New Member
Was charged $431.00 for old DIRECTV equipment
I was a customer of DirecTV for 23 years and paid my bills electronically every month. The perfect customer. We moved from a single family to an apartment. When we moved, I put everything in storage, including the old pieces of equipment from DirecTV. I was notified that I had to return it after I put in storage. I started getting calls from DirecTV and asked if I could return once I had a chance to get into my storage to locate these pieces. I received a bill for $431.00 which was very pricey for some old equipment. All of the money I have paid to DirecTV over the 23 years and they are nickel and diming me on this? Getting someone on the phone to discuss was almost impossible and when you get them on the phone, you can barely understand what they are saying. I finally spoke to someone in DirecTV and they said they would love to help me but the bill was out of their hands and normally they would have just credited it back to me. Than I get a call from someone at Credence collections. I would love for AT&T management to hear what he said to me. Very strange. To get rid of this I asked if I could just pay 1/2 and he said that AT&T was not flexible and that I had to pay the entire amount. If I didn't do this soon, it would be reported to the credit bureau. His call to me was during this Coronavirus crisis. You would think they could pick a more appropriate time to make this call.
I have been an outstanding customer of DirecTV for 23 years and this is how I get treated?
Unless this gets corrected, I will never do business with AT&T again. I will also let other people know on the internet how terribly they treat great customers.
This is such a scam asking for this old equipment back and charging $431.00 for it.
Accepted Solution
Official Solution
Juniper
ACE - Expert
•
22.9K Messages
5 years ago
Boxes are DirecTV's property. They are required to be returned upon cancelling the account. If not back within 21 days then the system automatically charges any non-return fees (NRF).
Getting charged NRFs would indicate that your equipment was actually not that old, at least not equipment-wise. To be sure what are the model numbers of each of those boxes? If any boxes are too old, then those NRFs should be reversed for the error. Anything remaining would still be valid. DirecTV historically doesn't adjust charges on a final bill, unless there was an error.
Normally if the boxes are returned late then the NRFs get reversed. The concern is that you mentioned being contacted by a collection agency. That may mean it is past the point of return, leaving the only recourse being to settle with the collection agency. This is because at that point the collection agency owns the balance and AT&T/DirecTV can no longer affect it, except if there is an error they must correct.
Returning equipment, or being charged if you don't, is not a scam. DirecTV owns the boxes, not you. The question is if the boxes were returnable in the first place, which can be verified by the model numbers.
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