Wed, 21 Mar 2007 17:24:00
My DirecTV saga…so far
Oh, this is just too much. I’ve been going around and around with these people for two weeks now.
A few weeks ago I decided that I would try to dump the Comcast DVR (which sucks on a level usually reserved for vaccuum cleaners and street whores) by adding locals to our DirecTiVo. Works out to like 25 a month in savings. Plus more chance of TiVoing everything without needed to use the Comcrap DVR. Which, as I mentioned, sucks terribly. Also, the hard drive is about three minutes from total failure.
I call DirecTV. I get locals. Oops! Only half of them work. Sounds like either the LNB on your dish or the cable itself, sir, we’re gonna need to send out a tech. Sure. Let’s schedule that. OK. You sit and wait for 5 hours on this day and someone will be there. Fine.
No one shows up. I call. Oops! Sorry sir we never actually made that appointment for you. I see we were supposed to do it, but it just never got done. You’ve been sitting there waiting? So sorry. Here’s a $111 credit for your trouble. Here’s a rescheduled appointment and a work order number. Why thank you, DirecTV people.
Today.
Guess who didn’t show?
Dial dial dial...ring ring ring. Hello? Hey no one showed up. Here’s my work order number. Oh, you have to call the local company sir and see if the tech is on his way, here’s that number.
Ring Ring. Hmm...that sounds funny. Very distorted and very Euro-ringy. Is this a call cent/// “Hello My name is Mary can I please place you on hold for the next representative?” I think Mary? This an Indian call center isn’t it? Because you sounds as much like a Mary as I sound like a Suresh. Sure, put me on hold. Don? Sure, right, Don. Got it, Don. Hi Don, here’s my work order number. What? I’m sorry I didn’t catch that. The S D M? Oh, the F T M! High Power you say? Don, is that the name of the company that is supposed to do my repair work? What? I’m sorry I couldn’t undertsand that. Yes it is and I should just call back to the same number that told me to call you and get the right number? Thank you Don, you’ve been most helpful.
Hello sir my name is Melanie. Hello, I just called regarding this work order number. Don, the helpful gentleman at the call center told me to ask for the FTM manager, and that I needed the number for High power, the company he said was supposed to be doing the repair. At least I think he said all that. I have to be honest, it was an outsourced call center and I could barely hear Don or understand what Don was saying, and Don couldn’t hear or understand me either. I hear you sir, and totally understand, we’re always getting complaints about that call center. I assure you, I’m in Pittsburgh and we can understand each other very well. Why thank you Melanie. Sir, High Power isn’t the name of a company at all, it’s a kind of work order. No one is coming to your home today, that’s a phone-only troubleshooting order and it’s marked as complete.
Melanie, are you kidding with me? No sir, I’m so, so sorry but I’m very much not kidding. I don’t know how this happened.
Hey, guess who is done being polite to you people? That’s right, me. I was patient when the first guy kept me on the line for a half-hour troubleshooting something that was easy to tell - in the first five minutes - was never going to work. I was patient the first time you made me wait all day for a tech that was never coming, but to do it again a week later? I will no longer be patient. Get me someone with the power to send a human being to my house as fast as it is humanly possible to get one here or I swear to God I will climb that roof and rip the dish out with my bare hands and call Dish Network 5 minutes later. I’m sorry to take it out on you, Melanie, but I’m pretty pissed. Sir, I get it, again, so sorry. Let me get a supervisor and I promise we will fix this for you immediately. Hi Supervisor Donna. Fix this.
Oh, I have a work order for day after tomorrow, and you personally guarantee that it’s a real, human-comes-to-my-house appointment? How nice of you. Another $111 credit? Yes, I would like that very much. Ten dollars off for the next three months plus another 5 a month for three months after that? Yes, I’ll gladly accept that as well. If no one shows up on Friday, I expect that you will double that credit and give me free service for six months. If not, I’ll burn down your headquarters, slaughter all of your children while they sleep, then raze your homes to rubble and ash. Then I’ll salt the earth around your homes and bury you and your children in the barren ground and I’ll cover your coffins in archaic symbols designed to keep you from attaining any of the really good afterlives.
Just in case. You sonsabitches. Pittsburgh is an easy drive from here.
I may not have said that last bit about the burning and slaughtering and salting of the earth, but dammit I wish I had. So far DirecTV owes me $222 and change. I almost hope the guy doesn’t come on Friday. I’d love to get another $222 credit, it’d almost be worth sitting here waiting. And of course I would finally be able to have a reason to drive to Pittsburgh and salt some earth.
You can’t put a price on that.
Posted by JimK at 05:24 PM on March 21, 2007
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Categories: Television, Personal
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Comments:
#2 Posted by Noblebrown 
on 03/21 at 08:21 PM -
That’s all you’d do, Jim? Bah, a paltry punishment. I could give you some REAL advice on how to get back at a bunch of lying sons of bitches.
#4 Posted by Rann Aridorn on 03/22 at 02:25 AM -
Just that their on-screen guide isn’t nearly as good. Their DVR isn’t either. And they don’t get quite as many channels.
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I used to work for DirecTV. They used to flat-out lie to us in training and say that we had no Indian call centers, so that when we were on the phone and people bitched about the shoddy treatment they got from them, we’d tell them that we kept our call centers “in house”.
Okay, it’s technically not a lie, since the call centers are in some OTHER foreign country that for all intents and purposes is India, but yeah.
By the way, might want to check those credits to be sure you actually got them and that they’re not doing it as just a discount off your programming spread out over time. (Which works out to the same thing, but is a catch 22 on forcing you to keep your service to get it.)
Just be glad that you don’t have Sprint telephone service. They’re far more crooked and their Indian call centers far, far worse.