- Report: #1369070
Complaint Review: DIRECTV - Nationwide
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Author Not Confirmed
Why?
DIRECTV
Nationwide, USA
Web:
www.directv.com
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DIRECTV DIRECTV charged credit card without authorization for an early termination fee I did not owe Nashville Nationwide
We cancelled our DIRECTV services due to a move to a highrise that did not allow DIRECTV, the building was pre-wired for Xfinity and AT&T Fiber(Also owns DIRECTV). At the time of cancellation I explained that to the rep and at the end of the call while reading her mandatory comments she stated, "you will be charged an early termination fee". I interupted and asked why as I was out of contract(unaware they should not have charged it since we were moving to a location where DTV was not an option). She explained that since I added 4KUHD service 8 months prior my contract renewed. I wasnt happy but let it go. In the following days I received multiple calls from DTV's retention team, after explaining why we were disconnecting to each of the DTV employees they all said to call back into customer service and explain that our new location didnt have DTV and they would credit the ETF. At our new location we installed AT&T fiber and I received my final bill from DTV, the ETF was still on there so I decided to call and have it removed as instructed by DTV retention, regardless of the service not being available I thought for sure since we established service with AT&T(their parent company) they would quickly credit the fee. Ill summarize the next 2 hours on the phone...they would not credit the ETF since I had not tried to actually transfer my service but if I would agree to transfer the service, allow a technician to come out and verify no service was available then he would note the account and I could call back in have the fees credited. I agreed, primarily at this point just to just show them how ridiculous they were.
Once I agreed I was told I needed to be transferred to the new customer dept since my account was already cancelled I needed to establish new service so they could place the order to send out a technician. I almost gave up at that point but was already 1.5 hrs in so I figured, why not? Once with the new service team, she reopened my account and scheduled a day and time for the tech to come out to confirm "no line of sight for the dish", I re-explained for the 30th time, there is a line of sight from our 24th floor balcony to all the satellites in the sky but my building did not allow dishes to hung from the building and the building was pre-wired for 2 fiber services(including AT&T), she said she understood. The first available appt was 10 days out, I went ahead and agreed knowing the tech would see the issue as soon as he pulled up to the building. She then asked for my credit card information to bill me the start up fees...at this point I decided I could not go any further and I gave up. I told them this was simply not worth the time I already had invested and I certainly wasnt going to give them any more money. I then told her to cancel the order, dont send the technician and I would pay the termination fee. They won!
Later that evening I received an email confirming the tech visit and thanking me for being a new DTV customer! I thought you have to be kidding me, they are still coming. Thinking I might have one more shot at getting my ETF credited I decided to let them come on and confirm no service, I did go ahead and pay my final DTV bill, less the termination fee, and thats where they took their sleaziness to the next level, they now had my cc info on file again, but just for a single payment.
The tech showed up 10 days later, called me from the lobby to confirm he was in the correct building, I explained he was and he proceeded to tell me that unfortunately DTV service was not available in my building, I let him finish before telling him I had told his company that 100 times but they still sent him, we laughed at how stupid they were and he said he would note the account stating service was not available...Victory at last! For the next few days I received calls from DTV stating the techinician missed his appt and I needed to call and reschedule, I ignored them for the first 3 days but once it didnt appear they would stop I called in to take one last shot at getting my ETF credited. That call only took an hour before I was disconnected when they tried to transfer me to billing...
I was done, they had officially killed my soul, I still had a balance on the account for the ETF but thought maybe whoever I was being transferred to would have read the notes and gone ahead and credited the fee. I figured Id follow-up today when I had a chance to call and try to close this out one last time. So, today I logged into my account and to my suprise the balance was finally $0, I was shocked but victorius, they had finally done the right thing!.....except they didnt, upon review review, my balance was $0 because 3 days ago they billed my credit/debit card for the outstanding ETF, obviously pulling my information from the final payment I made.
DTV is quite possibly one of the worst and most inefficient companies I have ever dealt with, if their executives knew how much time and money they spent trying to salvage a measley...wait for it....$130 they would certainly have to change their practices, not to mention losing any chance of ever getting me back as a customer, not to mention the loss of any potential customer that reads this. I purposely left out the amount for two reasons..1.To show how ridiculous they were in the efforts they would go to generate $130 in revenue. 2. So you wouldnt realize how ridiculous I was for investing as much time as I did in recovering $130, it was more about principle and now it is ALL about the principle. When all their soul killing antics fail, they will resort to retrieving your payment info from a prior transaction and taking their money. Unacceptable, I will recover my $130 if it cost me $10K...not really. If this doesnt stop you from doing business with DTV maybe you will at least get a good head shaking out of it.
