cell service that doesn't even do cell service very well. People are dropping them like flies. I can get Verizon hot spot (or whatever its called). It would work for some things but they have already said it won't work for streaming.

Sure hope there are some major improvements to be happening if what you say is true.

I mean I am all for the change but we have to have the services in place.

AT&T has upgraded in most areas here. They just have problems letting you know if you have service in your area. It takes demanding they come out.

As I have told them many times, for a communication company, they are horrible at communication.

 

[dez1978]

Simple solution, a $ 9 antenna. Let's get real, every "provider" has disputes that take channels off for a time. Even the internet based ones. Just the nature of TV today.

Its cute that you think that. Where we live we don't get anything with an antenna. Not even an expensive one mounted outside.

 

[tvguy]

Its cute that you think that. Where we live we don't get anything with an antenna. Not even an expensive one mounted outside.

LOL. Sorry you are in the 3% of the country with no OTA signal.

 

[dez1978]

Why would you have directv if you could get cable? Directv is expensive like you know. My parents have directv because they can’t get cable.

Directv used to be much better than the cable service around here. We had DTV for 20 years or so. Since back when you could go to walmart and buy the satellite and put it up yourself lol. It was cheaper, and had more channels than the one cable option we had, and was more reliable. Now we live out in the country. Our local electric co-op just started providing internet and tv packages. Now I have highspeed internet and tv thru them combined and its about 100 less per month than just DTV and we still get the same channels we watched before.

 

[dez1978]

LOL. Sorry you are in the 3% of the country with no OTA signal.

lol, me too. Even when we lived in town tho, when they first switched to the digital channels, we really could never pick up much. We tried 3 or 4 diff antennas.

 

[MillauFr]

So basically you are saying that AT&T plans to make it so that a great deal of the country can't watch TV?

Most areas of the country are expensive to serve. If the companies can make money providing a service the will provide it. If they lose money they will stop providing it. I think this is what is happening to satellite TV. The companies realize offering satellite is a similar business to running a movie rental store.

 

[Praying Colonel]

OP, the people with whom your husband spoke on the phone should've been kinder and more professional. But the issue of losing a channel (either temporarily or permanently) is not unique to DirecTV. It happens from time to time across all cable and satellite platforms, and even streaming (I use what used to be called DirecTV Now and we lost CBS for some time last month). I don't know of any that will compensate the subscriber for that. It sounds like your husband ultimately got a relatively good result by getting a credit on his account.

 

[sam_gordon]

LOL. Sorry you are in the 3% of the country with no OTA signal.

I'm curious where you got your 3% number. Is that an actual number or did you make it up? If it's an actual number, is that theoretically who can receive, or realistically? Is it by number of people or land mass? While I agree the majority of people by far can receive an OTA signal, I don't believe 97% can.

For those of you looking forward to 5G, you might want to watch this video...

Also, even if you roll out transmitters to every (ok, maybe every other) telephone pole, what are you going to do when power goes out? Cell towers have generator backups.

 

[tvguy]

I'm curious where you got your 3% number. Is that an actual number or did you make it up? If it's an actual number, is that theoretically who can receive, or realistically? Is it by number of people or land mass? While I agree the majority of people by far can receive an OTA signal, I don't believe 97% can.

For those of you looking forward to 5G, you might want to watch this video...

Also, even if you roll out transmitters to every (ok, maybe every other) telephone pole, what are you going to do when power goes out? Cell towers have generator backups.

FCC calculations. That's people who get zero over the air. So it may be only one channel out of the dozen or so licensed to your area. We have 2 stations here still on VHF including mine. So we lost a lot of range, but this year we added a UHF translator. Sort of like prior to 2015 when satellite companies would get requests from people in our viewing area for waivers to get out of market stations (San Francisco) We had an engineer working full time with an antenna on a pole measuring signal strength. My favorite was the lady who insisted she could not get Sacramento stations, even though you could see the transmission towers from her home. Engineer got an acceptable signal on his test TV with NO antenna attached!