So the night before thanksgiving, I’m doing some work in my office and I hear, “Dave…\u00a0 The TV isn’t working.”\u00a0 Great.\u00a0 The DirecTV HD DVR in my living room evidently crapped out.\u00a0 It locked up, and upon rebooting it I was greeted with a “ERROR 14 – Internal Storage Problem.”\u00a0 Several reboots later, I was on the phone with DirecTV.\u00a0 They ordered a replacement receiver, but could not guarantee what model I would receive.\u00a0 Over a year ago, I fought tooth and nail to get the HR24 receiver, because the previous models are painfully slow.\u00a0 I was certain that I was going to get one of the previous models, because the guy said I would be receiving a refurbished unit. Oh, and did I mention I have to pay $20 for shipping on the replacement receiver?<\/p>\n
The order didn’t get officially entered until Friday afternoon, due to the holiday.\u00a0 7 days go by…<\/p>\n
Last night I received the replacement unit.\u00a0 To my surprise, it was an HR24!\u00a0 I was quite pleased.\u00a0 I immediately unboxed it and hooked it up in place of the dead unit.\u00a0 Upon plugging it in, I kept hearing the “bong” noise through the speakers that you normally hear when you press an invalid button on the remote.\u00a0 My first thought was that they had shipped me a remote and I didn’t see it in the box, and the buttons were being mashed.\u00a0 No remote in the box.\u00a0 I went through the entire activation process (muted the audio).\u00a0 When the programming finally came up, it started wildly cycling through the screen resolutions.\u00a0 So fast that my TV couldn’t keep up and I basically just saw a black screen.\u00a0 The resolution indicator on the front of the unit was rapidly and erratically cycling between 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p.\u00a0 This particular unit has a touch-sensitive front panel, so it does not have any physical “hard” buttons.\u00a0 For some reason, it thinks the resolution button is being pressed repeatedly.\u00a0 In an effort to stop it, I press the resolution “button”, and some of the other buttons on the front of the unit.\u00a0 No joy.\u00a0 It just keeps cycling through the resolutions.\u00a0 I thought maybe I should block the front of the unit, to make sure that it wasn’t getting some erroneous IR signal causing this to happen.\u00a0 The cycling continued.\u00a0 So again, I’m on the phone with DirecTV.\u00a0 This time they run me through 20 minutes of useless troubleshooting.\u00a0 “Try unplugging the HDMI cable from the receiver.\u00a0 Ok, reboot it.\u00a0 Ok, now try unplugging the HDMI cable from the TV.”\u00a0 ?!\u00a0 Eventually, the “tech” concludes that the replacement receiver has an internal issue.\u00a0 They assign me a case manager and tell me that I will be contacted within two hours.\u00a0 Mind you, it is 8:30pm on a Wednesday.\u00a0 Unsurprisingly, I don’t get a phone call that night.<\/p>\n
This morning I got a call just after 8am from a case manager in Colorado.\u00a0 She asked me to explain to her, in detail, the issue and the steps I’ve taken to try to resolve it.\u00a0 She recommends having a technician visit my house.\u00a0 I tell her that I don’t want to take time off work to resolve this issue.\u00a0 She says that my only other option is “chance” having another receiver shipped to my house.\u00a0 She says that she has no way to guarantee that it will be an HR24, and that it may or may not have a similar issue.\u00a0 How can you run a business like this?\u00a0 Is there no quality control?\u00a0 By the tone in her voice, I could tell that she did not have a high level of confidence in the refurbished receivers that ship from their warehouse.\u00a0 I suspect that their quality control process consists of little more than checking to see if the lights come on when it is plugged in, and then it gets shipped out to another poor sap.\u00a0 There is no shipping charge for the second replacement, and I managed to get her to credit me the shipping for the first unit.\u00a0 Still not really compensation for not having service for what will probably wind up being 11 days (at best).<\/p>\n
I’m amazed by how little control anyone seems to have over this process.\u00a0 She said the receiver should arrive in 2 days, but she couldn’t promise that the order would get processed today.\u00a0 It was 8:30am (6:30am her time) on a week day.\u00a0 If she submitted the order during the call, how could it not be processed the same day?\u00a0 She had no ability to choose to ship me a new receiver, vs a refurbished one.\u00a0 Apparently the only way you can get a new receiver is to have a tech visit your home and install it himself.\u00a0 What a sweet setup.<\/p>\n
I realize it’s just TV.\u00a0 Big fucking deal, in the grand scheme of things.\u00a0 But this kind of stuff infuriates me to no end!\u00a0 So, DirecTV, you are on very thin ice.\u00a0 One more strike and I’ll be choosing an alternative content provider.<\/p>\n
To be continued…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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So the night before thanksgiving, I’m doing some work in my office and I hear, “Dave…\u00a0 The TV isn’t working.”\u00a0 Great.\u00a0 The DirecTV HD DVR in my living room evidently crapped out.\u00a0 It locked up, and upon rebooting it I … Continue reading