This Is Service!?

This does not bode well!

I seem to have the worst luck whenever I change service providers. There must be something that keeps me changing them. Oh! Yes, that’s right! Cost and service.

This time the complaint is with DirecTV. After years of watching my cable bill grow by nickel and dime, I received a cable bill this month that had gone up by nearly 100%! Paying more than $100/month to watch nothing but commercial TV is not something I am willing to do! To add insult to injury, when I called Comcast to ask why the bill this month was so high, I was informed that there had been a billing error for the past year, they had never put in the billing increase that should have gone into affect! I asked if there was a way they could switch me to a different plan to keep me as a client.

They are running ads all over the schedule that show prices as low as $29/month. I was told that the special promotions were for new customers only. I was told that I could change my service package, return my DVR and drop the channel group that includes three of the five channels I watch with any regularity to save myself about $20/month. I think not!

So, I have decided to install DirecTV. The programming package similar to what I currently have; actually, it has far more channels but as I really only watch a few channels, hundreds of other channels I will never watch do not really impress me. (I wonder if that Pink Floyd song should be updated: “I’ve got 210 channels of shit on the TV to choose from.” Just think, back when the song One Of My Turns was new 13 channels of television was a lot. But I digress...

So, I decided to switch. My installation was scheduled for Sunday morning 08:00 – 12:00. So imagine how shocked I was to be called at 07:50 to be told that the install was not going to happen. Seems they had run out of equipment to install and decided not to tell me until Sunday morning. Now, I can understand that they might have been out of equipment, but my problem with the situation is that they had to have known this before Sunday morning!

When I called I was told that they had expected a shipment on Friday which had not come in. The installer could not seem to understand why I was upset that I was just learning about the change in plan ten minutes before they were supposed to arrive. I had cancelled plans to be available and they didn’t seem to care! To quote Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy: “If that’s their sales pitch, what must it be like in the Complaints department?”

Oh well, the install is rescheduled for next weekend… We’ll see. The good thing is that once this is done, I will have service at less than half the price I am currently paying Comcast, I will have the ability to watch shows that I have recorded from any television set, and I will have a fixed price for the next two years. After that… well, we’ll just have to jump off that bridge when we get to it.

Wherever you are today, I hope your weekend has been lovely, and (on the whole) annoyance-free.

Don Bergquist – October 11, 2010 – Lakewood, Colorado, USA