When DirecTV first made it so you could add subscription packages through the web site, I thought it was very cool. Now, however, you can only remove the package by talking to someone. Obviously, they want to make it easier for you to subscribe than to unsubscribe. The guy asks me why I want to unsubscribe. "Because I don't want it anymore."
Jerks.
DirecTV did a lot of things we didn't like. First they refused to give us the new subscriber deal because I'd previously been a DirecTV DSL customer. We had to call on the phone to get them to straighten it out.
Then they immediately started calling us to try to get us to buy bigger packages. Phone call after phone call was made to let me know about all the sports I was missing. Finally I told the woman that I hated sports, I was a complete computer geek, I'd grown up as an unathletic nerd who couldn't even catch a ball, I was constantly made fun of in school for having no athletic ability, and that since I still had very sad memories about all this I hated sports and would never, ever, ever be interested. She was taken aback, and we never got any more of those calls.
A little over a year later, we decided we didn't want to subscribe any more, and got our service cancelled. They asked why, and we told them we couldn't afford it. They asked if we couldn't work something out, and we told them that, no, money was too tight. We went a surprisingly long time with no calls at all. I was impressed that they seemed to be honoring our statement that we could not afford the service. (We couldn't.) Then the calls finally started again.
Sarah has to deal with this during the day. Once, while I was there listening, she answered the "But why aren't you interested?" question with, "Because I don't own a TV." This seemed to hush them up pretty quick.
We do own a TV, but it will not be getting a signal any time soon.
Re:DirecTV
sigzero on 2006-04-29T23:41:17
We have not had "cable" for about 10 years now. There is nothing that I miss about it. I have cable modem service though and the cable company just can't understand why we don't want cable access services. "Why don't you want cable again?", "Um, because everything on it is crap?".
Re:Hard to leave
n1vux on 2006-05-01T16:04:44
Having the credit card it bills to re-issued with a new number may work for some of these hard-to-cancel "services". May impact a few other services, of course...
