who has direct tv?

[themadness]

anybody else finding a way around the direct tv black out? my kid is IRATE that he cant watch spongebob. i thought about hulu but i'm not sure if thats the way to go. direct tv has breached our contract because we are paying for channels we arent getting. we were also missing some before the black out. cancelling the service has a 300 dollar fee attached.

any other easy alternatives?

[3X00-Modified]

I have Directv as well but Spongebob makes your brain turn to mush... so I don't watch it

BUT they did not breach their contract... Re-read your Customer agreement again. It amazes me when people don't think companies plan for things like this.

(d) Our Programming Changes. Many factors affect the availability, cost and quality of programming and may influence the decision to raise prices and the amount of any increase. These include, among others, programming and other costs, consumer demand, market and shareholder expectations, and changing business conditions. Accordingly, we must reserve the unrestricted right to change, rearrange, add or delete our programming packages, the selections in those packages, our prices, and any other Service we offer, at any time. We will endeavor to notify you of any change that is within our reasonable control and its effective date. In most cases this notice will be about one month in advance. You always have the right to cancel your Service, in whole or in part, if you do not accept the change (see Section 5). If you cancel your Service, a deactivation fee (described in Sections 2 & 5(b)) or other charges may apply. Credits, if any, to your account will be posted as described in Section 5. If you do not cancel, your continued receipt of our Service will constitute acceptance.

They did have notifications on the guide for a duration of time before this blackout...

They also cover changing their contract while your under contract... so really to them the contract means absolutely nothing except you are with them for 2yrs unless you pay the cancellation fee... Its just a bunch of fluff that's all negated by this one statement

4. CHANGES IN CONTRACT TERMS

We reserve the right to change the terms and conditions on which we offer Service. If we make any such changes, we will send you a copy of your new Customer Agreement containing its effective date. You always have the right to cancel your Service, in whole or in part, at any time, and you may do so if you do not accept any such changed terms or conditions. See Sections 5(b), (d) and (e) below. If you elect not to cancel your Service after receiving a new Customer Agreement, your continued receipt of Service constitutes acceptance of the changed terms and conditions. If you notify us that you do not accept such terms and conditions, then we may cancel your Service as provided in Section 5, as we cannot offer Service to different customers on different terms, among other reasons.

And hell if they didn't back it out they would have just charged you more money... which would you rather have happen? See if they can resolve the issue at the same rate or hike it up on you and say too bad.

[3X00-Modified]

Also read the press releases, its not Directv screwing you over its Viacom

http://news.directv.com/2012/07/11/viac ... -proposal/

They demanded Directv to drop the channels at the current rate or they were going to sue Directv.

Also watch online I guess for now, Netflix and iTunes and such

http://www.directvpromise.com/

[themadness]

here's the problem though. of course they plan for stuff and the wording in the contract works in their favor but, we are paying for channels we arent getting and half of the alternatives arent available here. the guide warning they gave popped up on the 10th. if i hadnt seen it on the news i wouldnt have known until a few hours before. obviously they had to know the dispute was going on sooner than that so an email or something would have been nice.

problem number 2....about 6 of the channels in our package that is clearly listed we dont get. no help on that issue either. not too mention in less than a month they raised our bill over 40 dollars. we were being billed by at&t and direct tv. we bundled our web and tv service on a special offer through our att&t. the bill was "transferred" back to direct tv with out so much as a phone call or email. we called to figure it out and basically got "oops...our bad!" their solution to the bill being high was cutting back our programming package. piss poor customer relations IMO.

true this is mostly viacom's hard times since they are greedy as crap. but either way the customer is getting the short stick. we either pay more for channels. dont get channels that are the bulk of packages. or we pay exponentially more if viacom holds out.

we would switch if it wasnt for the 300 dollar fee. plus they havent made any effort to update people on the status of the black out. the direct tv promise site isnt very useful and the main site doesnt even mention the situation at all.

not giving me what i pay for is a breach of contract if you ask me. if you went to a steak house, ordered a steak and the waiter said the meat guy wouldnt give us any steaks.....would you like a hotdog? granted theres no contract in that example but you still arent getting you want as a customer.

as far as internet tv goes, i'm not really sure how to set that up in my house so that it would be convenient as far as setting it up. we dont watch that much tv on a daily basis but my kid loves his cartoons in the morning. dont worry its all educational stuff. spongebob doesnt show up until late afternoon and that really is more for me than him.

i'm calling sometime today to see what the heck they plan on doing as far as billing. wanting to watch the daily show and only being able to get anderson cooper is a rip indeed.

[3X00-Modified]

One its not directv's fault you can't watch the channels... Call Viacom... second, they reserve the right to change programming and cost with a short period of time notification, If you fail to see those that's not their problem... They had it out there. Also if you don't like the changes you have the right to cancel and if you don't that's your way of "accepting" their changes. It's all written in the contract you signed when you signed up, if you didn't like the fact that to change providers you would have to pay $300 to cancel you shouldn't have signed on to begin with. But then again last time I checked it's close to the same fee for a cell phone... So their cancellation cost is not crazy high.

