It's been a while

Well, it has been quite a while since the last total DVR blowout, but here I am again. Over the past few months I've had the usual problems with missing recordings, crashing hardware etc. I'd given up calling DirecTV, since they have really yet to satisfactorily resolve any of my problems.

I just got back from 10 days vacation on Monday night, and I wanted to catch up on all the season finales of the shows I had missed while out of town. Most of them worked fine, but as usual, a couple of recordings didn't make it. I watched the ones that did work, and then on Thursday decided to reboot the DVR to see if the broken ones would get fixed. Nope - too much too ask for. Far too much it seems, since now the box apparently can't get any guide data at all.

I have good signal strength pretty much across the board, according to the tests DirecTVs technical support had me run. So now no one knows what to do. DirecTV is going to send someone out to take a look at my setup on Monday morning, anytime from 8 AM to 12 PM. I'm hoping for the best. Amazingly, they're going to waive the $70 service call fee, and pro-rate my bill for this month so I won't need to pay for the time I'll be without TV service.

The customer support person was quite helpful actually, and commented that they get a lot of calls about how bad this piece of hardware is.

Wish me luck!

Customer Disservice

After last week's continued failures of my DVR, I contacted DirecTV using their online form. I sent this barely polite letter:

I called DirecTV technical support tonight to report yet another failure of my DirecTV HDDVR to perform as advertised (and as I pay you hundreds of dollars a year to perform). The technical support rep once again could not provide any suitable solution or reparations for the problem.

I am appalled at DirecTV's terrible customer and technical support, as well as your unethical, and quite frankly reprehensible, business practices. I cannot believe that you charge me (and many other customers) this amount of money for a service you then do not provide. In addition, I also don't even have the option to return your poor quality hardware and to choose another option, because DirecTV will charge me even for that privilege.

I cannot state strongly enough how disappointed I am with your company and its services and products. Unfortunately, such statements appear to get lost in the corporate woodwork far too often. Please pass this message along to DirecTV's management and executive team, so that they can take action to repair your company's rapidly failing reputation.

Their response:

Thank you for writing and letting us know your concern. I apologize for the inconvenience that your DIRECTV account has caused you. I have forwarded your message to a special group who would be able to make suitable resolution as to the appeasement of this concern. Do expect a specialist to call in the next few days to discuss the matter at hand.

Thanks again for writing and please stay tuned to directv.com for the latest news and information about our services.

As you can easily predict, no such phone call has been made, nor do I really expect one to be. Go DirecTV!

False sense of security

Well, it's been a while since I've posted. I was hoping this thing was finally starting to work, but of course that was just wishful thinking. I had an inkling that things were going south last week - the DVR just froze entirely while I was using it. A reset appeared to fix the problem. My old friend the funnily-stretched crop mode was also bad early last week, but I just let it go, since things were working mostly as expected. Then, yesterday, I noticed that a schedule episode of one of my 'season pass' programs was running, but not being recorded. I could see it in the 'To Do' ist, but it sure wasn't recording. The episode came and went, but the DVR made no effort to record it whatsoever. Even hours later, it was still in the 'To Do' list, long after its broadcast had passed. I didn't bother calling DirecTV since a rebroadcast was available later in the evening and I just set it up to record that particular showing. Today I came home from work to find the system happily recording my two Monday night shows. I got home from work late, so I watched an episode of seinfeld while waiting for these two programs to record. One of them is just fine - the other didn't play back at all, just a blank screen. I reset the box, hoping it would come back to me, but it's gone from the list entirely. I called DirecTV, they have no way to fix it nor any compensation to offer. After the call, I went to check the to do list, only to find that the 10-15 movies I had set to record over the next 2-3 weeks are all also gone from the list. Thanks DirecTV. Thanks for nothing.

Wouldn't turn on (again), and found yet more billing trouble

Well, I got home tonight after being out to see a movie, and settled into the couch to watch some pre-recorded television. Once again, the receiver wouldn't turn on. I gave DirecTV a call immediately, and then proceeded with some troubleshooting on my own. Pushing the red reset button did appear to reset the receiver this time, but then a moment or two later, everything went dark. Eventually, pressing the power button on the remote turned the box on, and I waited the 5+ minutes for it to boot up. It appears to be back in working order now.

DirecTV couldn't explain the problem to me (no surprise there), but I took the opportunity of being on the phone with them to inquire about my billing question (the $55 charge for a non-returned receiver). The woman I spoke to said that the escalation to their billing department had been closed for no apparent reason. She's reopened it, so hopefully I'll get my $55 back someday... otherwise I guess DirecTV just wants to have a dinner or two on me.

Call Time - 27:03
Problems solved - 0
New problems found (WHILE ON THE CALL) - 1

Linking around the web

As you all expect, I'm not the only person to have a problem with DirecTV and their terrible service. Here are some links to other pages describing this terrible product and the customer service to match:

• PVRWire
  
• Engadget
  
• My 3 Cents
  
• Business Week. BUSINESS WEEK!
  
