Eric was living in two different realities simultaneously. In one, he was a frustrated DirecTV customer who was trying to get new and modern equipment by using the regular customer service channels, and no one would help him. In the other timeline, he was a Consumerist reader who had fired off an Executive E-mail Carpet Bomb when DirecTV couldn’t get it together and had an installer right there in his house within only a few hours.

I actually had an interesting experience with DirecTV yesterday. It was like watching that Gwyneth Paltrow movie, Sliding Doors about alternate timelines.

Before I deployed my EECB yesterday, I had done a standard service escalation via the 800-DIRECTV phone number. I was told by everyone up the line that I spoke to that there was “no way” they were going to be able to honor the Monday morning commitment made by the installer on Saturday. This is what prompted my EECB.

Within 2 hours of sending the EECB, I had a senior DirecTV installer at my house doing an A-1 job of replacing my equipment. While he was working, I received calls from Chad in their president’s office making sure all was going well.

During the exact same window of time that the installer was here, I was observing a potential alternate timeline full of frustration and bitterness toward DTV in the form of calls and messages from DTV’s installation contractor, Mastec, telling me that “nobody” was able to get their equipment activated because of computer problems and that there was “no way at all” that anybody would be able to help me that day.

I basically had the left hand of DTV telling me that that they couldn’t do anything for me that day . . . all while the right hand was actually helping me.

The install went great and I had many corporate followups. Mastec called this morning (Tuesday) telling me that they thought they’d be able to help today. I let them know that they missed the boat by about 24 hrs.

I love the Consumerist. I’d like to think that copying you on the EECB helped light the fire that solved my problem.

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