Being Charged for Early Termination

So long as DTV is delivering one channel they are not breaching the contract, there is a clause that states channels and programs are subject to change at anytime.

ETF/ECF fee is $20 per unused month, you are correct, changing the package doesn't start/extend a contract but moving or adding new receivers or upgrades do.

Upgrades of equipment, including adding another TV, come with a 24 month agreement.

Movers order, if without an upgrade of equipment, is a 12 month agreement.

Some 12/24 month discounts may come with an agreement as well.

Any suspension of service freezes service agreement as the time the account is not active doesn't count.

Changing your package does not affect the agreement.

You would need to discuss with DirecTV what the agreement was for in the first place. However, DirecTV is NOT in breach of contract for a channel being gone. It would be impossible to guarantee any channel will always be there as they don't own them. As such Terms of Service state that channels may change at any time. All TV providers have such a clause because they cannot force the channel to stay.

(d) Our Programming Changes.

Many factors affect the availability, cost and quality of programming and may influence the decision to raise prices and the amount of any increase. These include, among others, programming and other costs, consumer demand, market and shareholder expectations, and changing business conditions. Accordingly, we reserve the unrestricted right to change, rearrange, add or delete our programming packages, the selections in those packages, our prices, technologies used to deliver the Service, and any other Service we offer, at any time.

I scheduled my services to be canceled a month ahead of time on the last day of the billing cycle.  Only to find out upon cancellation that AT&T had "Extended" my contract with them because I added an extra receiver box 9 months earlier.  The kicker was, the extension didn't keep my rates where they were and no one told me about this extension.  Then they charged me an early termination that doubled my final bill!   After a month of fighting and calling AT&T i was finally able to get them to take 50% off my final bill and paid them off.  I feel taken advantage of, lied to, and robbed. [Edited to comply with Guidelines]  They are a terrible and dishonest company.

@rudigo 

Adding a TV has been treated as an upgrade for over 15 years. Yes the agent who placed the order should have gone over it to be sure. For everyone's protection, DirecTV sends an order confirmation same day which would show the 24 month agreement. When you sign off with the tech you are once again confirming that order (including agreement) is correct.

Regarding your "kicker", a service agreement never locks your rates. All an agreement means is you are agreeing to stay with DirecTV for getting some kind of promotion, which in this case was the new equipment. It is nice when there are discounts available when you upgrade equipment, but sometimes they are not.

So nothing criminal was done here. In the future, read the paperwork and anything you sign off on, no matter the company.

@rudigo 

the tv I added was a wireless receiver box that I purchased and installed myself. However I had to call AT&T/Direct TV in order for them to “activate” the receiver. So there was no technician to present any paperwork to read or sign. Furthermore when on the phone with the service representative activating the receiver there was no mention of an automatic contract extension.

The only wireless boxes are Mini Genies which are Clients, not receivers. DirecTV went to lease only with launch of the 1st Genie so purchase to own options from the old SD days were discontinued. A free upgrade or paying the one-time cost (via DirecTV or authorized retailer) still comes with 24 month agreement upon activation. The paperwork from the authorized retailer should have had the fine print of the service agreement, and normally would be listed in the item details on their website as well. The agent not reconfirming the agreement certainly was poor, but the Terms of Service requiring agreement for activated equipment (that is not a warranty replacement) hasn't changed in almost 2 decades.

You are right, reading an agreement is important and had I been notified of this a year after my initial one, maybe I would have taken time out of my day to read a 20 page legal document.

Choosing not to read would be blindly accepting what is on there. Claiming you were unaware as you didn't have time to read or that the paperwork was too lengthy doesn't work in your favor.

Your response is exactly what I would expect from this company. It’s the customer’s fault, the customer is wrong, the company did nothing shady at all. By the way, that’s sarcasm.

My response is not that of the company. I am a customer like yourself. Just have the experience over the years to understand how a lot of it works. Didn't have to mention sarcasm as it would read as paraphrasing the response you expected. Either way your statement makes the same final point.

And yes it should be illegal for a company not to disclose a contract extension at the time of an arbitrary activation. That’s incredibly deceptive.

That is a fair point. DirecTV covers this by having agreement in the Terms of Service and that even if you get it through an authorized retailer that they are required to list the agreement in their offers and order confirmation. If the company you got the box from didn't list the agreement in the order/fine print, then that would be a dispute for them. You can certainly try speaking to a supervisor in the retention department and requesting they rersearch your account to see if the call may have been captured to verify agent not confirming the agreement itself. Calls are randomly recorded/monitored for training and quality purposes not for record keeping, so though it is not a guarantee, it is a shot at least.