I am currently an employee of DirecTV and was previously a customer therefore I have been on both sides of the fence with this company and I am here to tell you if you feel wronged by this company or misled this is flatly due to your own lack of savy as a consumer. I will go over a couple of different things I have seen through reading the rip-offrepot.com website and address those issues specifically. All claims that I do not address I am neither siding with or against the company I simply chose to address these few issues.
First of all you are under NO contract with DirecTV until the installer comes and activates your service at your home. This installation includes you signing an agreement which states you have read or have had the terms and conditions of this agreement read to you. Now this filters back to your call to our sales team which I am a member of. Prior to any representative authorizing a credit card payment to lock in price or agreement length, we are required to read to the consumer a disclosure which based on your package includes: length of contract, length of current discounted pricing and amount. We are also required to advise the customer of an early termination fee if agreement is broken by the consumer, in order to proceed with the sale an affirmative yes or no response is required at this point. At this point with an affirmative answer we close this portion of the call with the simple statement of "Do you understand the agreement that has just been read to you?", if at this point we receive an affirmative answer we proceed to authorize sale.
By this point in the call the non savy consumer usually does not fully pay attention to what they are being advised and DirecTV can not be held responsible for this. Furthermore, you are still not under the terms of the agreement untill you receive your first bill with the EXACT same information that had been read to you during the sales process. This customer agreement must be signed and returned with your first bill in order to be held to the terms of the agreement. So DirecTV has by this point verbally advised you of what fees they will charge you minus state taxes (as we are unable to provide exact information) AND if you have chosen, DirecTV has received your verbal and written consent to this agreement. If at this point you do not fully understand the agreement, still answered affirmatively in writing and verbally you can not possibly blame DirecTV for your unsavy consumer actions.
I know the reports included on this website are a small fraction of the well over 15 million customers DirecTV has and there is a reason DirecTV is now for the 9th consecutive year ranked number one in customer satisfaction by JD Power & Associates as well as customer service. I wish all of those with issues great success with their disputes and please remember for future reference any satisfied customer is also a savy one. This goes for any company you chose to do business with if you have questions ask because that is the only way to ensure you understand fully what you will be getting for what you pay and this also will make the representitive you are purchasing service from accountable for what they tell you.
Thank you