I have been a customer with DIRECTV LLC. since May 2011. At first my fiancee at the time, daughter, and I were very happy with the services, billing, etc. However, when we hit the 1st year of our contract the bills started skyrocketing. It was difficult to adjust to paying 110+ dollars when we had been budgeting between 60-100 prior. Dispite all of the blackouts, provider disputes with several of the channels being cancelled for weeks @ a time, and the bills raising we stayed with Directv.

Recently, We just had had enough with the bills went from $60.00 from signup to $75-80.00 later on, then to $115.00- 118.00. But the last bill we receive was for $223.00. I was very upset. My husband called on November 20th and spoke to a female customer service representative who could barely speak english and didnt understand anything we were trying to explain to her. She just kept telling him we failed to make a payment between the months of May 2013-Oct 2013. I knew this information was incorrect because I always make my payments. Earlier on in the conversation, My husband said well we will just cancel. But then he gave me permission to speak with her because I was an authorized user and I was the one who made the payments. We told her while we both had her on speakerphone not to cancel the service until I recieved my bank statements to which I would fax them to clear up the billing dispute. She said ok and we ended the call shortly after.

Needless to Say, two days afterward our service had been turned off. The next day I called my bank requesting my statements from the months MAY-NOV. I received the statements the next day. I called Directv and spoke to another female representative and cleared up the billing dispute so i thought and questioned them as to why it was turned off because on our DIRECTV online account it said we had until December 2nd, 2013 to pay off the balance to avoid service interruption. She replied with the bill must be paid in full including the Early Termination Fee (ETF)which came to $202.37. We disputed for awhile regarding the situation of disconnection, etc. At the end of the conversation, my husband and I agreed to just keep the service cancelled because we didn't want anymore of a headache. I told the Customer service representative i would have the bill paid off soon and she said after they recieve that payment my deposit would be refunded.

At this point we figured according to the terms and conditions we had read that we had at least 30 days to pay off the balance. On December 8th, an amount of $202.37 had been withdrawn from my checking acct. by DIRECTV using the card that I had made payments with but had NEVER signed up for auto-pay, NOR did i authorize DIRECTV to withdraw the payment from my account via email, phone call, etc. Extremely irritated at this point in time, I had my husband call directv on December 09, 2013. He spoke to a male customer service rep. who did also not speak very good english and did not understand the situation. He basically told my husband the amount was owed so they withdrew it. I got more and more irritated seeing my husband get upset with the rep. My husband authorized me to talk to the gentleman regarding the withdrawal. During our conversation he said the money was past due and they had authorization to pull the money. I requested to talk to his supervisor.

I spoke to a female supervisor after several minutes of waiting on hold. I explained to her about how the billing had been messed up months prior and how I had planned on paying the amount this coming Friday when i got paid. I also explained to her that I did not authorize the payment nor did I sign my card up for auto-pay. She seemed very sympathetic to the situation they had initiated and caused. She placed me on hold several times throughout the conversation to research issue and to take to Upper Management (UP). Finally, she came back on and explained to me there was nothing she could do and that the amount charged could not be refunded even though it was unauthorized. She stated that if there is a past due amount/ETF owed and there is a card on file that has been used after 30 days that card would be charged if amount due was not made prior, whether or whether not the card was signed up for auto-pay/ payment was authorized. I explained to her if they disconnected the service between November 20-23rd even though they weren't supposed to until December 2nd that the amount still wouldn't be due until December 18th. She kept repeating herself saying nothing is going to be done and NO credits will be given Ma'am. Eventually I got tired of arguing about the bill and asked about my deposit and she said I should receive it in 10 days. Then she turned around and said " Actually you won't actually see a check cut for the deposit after the 1st year it appears as credits on your bill." When I pulled out a bill to inquire where I would find that credit she couldn't tell me. Just kept saying it goes into the bill. At approxamately 2:00am Pacific Time the conversation ended.   

So as of now, I had $200.00 stolen from me, 2 checks have bounced because of the occurances. I would very much like to take legal action against them because not only what they did was Morally wrong it is ILLEGAL!!