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Monday, May 18th, 2020 2:58 PM

Customer Service billing dispute

First, I want to say I have been a longtime subscriber and the customer service has been very disappointing since AT&T took over. Here is the entire scenario: We called customer service on March 11th and told them we could not watch more than 3 tv's at a time, but we pay for 5 tv's every month for years. The representative said it was because the system we have has limits and we are eligible for an upgrade to the new Genie 2 that takes care of that. She put the order in and told us to call them when it arrives. We waited 2 weeks with no delivery or response from AT&T. I looked online at my account and saw that it was canceled. We called again and a different representative said that was a mistake and it needed to be brought and put in by a Tech (which we have the whole home coverage), during the same phone call, we also requested an additional box bringing it up to 6 tv's and she said now that we would have to pay $399.99 for the Genie 2. We told her we would not pay for the upgrade and that it was there mistake. She transferred us to a Supervisor who after telling this entire story way too many times, said she would put in an override, but we would owe for the additional box we ordered. We agreed and the tech came out installed it and we thought everything was great. SUREPRISE the bill came, and the $399.99 charge is on there. We have called twice with a representative telling us that they do not see that conversation in the notes, and we owe it. WE NEVER AGREED TO PAY THAT FOR THE GENIE 2 AND WOULD NOT HAVE HAD IT INSTALLED IF WE WERE NOT TOLD WE WOULD NOT BE CHARGED FOR IT. We have been told in 2 calls now that a manager will be calling us back and no one calls. I told them to go back into their so-called recorded conversations and find 1 time that we allegedly agreed to that. This is a bait and switch I am appalled that no one can respond and no one you speak with has authority to do anything but telling us we must pay for an AT&T breakdown of customer service. There has been over 8 hours of transfers, time spent on hold and discussions. It would be nice to here from a legitimate Manager that can resolve this.

Employee

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34K Messages

5 years ago

any calls recorded cannot be accessed by phone support this is a corporate level availability, not all calls are recorded and if are recorded they are for training pourposes only not to prove or disprove what you were told or what you told them. unfortunatly to remedy anything you will need to call them, this is a customer helping customer forum not directv so they wont see your post, any employees like myself are here on our own time off the clock

New Member

In other words, the only support Directv Customers can get is the inept phone support that AT&T has available? You can't even walk into a AT&T store to get help with any Directv problem. Poor service is forcing all of the long time Directv prescribers to go elsewhere. It's sad that AT&T has ruined Directv.

Employee

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34K Messages

AT&T stores can only sign up customers and can’t assist with account issues. In directv eyes the At&t stores are no different than the kiosks at Costco or Walmart

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While AT&T employees do look at forum posts from time to time, we are here to represent the forum with our experiences as customers and do not represent AT&T in any official capacity with our responses and do so on our own time unpaid and off the clock. As employees we are not rewarded nor compensated to participate in these forums This forum is comprised of regular customers to communicate with other customers to offer advice and share experiences same as any other user Although there is a small team of customer care specialists that monitor the forums the sheer volume of posts are simply too many posts for these agents to respond to each one of them.
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ACE - Expert

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22.9K Messages

Calls are only recorded/monitored randomly for training and quality purposes. They are not for record keeping. With millions of customers there is just no way to have recordings for every call.

Those are AT&T stores, not employees of DirecTV. All they can do is send orders for new DirecTV service like the 3rd party reseller they used to be. For official support you call customer service as always.

Sounds like you had a regular Genie setup, but did not receive proper guidance on how it works and was set up with a sub-optimal install.

Genie (HR34, HR44, HR54) is a 5 tuner HDDVR.

Mini Genie Clients (C31, etc.) have no tuners.

Genie keeps 2 to itself for Picture in Picture (PiP), so leaves 3 tuners left.

Genie and up to 3 Clients (so 4 TVs total) is the most that can be used at the same time.

Greatly dislike any agents who order an install for 4 or more Clients. At that point they should suggest having an HDDVR (2 tuners), or even an HD non-DVR (1 tuner), to avoid tuner conflicts.

An upgrade to the Genie-2 is not drop shipped, but tech installed. You don't call them when it arrives, they have to schedule the appointment so tech can do all the changes. However, I would not recommend this system. Though it has 7 tuners, and being a server tower it doesn't keep any to itself as doesn't go on a TV, it is a restrictive system. A regular Genie and 2 HDDVRs is 9 tuners. The Genie-2 (HS17) forbids anything but Clients making it a downgrade in overall capability.

The initial install with the regular Genie is an issue seen on occasion, mainly by 3rd party sales people who don't understand the system (or just skip over the needed details), and is usually a simple fix with a later free HDDVR upgrade (or possibly free correction order if within 2 weeks of original install on opening the account).

But instead of doing an upgrade of 1 Client to an HDDVR they went the Genie-2 route, with a horrendous order process with bad info just snowballs the problems. At this point when you call DirecTV say "cancel" as you need at least an experienced retention agent, if not a supervisor of that department to see what can be done. As it sounds you should have been due for a free upgrade, it is likely that the charge is from over lapping orders, such as completely placing a new order instead of modifying it (or at least cancelling the old first so that the new one charges correctly). Though the Genie-2 box may have been free, the additional box wouldn't have been and be a $99 one-time least cost instead, which further suggests the order process was not done in the correct order.

Hope you finally get this resolved by them adjusting the order to what it seems should have been a free upgrade. Though I would ask if because of the issue if they would just go to a regular Genie setup with the dedicated HDDVR replacing the 4th Client as that was the optimal fix to the original ongoing issue.

https://support.directv.com/contact

Customer Service

800.531.5000 | Pay Bill | Order Movies | Refresh Your Receivers

General support daily, 8 a.m. – 12 a.m. ET

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