05-07-2010, 10:12 PM
I got quite a few buyer beware stories, but I guess I'll start off with Direct TV.
When I ordered it I was pretty excited to get away from Comcast and their constant billing surprises. On the day of the install I waited around pretty much all day and then got a call from the installer telling me he was going to be late. This was a good hour after he was already supposed to be here.
The guy shows up in a pickup truck (not a Direct TV van) and gets out of the truck and stares at the house for a bit. Then he tells me that it's not a good idea to put the dish on the house and I should go with the pole mount. He says the pole and mounting it in the ground will be $50. I didn't want holes in the house so I paid him the $50. I left him alone and let him do his thing. (Except for when he would ask me to borrow tools)
I couple months later we get a storm and the dish needs alignment. I have it aligned after like a week without TV. A couple more months later it's the same deal. Then a few more months later I have to have them come back out again. This time the guy says the pole is mounted wrong and was never set into concrete. He wants $150 to mount it. I told them they could fix it or I'd go to Comcast and they let me go. My DSL speeds sucked so I was ready to switch anyway.
Somewhere in between all my dish adjustments I bought a few HD boxes online to add additional TVs in the house. These boxes were like $200 and $100.
When I called to cancel my service they informed me that my 2 year contact was automatically renewed every time I purchased an additional box. The early termination was going to be $20 for each month that I still had left on my “new contract.” According to them I still had like a year and a half left on the contract. They also informed me that the boxes I got from the 3rd party website were not purchased and were only rentals and I’d need to return those as well.
Their policies may be common knowledge to some or even most of you, but I figured if I didn’t know then maybe someone else might have the same issues.
When I ordered it I was pretty excited to get away from Comcast and their constant billing surprises. On the day of the install I waited around pretty much all day and then got a call from the installer telling me he was going to be late. This was a good hour after he was already supposed to be here.
The guy shows up in a pickup truck (not a Direct TV van) and gets out of the truck and stares at the house for a bit. Then he tells me that it's not a good idea to put the dish on the house and I should go with the pole mount. He says the pole and mounting it in the ground will be $50. I didn't want holes in the house so I paid him the $50. I left him alone and let him do his thing. (Except for when he would ask me to borrow tools)
I couple months later we get a storm and the dish needs alignment. I have it aligned after like a week without TV. A couple more months later it's the same deal. Then a few more months later I have to have them come back out again. This time the guy says the pole is mounted wrong and was never set into concrete. He wants $150 to mount it. I told them they could fix it or I'd go to Comcast and they let me go. My DSL speeds sucked so I was ready to switch anyway.
Somewhere in between all my dish adjustments I bought a few HD boxes online to add additional TVs in the house. These boxes were like $200 and $100.
When I called to cancel my service they informed me that my 2 year contact was automatically renewed every time I purchased an additional box. The early termination was going to be $20 for each month that I still had left on my “new contract.” According to them I still had like a year and a half left on the contract. They also informed me that the boxes I got from the 3rd party website were not purchased and were only rentals and I’d need to return those as well.
Their policies may be common knowledge to some or even most of you, but I figured if I didn’t know then maybe someone else might have the same issues.