Notes on DIRECTV

As a birthday gift to myself, I upgraded to DirecTV HD. Initially, I had major issues with DirecTV's cusomer service and their inability to create a work order that reflected what I wanted. After much time spent and threats (promises) of discontinuing service, they finally got it right! While I still feel their company has some serious customer service issues (smack talking and blame gaming between customer service and the technicians), I am very pleased with my new tv!

I did find out some interesting and insightful info from the technician who installed the new HD dish. The following is a compilation of info I've learned through this process. Some of these are DirecTV specific and others are relatable to any cable provider.

• If you are having any kind of issue with your service, ask to speak to the Customer Service Retention Department. This department is willing to play 'Let's Make a Deal' to keep you as a customer. Even if you aren't thinking of taking your service elsewhere, ask them what they are willing to do to keep you as a customer. By asking them what they could do for me, they credited me $15 per month for 6 months. Further, they credited me the entire $199 charge for the HD/DVR upgrade.
• Each of our tv's has a receiver. However, two of the receivers I have are in rooms that aren't used all that often. One is on the back porch, which is used only during the summer months. The other is in the spare room my mom uses when she comes to visit once or twice a year. I thought I had to pay for these receivers to be active year round (to the tune of $5 rental fee for each receiver). Turns out you can suspend service when those receivers are not in use. Then, when you do want to use them, just call in and have them reinstate service. This will save me about $90 a year.
• The technician left me the old, working receiver. While I don't have a summer home or cabin, turns out that, if I did, I could relocate the dish there. All you have to do then is take the dish, position it so it gets signal and take one of your home receivers with you. This way you can have DirecTV service whereever you go.
• The technician also set up my tv remote so I can have wifi access. This way I can change the channel anywhere in the living room or any other room in the house. This is really handy if your furniture is placed so you don't have a straight shot at the tv.

This info was really helpful to me. I'm not sure why DirecTV doesn't make this knowledge more accessible to their customers. But, as I said, they seem to have such major communication issues internally, it's no wonder they don't communicate well with their customers. If you have any other lessons learned, please leave them in the comments.