The Lies of DirecTV

I recently signed up for DirecTV after being fed up with cable for many months. Their marketing is extremely attractive. $50 a month for a package that would cost you $80+ with cable. But the marketing is not in sync with their actual policies.

First things first. The installation was completely free and was handled extremely well. The technician came out to our house (on time I might add) during a day when it was pouring down rain, installed the dish and was in the house for all of about 15 minutes, installed the box and left. They even provided an HDMI cable free of charge (which costs something around $50 at Best Buy). So two big thumbs up for the installation. Well done.

Then the first bill came. Sigh. The first bill showed a charge for $80, and my immediate thought was why would I go through all the hassle of canceling cable and setting up DirecTV for no savings? So it turns out the fine print is really crappy. You have to apply for a rebate after you get the installation which takes SIX TO EIGHT WEEKS to process and then they apply the rebate to your account for 12 months going forward - they don't backdate it to your start date. So if you are hoping to lower your bills immediately by switching to DirecTV, that's not going to happen.

So I will be paying the same price as cable for 3 months, which I never would have agreed to had I known that from the start. Just to make matters a bit worse, somehow my online contract got morphed from a 12 month commitment to an 18 month commitment. How that happened I will never know.

Just to rub salt in the wounds, the week after we had DirecTV installed, the AT&T guys went door to door announcing that u-verse was available to our house now which is cheaper than cable and more functional that DirecTV. Oh well.

Please don't buy DirecTV. They advertise that they run a more consumer-friendly business that the cable companies but in reality, they are just a bait and switch operation.