Direct TV.
We've been thinking of getting rid of them for a while and going with cable for various reasons. But the main thing keeping me from doing it is that I have days or maybe weeks worth of shit recorded that I plan to watch, but don't have time. Shit that we can't get on netflix, hulu, or amazon prime (at least not without additional charges). So recently one of my DVRs shit the bed and it was the one with most of my recordings on it. So I call tech support, they confirm it has shit the bed and arrange to have a new one sent out. He tells me they won't even try to recover the shows on the HD because of copywrite issues or whatever. It's going to cost me to get a new box and I go "whoa there cowboy, this is your equipment, I rent this shit for like $6 a month, I'm not paying to replace your equipment" Then he changes his explanation to it being a 'shipping and handling charge' But I can buy equipment protection for another $5 a month and I wouldn't have to pay the shipping charge! I can do simple math in my head. I've had this box for like 10 years with no problem ... the math is not even close on that particular insurance plan. He also tells me that if I don't return the old box by oct 25 they're going to charge me $135 for it. At this point I let him know that I'm really fucking close to dropping them anyway and all these charges showing up on my bill might push me over the edge.
OK well fast forward to today and I don't even have the new box yet, much less the package to ship the old one back. I called them oct 24 to let them know I hadn't received the box and found out the original order wasn't finalized and they redid it 10 days later. The last 4 days they sent me an email every day with new charges that I needed to review (I didn't actually see any changes so I don't know WTF they were doing). I still don't have the new box, but now I'm getting texts that a technician is coming to my house today to install my TV service.
It's like the tech support guy wanted to make my decision easy. He probably did me a solid, but I'm too fucking busy to deal with switching right now. The good thing here is that as long as I never activate the new receiver I don't owe the shipping and handling charge. So I have until it gets here to get off my ass and call the cable company.
We've been thinking of getting rid of them for a while and going with cable for various reasons. But the main thing keeping me from doing it is that I have days or maybe weeks worth of shit recorded that I plan to watch, but don't have time. Shit that we can't get on netflix, hulu, or amazon prime (at least not without additional charges). So recently one of my DVRs shit the bed and it was the one with most of my recordings on it. So I call tech support, they confirm it has shit the bed and arrange to have a new one sent out. He tells me they won't even try to recover the shows on the HD because of copywrite issues or whatever. It's going to cost me to get a new box and I go "whoa there cowboy, this is your equipment, I rent this shit for like $6 a month, I'm not paying to replace your equipment" Then he changes his explanation to it being a 'shipping and handling charge' But I can buy equipment protection for another $5 a month and I wouldn't have to pay the shipping charge! I can do simple math in my head. I've had this box for like 10 years with no problem ... the math is not even close on that particular insurance plan. He also tells me that if I don't return the old box by oct 25 they're going to charge me $135 for it. At this point I let him know that I'm really fucking close to dropping them anyway and all these charges showing up on my bill might push me over the edge.
OK well fast forward to today and I don't even have the new box yet, much less the package to ship the old one back. I called them oct 24 to let them know I hadn't received the box and found out the original order wasn't finalized and they redid it 10 days later. The last 4 days they sent me an email every day with new charges that I needed to review (I didn't actually see any changes so I don't know WTF they were doing). I still don't have the new box, but now I'm getting texts that a technician is coming to my house today to install my TV service.
It's like the tech support guy wanted to make my decision easy. He probably did me a solid, but I'm too fucking busy to deal with switching right now. The good thing here is that as long as I never activate the new receiver I don't owe the shipping and handling charge. So I have until it gets here to get off my ass and call the cable company.