Thinking About Direct TV – DON’T DO IT!

I’m stuck in the middle of a technological nightmare.

First, a couple weeks ago, I came home from a trip to the pool room to find that my pc had crashed. I lost everything – programs, emails, pictures. You name it, I lost it. I picked up a new rig from Office Depot. It has 500 gigs on the hd and 4 gigs of ram. With a 17” flat screen monitor, it cost me $593. Not bad.

Then, the following Sunday, my vcr died. I went out and picked up a new one at WalMart, but it didn’t work. I traded it in for another model which didn’t work either. A kid at Circuit City told me I needed to get a cable box because newer vcrs required a connection from the cable box. (This, I later learned, was a bunch of hooey, as was a lot of what I was told along the line by Best Buy, Direct TV, etc. etc.) I called Bright House and was told I couldn’t get a cable box with my level of service and that I would have to spring for an additional $40 a month if I wanted a box. Vindictive bastard that I am, I said “No, thanks,” and immediately logged on to direct-tv.com. Within moments I had called, explained to the girl rep my vcr woes, and signed up for their cheap $29.99 per month plan. By noon the next day, my satellite service was installed. I even slipped the installer a fin for helping me hook up my new LG, RC897T VCR.

Trouble was the VCR wouldn’t work. What I normally do, because my wife likes to go to bed early and I’m often out playing pool, is program our VCR to record a couple shows that we will watch early, after dinner, the next day. Well, what I couldn’t do is program the new recorder to record one show on FOX from 8 to 9 and then record another on NBC from 9 to 10. Correction – I could do it if I stood in front of the TV and changed channels with the satellite box at the times in question. Not exactly what I had in mind. I called LG customer service and spoke to someone in India who told me over the next 20 minutes how I could get the VCR to perform as I wanted. I programmed it last night and checked the tapes this morning. It did not work. The VCR only recorded the stations the box was tuned to. I called LG again this morning and spoke to someone who spoke English. After hearing my dilemma, she immediately responded that what I wanted to do was impossible because a satellite signal cannot be split. “Well,” I said, “why don’t you tell that to the guy I talked to yesterday.”

I’m pissed, now. I call Direct TV and tell them about it. They offer to sell me more equipment and to increase my monthly bill by another $5.95 for something else that would not quite give me the capabilities I was looking for. Oh, yeah, I had already upgraded my plan to the one with 150 channels because the $29.95 plan gives you nothing – that’s NOTHING! Anyway, I tell the girl to forgetaboutit, “I just want to cancel.” That’s when she hits me with the $347 disconnect fee. There was probably something in that agreement the installer had me sign to that effect. Unfortunately, he didn’t leave me a copy. “Do you still want to cancel?” “YES, I STILL WANT TO CANCEL.”

So, as of midnight tonight, the satellite will no longer be sending me beams. Tomorrow morning, between 8 – 10, the Bright House guy will be here to hook me up with a cable box which is what I should’ve opted for in the first place before I got the idea of showing the world how smart I am. To mollify Uppy, my frugal better half, I cancelled NetFlix to help defray our increased cable costs. Our next dvd will come from the movie cube down at WalMart.

Postscript: After the hookup to cable, my new VCR (or DVD-R) still wouldn't work. After a few calls, I hooked up with another young fellow from the manufacturer, LG Electronics. He told me the cable box was the problem. He instructed me that I could get the unit to perform the way I wanted if I bypassed the cable box. So, I went to Radio Shack and purchased a splitter and split the signal as it came into the house and sent one line to the cable box and another to the VCR. That did the trick. Honestly, I had never heard of LG before, but based on their commitment to customer service I wouldn't hesitate to buy one of their products in the future.

Update - I received a response from the FCC today, 11/03/2008. Here are the pivotal points:

"Billing and service disputes between customers and satellite providers are not subject to FCC jurisdiction...

You may file a complaint with the FTC. The FTC does not normally investigate or resolve specific complaints: they look for trends of patterns when an issue appears to warrant action."

In other words, I'm screwed.