Woman dies at age 102, DirecTV charges early termination fee

[FreddyE1977]

I guess when it starts going wrong for a company it ALL goes wrong!

https://abc7news.com/society/woman-dies-at-102-directv-charges-early-termination-fee/5583488/

I guess they could have gotten worse press if they had sent some thugs around to collect.

 

[TheBigA]

Bad press, until you read the last sentence of the article:

Manrique received a letter of apology from DirecTV's parent company, AT&T. It agreed to waive the early termination fee after all, telling us simply "We have apologized to the family and resolved this."

 

[Will_H_69_9]

AT&T has a lot of bad will for it's customers.

 

[KML0224]

AT&T seemed to only cave because this one family's case was spotlighted by the local ABC station. Otherwise, it would still, most likely, be unresolved.

 

[davideduardo]

AT&T seemed to only cave because this one family's case was spotlighted by the local ABC station. Otherwise, it would still, most likely, be unresolved.

The bad treatment of customers of DirecTV precedes the AT&T ownership.

Example: I went through an unpleasant episode about a decade ago where I had been offered an incentive for upgrading to the multi-header dish and receiver in the form of a $200 credit on the installation cost. I was billed without the offered incentive, and after I appealed they said that "the time to apply for the incentive had expired". Of course it had expired; it took them months to look at my claim which was within the time period.

Then, I moved to a home which was in a foothill are of Los Angles and where there was no signal no matter where the dish was placed; they insisted on applying a cancellation fee even though they could not provide service to my residence. I refused to pay, wrote many letters and the result was that they gave my account to a very aggressive collection agency.

I still have a hard time controlling my temper when I am approached by a DirecTV salesperson in Costco or some other retail outlet or at an AT&T cellular store. DirecTV makes cable companies seem truly customer friendly.

 

[TheBigA]

Then, I moved to a home which was in a foothill are of Los Angles and where there was no signal no matter where the dish was placed; they insisted on applying a cancellation fee even though they could not provide service to my residence.

Similar experience many years ago, when I moved to a house blocked from the satellite by my neighbor's trees. Up til then, I had been happy with the service.

 

[KML0224]

I still have a hard time controlling my temper when I am approached by a DirecTV salesperson in Costco or some other retail outlet or at an AT&T cellular store. DirecTV makes cable companies seem truly customer friendly.

It sounds just like the Comcast "vultures" who are at the Newington, CT Walmart nearly every day. It's funny that Newington is a town served by Cox Communications. Between my older brother and then me, my household had Comcast and the prior company from 1993 to December 2016. Our bill was paid in full, every single month from August 1998 until the end. I didn't owe them a cent. It felt SOOOOO good when I walked out of their West Hartford store that day! Since then, I tinkered with the service my mother had with Frontier and, if at my old place in New Britain, used an indoor antenna and took my chances. I, myself, had Frontier for landline phone service and DSL internet. That was by default, since Frontier took over for AT&T's service when they left Connecticut.

 

[FreddyE1977]

Sadly I have learned over the years that the only thing these companies seem to fear
is public humiliation.

Once you go to the media (or convince them that you are serious about doing so)
you will finally get some action.

It's how I took care of a similar problem I had with Comcast years ago.
Called the Sr. VP of Sales for their Spotlight Channel and told her that if I did not
have my problem resolved within 72 hours I was going to all of her advertisers with my
story and a request that they pull their ads.

I had of course memorized enough of their names to convince her I was serious.