Bottom line they will currently not be able to tell you anything. Will they compensate the cost for the lost channels, Probably but the blackout just started to give them time to sort out 30MILLION customer bills... it will take some time. Other than that, in my mind TV is a convenience if you don't want to pay for it or deal with the on the fily and unknown changes then don't watch it or pay for it. All conveniences are like that and people should be 100% accepting of that fact.

Good luck but I doubt you'll get anywhere.

Also the info about the blackout is not on their homepage because it deters new subscribers at the moment.. they know there is an issue and rather than clutter up their main site they dedicated a domain to informing you about whats going on... and the fact that your upset over that blows my mind... They could have buried it 13 pages deep on the home site to keep quite about it.

[themadness]

granted viacom is at fault for snatching the channels. the beef i have with direct tv is customer relations and an effort to make arrangements for compensation. a sufficient notice for the black out is certainly not the day before. i'm pretty sure they didnt start negotiations with viacom on the 10th. i'm sure they knew way earlier than that so a heads up would have been nice.

just as much as direct tv has control of a contract as a consumer i have rights as well. that door swings both ways. as a loyal customer that pays my bill on time religiously i reserve the right to demand compensation when i do not get what i pay for. and 300 dollars is a bit much in any situation. a cancellation fee basically is a big "oh well". its funny how if i ordered extra channels or movies they bill and activate it almost immediately but if they cant deliver i hear "this takes time".


in a world where we can hear tweets that some celebrity farted and "like" some chicks facebook report that her kid bumped his head, then it shouldnt be too much to ask to get an update on the status of "negotiations".

TV is a convenience but it also cost money and getting the most out of your dollar isnt. just "accepting" that as a consumer i have no say in the quality of what i by is the reason big corps own everything.

if i were a potential customer, direct tv not having some info on their home site would be a huge turn off. that says to me that customer service is not important enough to be front page news for them. they may as well have buried it 13 pages deep since the main site has NOTHING concerning the matter. if i didnt know about it from other news sources i literally wouldnt know. if i wanted direct tv i would go to their main site and not seeing that info would lead me to believe its business as usual.

[3X00-Modified]

I'm done... let me know how your call goes.

[#1 stunna]

I think directv should pay viacom the extra money and not try to stick us with the bill , they allready charge way too much as it is . Im paying over a 100 a month for the choice extra and hd programming.(which is jus basic cable) My at&t and directv was suppose to be bundled too but never happened. Even if i switched to the lowest program package , no hd , no dvr , the cheapest of cheap it would still be 70+ a month.
Bottom line they are the billionaires but are too greedy to give the other billionaires more money for their channels! They can both go suck it!!!!

[Styluss]

At this rate, you're going to be missing your 26 channels, or you're going to pay the early cancellation fee. What is the lesser of two evils?

Switch to Dish, done.

[DTMAce]

Wow. Gone are the days of only having at most 20 channels, eh? LMAO

Thank god for Netflix, no more commercials, and I can catch up on episodes I missed!

We have DirectTV here too, and we agree, it sucks major balls. Long time customer loyalty means NOTHING. We have to threaten with leaving for another company before they are even willing to help us fix something they broke. Lame.

Anyway.

[3X00-Modified]

I'm still confused on why you think threatening directv you'll leave is going to fix the issue, its viacom who won't deal with directvs lower price request... Damn a company goes to bat for you to keep your bill lower and all you can do is complain about it. I'm sure dish will either raise their rates to compensate or have to go through the same thing soon.

[DTMAce]

That was with regards to other issues, nothing to do with the Viacom problem. Lately, they have been fine...

But in the past, we have had to go to extremes to get them to resolve problems they caused or their equipment caused, etc. Don't misunderstand me.

[berettaboi]

are there any 'over the air'(antenna) tv channels reachable in your area? i dumped my cable tv about 6 months ago... not a bill i need to be paying. i still have cable internet with them though, and when they pulled the plug on the tv, the lower level channels are still there (only about 10 channels)... no box needed, standard def... we can reach about 20 over the air channels in my area, some US stations, and a bunch of HD stations.

we have netflix as well.


oh forgot to say... it was nice 5+ years ago when many just programmed cards or software on a 'free to air' or provider satellite receivers got you fully open viewing pleasure... there are still forms of it around and it is 'sharing' someones paid subscription most usually. best bet is actually have family or friends with multiple receivers on the same plan, divvy up the costs between everyone.

[themadness]

we have to use digital boxes to get the "free" channels now. growing up in country we had those tall ass antennas with the electric box that would aim it. if we were lucky we could get 4 channels. now you have to by a digital converter since the FCC decided everyone needed a digital signal. back in the 90s the programmed cards were big here. a guy in town would hit it with a boot program, take it home, and bam every channel available to man was all yours. sat companies had a field day arresting people here. most of them were law enforcement too. making a couple grand per week programming sat cards out their back door. i may grab a digital antenna to see how many channels we can get inside the city limits.

[diedemus]

switching to dish wont help you, viacom is doing the same thing to them