Beware Major Rant Below (CableTV, DirectTV, and things in general)

I need to vent. Don’t read any further if you aren’t interested in listening to someone complain.

Cable companies, TV companies, and many others have us between a rock and a hard place and they know it.   I recently switched to DirectTV after having Cox Cable for more than 5 years.  I bought a Hi-Def TV a few years ago and got Cox’s HD receiver so I could watch hi-definition TV.   I don’t watch many channels so I only got 2-13 (Limited Basic)  and HD channels.  That worked for me.   Now after way too many phone calls and a couple of technicans to my house to find out why I wasn’t getting the new HD channels they just brough out, someone finally at Cox finally said “Oh — you don’t get them because those channels are on HD Expanded”.   What?  Yeah — turns out they moved all the HD channels, except for local channels, to the Preferred Basic plan.  It’s on their web site, but it was supposed to roll out on March 1st, and my HD channels went away about two weeks early.  “Yeah..we’re rolling that out early ” says the girl on the other end of the phone.    I’ve had issues w/ Cox TV before (waiting hours for technicians that show up and can’t fix the issues) and the prospect of paying an addtional $34/month to get back what I had a week prior  kinda was my last straw.  There’s DirectTV after all and competiton is good.    So off I go to cancel Cox and get DirectTV.  DirectTV was about the same price Cox was trying to charge me plus they had more HD channels.

DirectTV was able to take my order, and then get me installed almost immediately.   I think it was a matter of days.  Now the installer was supposed to come from 12-4 but he called and was running late, and got there at 6:30pm.  Fine.  Not really what I wanted to be doing at 6:30pm (I was hungry), and he was relativey quick about it.

Now, I’m gone this past week and get home last night. Watch TV, etc.  I get up this morning and DirectTV is out.   I’ve had the service for 7 days now.  I read the Quick Tips on resetting the receiver – no go.  I finally call customer service. They walk me through about 5 minutes of trouble-shooting — “We’ll need to send someone out there.  The soonest we can do that is on March 11th.”    9 days from now?  I’ve only had the service for 7 days.   I get put on the waiting list in case anyone cancels.  So I have to waste another afternoon on the 11th waiting for a technican.    9 days?  Seriously?      I’m a brand new customer and by teh time this will most likely be resolved, I’ll have had more off-days than on-days.   I did talk to the billing dept and they said that if I call back once service is restored that I’ll be credited the lost time.

Do content providers have such a strong grip that they can do whatever they want and we just have to take it?   I’m half tempted to just call up DirectTV and tell them to come and get their POS system and return it.  I can always download TV shows and movies from Apple to watch on my DirectTV.   No matter what I choose – either waiting the nine days or telling them to take the system back and cancel the service (if even possible), all I end up doing is screwing myself over.   What has happened to customer service?  Isn’t competition supposed to benefit the customer/user, not hose them?   Silverlight and Flash/Flex competition will only make the two technologies better.  Why doesn’t the benefit of competition cross over to the world of content suppliers like television?

At least I still have a TV in the backroom w/ an antenna so I can watch the news.  (atleast until 2009 when that probably will get hosed too).   Hopefully services like Joost, Apple iTunes rentals, and others take off soon.

Ugh…   Rant Off.