Consumers have had enough with DirecTV

Bend, ORMany consumers are saying they have had it with DirecTV for a number of reasons. One of those reasons is the termination fees that they must pay for cancelling a service that is not working well for them. One consumer in Massachusetts complained to the Massachusetts Attorney General when he was forced to pay $162.50 in termination fees after he had nothing but trouble with his service.

He says that technicians had to be sent out to his home a total of six times after the service was installed in his home in order to fix installation issues. DirecTV also had to send him a new receiver after the first one had failed.

"The first few visits were related to mounting and wiring issues. Apparently there were no dish support arms and the dish was not properly grounded. There was even an instance in which the dish had to be mounted higher because the spring leaves caused reception issues and he could not receive any of his programming. There was also a time in which the dish had to be remounted because the wind had blown the dish out of alignment. That particular technician had commented to him that something was wrong with the installation of the dish and had even taken pictures to show his boss.

After all of these issues, the gentleman decided to cancel his service because he was having more outages than he was having service. He has also sent his complaint to the California Better Business Bureau.

Another gentleman from Oregon says that the initial installation was not complete and after two weeks had gone by without the job being completed, he had contacted DirecTV. As a result, they said they would have to charge him $75 for coming back to finish the installation. He felt that he should not pay this when the job should have been completed the first time. As a result, he cancelled the service.

American Express did dispute the charge and credited it back to the man's credit card, but DirecTV turned the account over to collections. DirecTV told him that the only way he could fight the charge was to hire an arbitrator. They have also been told that they have to take it up with the installation company regarding the installation issue and the fact that they were told they would have to pay $75 to have the installation completed. He has now filed complaints with the FTC, the FCC, the Colorado Better Business Bureau, sent a letter to the Attorney General, and has notified both Colorado senators.

These are just two cases of many regarding complaints about DirecTV and their termination fees. In many cases, customers are not able to control why they cancel. If they move, then they may move to an apartment that doesn't allow mounting of the dish. Then there are these complaints in which installation was not complete or the service was not adequate, so the customers cancelled. In the end they were penalized for something they did not get to use or hardly got to use.

By Ginger Gillenwater