Solve the problem with ESPN & ABC!

Right at the start of Football season I think they did this on purpose are they gonna give people discounts on there bill for me I'm gonna have to switch to something else that has ESPN and SEC Network 

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They charged my credit card yesterday when they were closed and would not issue me a refund today when I canceled my service.  My credit card company canceled my card, blocked their payment and is sending me a new card.

@MTCasings 

Just because it is a holiday doesn't mean purchases or autopayments cannot occur.

Keep an eye in case your card company validates a legitimate charge. Canceling service does not stop payment for the service month you are in. And the service does not prorate, so yes you pay for the entire bill cycle not simply a portion of it.

I’m just trying to assure I can still watch the first Monday Night football game on 9/7 (49ers vs.) in the Bay Area.

If DirecTV has not settled, do we believe that we can still watch the game on Roku live TV, for which a national ABC feed seems to be working fine tonight) or do I need to start looking for a digital broadcast antenna?

Please advise.

@waltek 

Not only are digital antennas ultra-affordable, sometimes they can pick up digital subchannels  channels that aren't available on satellite.

Another cool factor: The broadcasts aren't as delayed as much. If you're on social media during the game or you do in-game betting, the delay can be awful.

Cut off access

Hello, I decide to give YouTube TV a chance. While watching my local Sinclair owned ABC channel discussing the DirecTV feud on our evening News, they broadcasted that they were owned by Sinclair and would not be blocked by direct. 

I quickly switched over to my DirecTV stream account but to no avail as the contract with Disney screen is still being shown. 

Could someone from direct please respond to why WLOS in Asheville North Carolina is being blocked even though it is not owned by Disney. 

Thanks

Contract disputes will happen with all services. Changing will not guarantee you a dispute will not take place. It will get resolved and eventually a price increase will take place.

This entire situation is maddening, and needs to be resolved immediately. I am a passionate ESPN consumer. It is a primary channel for me, and this is taking place literally when I use ESPN the most, for football content. Not just games, but also the talk shows with analysts. I love that the service provider is saying that changing providers is not the answer. Of course they are going to say that. If you transition to a provider that's already been through this, then the problem is solved. I was married to DirecTV because of the NFL package. That's no longer the leash that keeps me here. So, if DirecTV doesn't get this fixed quickly, I will be switching to a new service provider and ending a multi-decade relationship. You have my word!

@Ebrewer3906 

The problem is only "solved" until the next contract negotiation, or when it hits one of the other corporate network owners.

I am not trying to be a jerk here. As I've stated over and over, I am a loyal and long time customer of DirecTV. Every response that a DirecTV employee or random know it all posts on here in defense of the situation only sounds like a sales spin to all of those truly impacted by this interruption. ESPN channels make up at least 70% of my TV viewing. So, forgive me and my frustration of this significant disruption, if most of your responses are perceived by me to lack any substance, resolution, or even empathy for the situation. Somehow DirecTV thinks compensating me $20 makes everything OK. I would wipe mud off of my shoes with that $20 if it meant I would get ESPN back immediately. Do better DirecTV, and treat your subscribers like human beings instead of subscriber numbers. 

The people here in the forums are other customers - we can neither do anything to “fix” it, nor really care if you leave (you aren’t our customer).  Some of us have gone through this sort of thing multiple time with multiple services - it almost always eventually ends, with our prices being raised again.

But it seems it’s getting worse.  As more subscribers leave the linear services (cable, satellite, live streaming) the content providers appear to be getting more aggressive - they want to keep or increase their income, even though there are fewer subscribers to get it from, so the increased cost is higher per subscriber - leading more to leave, in a vicious cycle.  The sports providers are the worst, since they know they have the most leverage, due to rabid (hopefully only metaphorically) sports fans. It will eventually kill off the linear services as they get too expensive for all but the most dedicated (or wealthy) viewers, which may not be enough to support a service. Unclear what that will do to the sports themselves, since as noted, these fees are the vast bulk of what the leagues depend on - that’s part of why the leagues (especially the NFL) have divided the coverage amongst numerous carriers.  Disney, WBDiscovery, and MAX (who between them cover a good percentage of sports) tried to set up a (streaming) sports bundle separate from the linear carriers, but it’s (so far) been blocked by the courts.

All I know, as a rare sports viewer, is that I’m not happy paying more and more to support your content.  There’s still some (non-sports) content that my household wants and can’t get (at least easily) without a linear service, but that is getting less, and at some point we (and likely other people like us) will bail too, leaving even fewer to share the cost of sports - regardless of which carrier you get it from.  (Yes, many non-sports content providers raise their costs to the carriers regularly too, but aside from perhaps local broadcast stations - who are also mostly using sports as their leverage - the increases aren’t the same order of magnitude as the sports providers.)

The different carriers aren’t totally interchangeable - they don’t all carry the same thing or have the same features.  But maybe you can find one that carries what you want and is cheaper today.  Go for it - but don’t expect them to stay that way, since these content providers go after every carrier when their contracts expire.  The only recourse the streaming carriers will have against the churn of people constantly switching to try to get something cheaper will be to bring back the contracts that cable and satellite still have. DTV has (optionally) done that - I would not be at all surprised if the others do too. 

@FrankDennany 

Not everyone has internet good enough, if at all, to support streaming as their sole TV option. Fiberoptics reaching you is great, but it is not available nationally. Satellite TV still has its place. Plus if/when internet goes out, satellite TV still works as from a different route. So satellite is not so outdated and unreasonable as you make it sound (for the birds or stone age).

If other TV works for you then great. We each choose what works best for us. Do keep in mind, no TV provider is immune from these types of negotiations. So any other TV service you go to could have the same thing happen. Just the nature of the entire TV industry.