Jeff wanted to upgrade his DirecTV service and sign a new two-year contract, but the company changed his appointment to a time he wasn’t available, then canceled it, all without his approval.

He writes:

I asked for a supervisor as the pleasant employee, [redacted, could not resolve the issue. Apparently neither could his manager, as she could not explain how the appointment got cancelled but said it was likely the local contractor ran out of receivers. I expressed my frustration and agreed to the new appointment time which would be 10 additional days out; August 21st was the soonest they could do it. I asked for a credit and the supervisor agreed to $50 applied to my next bill. I asked for a case number and we ended the call.

When arrive home from work today, what do I see next door? A DirecTV van with the local DirecTV installer finishing an appointment with our close friends. Fate I thought. I even happened to catch him walking out the door. So I asked him, “any chance you are out of HD DVRs?” “Not at all” he responded, “we have boxes of HR24s (the model they would likely be upgrading us to)”. So much for that excuse.

I then called DirecTV’s 800 number to get the real reason why my appointment was canceled and hopefully get it back on track for Friday. I would gladly give the $50 credit back. I explained the whole situation to another very friendly gentleman in Alabama, named [redacted]. He was very client sympathetic and even called me back when we got disconnected. The little act of calling me back had temporarily restored my faith in their support center. However, he could not resolve the issue and sent me to his supervisor. I for whatever reason, got my hopes up. It was all for not though, as the she said their system does not track the details of a cancellation, namely who and why it occurred. Really? Are they tracking appointments on dry erase boards? How can’t there be an audit trail?

Very quickly I realized I was not speaking to the right person (plus, I was getting fairly heated) and asked that one of two things happen. 1. My appointment take place as originally scheduled or 2. They research the reason why it got canceled and follow up with me via phone with an explanation. Number 2 is really for their benefit; if they have ninjas or gremlins in their system, randomly canceling appointments, then they should know what those are and actively work to address them. The supervisor informed me that 1 was not going to happen and 2 would likely not happen, as they had no tracking of appointment cancellations.

I’ve never had such a hard time being a customer and giving a company my continued business. With today’s economy, you would think companies that provide luxuries would be falling over themselves to prevent customer frustrations and thus churn. This apparently is not the case for DirecTV. They are content with their customers being victims of their rogue, appointment assassinating system.

If you were Jeff, would you give DirecTV another shot or move on?

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