Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Not All Who Wander Are Lost
June, 2019 - Mount Denali, Alaska

Friday, May 28, 2010

Continued Frustrations with DirecTV

I spent another hour on the phone this week trying to straighten out our DirecTV account.

When I originally called in early May to change our service from our house to the RV, I was told it was not possible and that we needed to be in one location at all times with a permanently mounted satellite. After going round and round with the guy, we finally agreed the best course was to suspend our account until we could find someone who knew what they were doing.

After several unsuccessful attempts, Kevin found a local DirecTV installer who was able to get us exactly what we needed. She shipped the satellite, the tripod, a DVR and a regular receiver for our two TVs. An installer came to our RV and hooked it all up. Finally, success. Now the only problem was we had two DirecTV accounts. I still needed to deal with the suspended account.

This is where the hour long phone call came into play. I thought I would go crazy :) By the end of the call, I had been transferred to three different people. The first person told me the accounts had to be merged and transferred me to a "merge specialist". OK, that sounded reasonable.

After holding for some time, the merge specialist came on the line. He went ahead and merged the accounts. After he was done, he told me one of our old receivers had to be transferred to the merged account. I explained our situation AGAIN; that we already had two receivers and didn't need a third one and how the original person I spoke to could have avoided all this mess if he only knew what he was talking about. Well, after going round and round, I was told an old receiver had to be transferred. The "system" would not allow anything else. No overrides were possible. I asked for a supervisor. He would not transfer me to a supervisor!! By now I was growing weak from hunger and exhaustion. I agreed to the receiver transfer figuring I'll just call a few days later and cancel the extra receiver. You guessed it, I now had to be transferred to an "activation specialist".

More time on hold. I asked the activation person if she could get around the "system" since I didn't need the receiver she was transferring. She told me to call a week later and cancel it. That's what I had already figured I would do. I have NEVER encountered such unbelievably screwed up customer service!!

The following day I received a call from a survey company asking about my DirecTV customer service call. You can imagine the earfull she got. She assured me someone from DirecTV would be calling me and solving this entire mess. That was on Wednesday; still no call from the magic person who can fix things. Go figure!

My blood pressure is now back to normal. Actually, the rest of the week was great. We have had the most beautiful weather the last several days. This has been very unusual for May in Wisconsin. Average high temps are 72 degrees. It has been in the 80s for an entire week. The Memorial Day weekend forecast is fantastic.

The campground sites are all reserved. I'm sure we will be quite busy this weekend.

I also want to report that I have had a visitor to my hummingbird feeder. I'm so excited! I'm trying to get a picture, but it never stays long enough. I don't know exactly what kind it is, but is has a green neck :)

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

4 comments:

  1. Dealing with the satellite TV companies is seldom a pleasant experience. Their representatives seldom listen to what you are saying. :(

    I would guess that you are seeing a ruby-throated hummingbird since that is the only species found in Wisconsin. Anything else would be a rarity, and a million birders would descend on your campsite. :)

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  2. I think by the time we get out there, I will be expecting a nightmare experience with every small detail! In a way, that is GOOD, because when things arn't so bad I will feel incredibly lucky.

    Hang in there. Remember YOU are full timing, those poor people at Direct TV have to go to work every day!

    Enjoy the weekend and smile every time you remind yourself that most of the people at the campground have to go back to a job at the end of the weekend!

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  3. I've read where people say each time you call Direct you get a different answer and if you hang up and call back you might get a different response. We've had Direct for years but only in our home..we just take our Directv tivo box with us when we travel. I hate to think of the hassle when we go full time.

    Did you sign up for the DNS service? Maybe that is who you need to speak to... I think you have to sign some sort of a release saying you live in your RV.

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  4. Oh no, we are waiting for our finances to settle down before even trying to have a satellite system installed. Please, not another possible aggravation.

    But as Merikay said - they got to work - we don't have to!

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