• High-def Forum
  
• Buzz Customer
  
• Consumer Affairs
  
• Home Theater Forum
  

Part 1 - The middle

Ever since I got my DirecTV HD+DVR a couple of months ago, it's been nothing but trouble. I spend about an hour on the phone with DirecTV's technical support every time I have a problem. I usually have to call them at least twice a week; often, it's a lot more than that.

I had read on various places on the internet about DirecTV's terrible customer service and technical support reputation, but I thought I was above those problems. I work in a technical field myself, so I believed that I could work around any problems the device was likely to have. Unfortunately, I couldn't have been more wrong.

There are a couple of categories of problems I have with this DVR. The first is that on occasion, seemingly randomly, it simply doesn't record programs it was scheduled to record. Problem number two is the unreliable playback of apparently successfully recorded programs, and bringing the major problem set to the magic number of 3 is the most recent problem - the box sometimes just doesn't turn on at all.

I should note that this HD+DVR is already my second box from DirecTV. The previous one had all the same problems, and eventually one of DirecTV's customer service agents offered to ship me a replacement. I accepted, hoping that the new DVR would solve my problems, and I could fade away into a land of pre-recorded commercial-free television bliss. Instead, the new DVR has arrived and been running for a couple of weeks now with all of the same problems the previous one had. To add insult to injury, DirecTV also has decided to charge me $55.00 for a 'non-returned receiver' fee for the old DVR, which I shipped back to them via their own FedEx shipping label weeks ago. For $55, I should have kept it and taken the hard disk out to use for something else... I of course telephoned DirecTV to complain, and I was told that it would take 5-7 business days for their billing and credit investigations group to resolve the issue. If any of my other customer service experiences with DirecTV are any indication, I'll be paying this fee one way or another regardless of whether they received the old DVR or not.

Leaving billing aside, let's move on to the technical problems. About once a week, my DVR simply chooses not to record shows which have been scheduled. It seems to me that the entire point of using one of these devices is for this feature to work reliably. DirecTV's engineers must not be of that opinion, however, since there have been 3 software updates to this box in the last few weeks with no sign of a fix for this problem in sight. I can't believe it's that hard to isolate and fix the problem, since it happens to me on a surprisingly regular basis. As I'm sure you all expect by now, neither DirecTV's first-level technical support group or the so-called 'advanced technical support' group have been able to help me with this problem at all. My offers to help in any way I can haven't been received very well either; I'm no stranger to good quality assurance procedures, and I'd be happy to write up nice detailed bugs for their engineers to look at in order to help solve the problem, but they don't appear to be interested.

Another common problem I have is with the playback of programs that appear to have been successfully recorded. This category is a bit of a catch-all, since it includes both picture distortion (my most recent exciting trip through the DirecTV HD+DVR funhouse) and recordings that simply don't play back at all. Another great problem that's turned up recently is the DVR recording channels that I don't even receive. I'm a hockey fan, having moved to the United States from Canada just about 2 years ago. I like to root for the home team, so I have the DVR set to record programs matching the pattern "SHARKS" in the category "Sports, Hockey". Apparently, to DirecTV that means recording every game it can find on their NHL Center Ice package, as well as on all of the Fox Sports Net channels they don't even offer in my area. I do get the occasional Sharks game recorded successfully, but my DVR's relatively limited recording space is filled with hours and hours and hours of beautiful, picturesque, black screens... and that's just on some of the recordings. On the NHL Center Ice channels, the recording just puts up a box saying "Looking for authorized content...." and won't let me exit back to regular TV; I have to instead go to the list of recordings, pick one that does work and play it before going back to regular TV watching.

Problem number 3, and the most painful to work around, is the DVR box simply not turning on. I can see that it has electricity - it's even recording a show maybe (there's a yellow light on the front of the box that lets you know if it's in the middle of recording). No answer to the power button on the remote, though. Likewise the power button on the front of the DVR itself does nothing. Not even pressing the red reset button works. No, that's right - I have to unplug the DVR from the wall and then reconnect the power cord for it to come back to life. 'Coming back to life' for a DirecTV HD+DVR, unfortunately, is a lengthy process... about 10-12 minutes in my experience. Of course, any programs that were supposed to have been recorded since it went into its happy place are nowhere to be found.

In all cases, DirecTV's technical support has been unable to provide any suitable resolution for these problems. They have a handy record on their computer systems of how often I call and about what, so I'm going to start one here of my own. I'll post every time I call DirecTV and detail what I called about, how long the call took, how many times I was hung up on by their customer service agents (3 times last night between 12:30 and 1:30 AM), and if there's any resolution to the problems. Please post comments and let the world know your experiences with DirecTV and their products.

Don't worry - it won't be long before the next post.