So I take the Receiver home and plug it in and put my access card into it, and whala, the card and reciever are incompatable...Please call Direct TV.
So I call Direct TV and explain to them what i'm trying to do. The lady is confused and isn't totally sure if I can do that. She goes throug the process of looking at my account and I tell her the reciever type, and she says "oh, yeah we CAN do that with that type of reciever." Then she puts me on hold for 10 minutes and comes back with a "This reciever is still on a Business account, you'll have to call the business support to get it removed." She gives me the Business number and the account number that the reciever is still linked to and I call them.
After being on hold for a while and having to repeat the automated prompt thing 3 times, I finally get ahold of someone over at Business Support. She asks for all the exact same data that the lady I talked to wanted, and tells me that the other lady has no idea what she's talking about, the Reciever is inactive and can be transferred with no problem, and transfers me back to residential support. Driect TV's transfer thing proceeds to drop the call and I have to call again, after doing the automated prompt an additional 3 times, my call could not be completed as dialed. I call again, finally get ahold of another person, and she says she can do the transfer no problem. She asks for all the same information I told the other two people and starts adding the new receiver to my account. About 5 minutes in she just suddenly transfers me for no apparent reason. I'm on hold for 15 minutes when someone finally picks up and asks what I need. Apparently the person I was trying to be transferred to declined the call and I was put back into the queue to talk to a standard rep.
This lady starts the same process i've already done 4 times and asks for the same information and tells me she needs to transfer me to Line of Business to get the reciever seperated from the old account. I tell her I already did that, she puts me on hold for 10 minutes, and comes back telling me that the reciever is fine, but I need to order a new access card and transfers me to another department.
Yet another lady picks up and asks me for all of the same information the previous 5 people asked me (i should mention this involves squatting behind my entertainment center to read off a 16 digit number. I almost had it memorized by now). She tells me that before she can give me an access card she has to check the reciever to see if it's eligble for account transfer. I tell her I've already talked to 5 people, i'm sure one of them has already done that. She says she has to do it anyway, and puts me on hold for 10 minutes. She comes back on the line and tells me that the account the Reciever was associated with, which I was transferred twice to unassociate the reciever with, was in collections and I wouldn't be able to use this reciever until the old account was paid up. Considering this was given to me and I don't have access to the old account, I was SOL. I ask the lady how much the balance was to see if I could just pay that, but no, it's confidential information.
She finally transfers me to yet another person (person number seven) to see if my acount is eligible for a reciever upgrade after I tell her the whole reason I'm wanting to do this is cause Direct TV wants $430 for an HD reciever. I explain to Direct TV Representative number 7 that I can get Dish or Charter TV with no contract and a FREE HD-DVR Receiver, and that I'm about to leave Direct TV cause they want $400 and a 2 year contract to do the same thing, even though we've been with DTV for 7 years. She puts me on hold to see what sort of "deal" she can get me. She comes back with $200 for the reciever, $100 for installation of a new dish, and a $30 service charge on top of a 2 year contract. And they're only doing this because we're such a valued customer. I say "so you're offering the same thing I can get elsehwere when i'm OUT OF CONTRACT for $300, when everyone else is offering it for free?" And she says "that's the best I can do for you." In which case I tell her to have a nice day and end the call.
I promptly go to their website and see they're offering new customers the exact same thing I just asked for for $99, free installation and shipping, on a 1 year contract.
So here's my rant summary:
Why did it take them 6 people and 2 hours on hold to finally check and see if the reciever i'm trying to use was eligable to be transferred?
We pay $150 a month for our cable package, why in the world are they refusing to give me a better deal than their competators? If I get the crap I want for free and sign a 2 year contract, they make $3,600 off of me over two years. If I tell them to go to hell and sign with Charter, they make $0.
This company is absolutely Genius. It's a shame Charter's service Sucks and that Dish uses RDIF Recievers that disrupt the remote control's signal and aren't compatable with universal removes.
</rant>
