DirecTV Customer Service

I am writing to express my frustration with AT&T DirecTV technical assistance. First let me start with, I understand that this is an unprecedented time in our nation’s history and fully understand and appreciate all you are doing to protect the health and safety of your call center and tech support employees. With that said, for a company’s who’s slogan is “Just OK in not OK” I often find your tech support performance worse than just OK.

Last week, my DirectTV service went out (Message 775) and I as able to immediately reach a tech support specialist and she was able to get a technician out to my house the same day. After about an hour the technician had fixed our issue and our satellite service was working again. However, on Tuesday of this week we got the same message that DirecTV was unable to communicate with the satellite (Message 775).

On Tuesday and Wednesday I spent 2 hours each day on hold trying to get a tech support specialist. On both days it took several attempts even to be put on the hold line, as I received a message stating that due to COVID-19 you were not accepting calls at this time. I also tweeted and DM’d @ATTHELP, @DIRECTV and @DIRECTVSUPPPORT and did not get any response.

On Thursday, after about 45 minutes on hold I actually got a representative on the line who seemed very eager to help. She took down my number in case we got disconnected and asked to put me on a quick hold as she attempted to schedule a technician. That quick hold turned into another hour on hold at which point I hung up.

Today (Friday), I decided I’d try and call the “new service” number thinking I may be able to reach someone quicker. Shockingly, I spent all of 2 minutes on hold before a new client representative picked up. She informed me that I reached the wrong department (I knew this), but she would get a tech support representative right away. I told her that I have already spent a combined 5+ hours on hold trying to connect with tech support; she assured me that she would have someone within 10 minutes. As I sit here and write this, it has now been 46 minutes!

There are several issues here which I will try and outline below:

1. Why do you not have a call back feature – Last week I had to call American Airlines to cancel a flight (couldn’t do it online b/c of how it was booked), understandably due to COVID-19 there was a long wait time to reach a representative, but they gave me the option to not wait on hold and have a representative call me when it would have been my turn on line. When you are losing out on customer support to an airline, you are not doing something right.

2. On Thursday, the nice representative that I spoke to asked for my phone number specifically to call me back if we got disconnected. After she put me on a 1 hour hold (could have been by mistake) I hung up and never got a call back.

3. I was not surprised, but disappointed that when I tried to call DirecTV to set up new service this morning, the call was answered in less than 2 minutes. It is clear that you either continue to prioritize new client sales over existing client concerns or have not done a good job reorganizing responsibility during the COVID-19 crisis.

Lastly, I as I mentioned above, I hope this does not come across as insensitive, given all we are going through. I'm sure, like all of us, AT&T is going through significant challenges during the extraordinary time. However, this is nothing new when it comes to my experiences with AT&T. I have been a lifelong customer of AT&T / DirecTV and my general feeling is that customer support is never where it should be.

I appreciate you taking the time to read this and I look forward to a response and quick resolution. BTW, I have now been on hold 1 hour and 5 minutes (she promised it would be less than 10 minutes!)