A few days ago I wrote a rather cynical op-ed piece about my personal experience with the company, you can find it here.
I had said my piece, and moved on other projects. DirecTV is a large organization, as of 2010 it had over 19 million subscribers. This makes them a very serious player in the TV provider business. Where they beat out the cable providers is in coverage. There are many places that cable does not have the infrastructure (cable in the ground) to be able to offer service. DirecTV’s infrastructure does not have that problem, the key being small receiving dishes and geosynchronous Satellites. I think they have 12 in total. Yes satellites are expensive, but so is laying thousands and thousands of miles of cable under the ground.
The point I am making is that DirecTV is a big company. Big Companies on the whole don’t seem to really give a damn about the consumer. A good example is if you have a falling out with your bank and threaten to move your account. They will say something like, ‘fine, see if we care’.
So let me return to my narrative. Yesterday morning I received an unsolicited email from the PR department of DirecTV expressing concern about my plight. Yes, they reached out to me, I had not contacted them. My grumpy little article apparently had been noticed!
Of course it doesn’t hurt that Blogger News is one of the sites that both Google and Bing use for their News feeds. I was none the less surprised that an organization the size of DirecTV would contact me and want to offer help.
I wrote a reply giving a more detailed description of my experience and once again merrily went on my way. As I said, I was surprised at the email exchange, and it certainly impressed me that they would contact me.
A couple of hours later my surprise went to amazement when a gentleman from HQ called me. They are so concerned about my situation they are sending a technician out on Monday morning to give the entire installation a work over!
Most large (even medium) sized companies would just have ignored my article, what does it matter if one customer out of 19 million complains?
Even if they do not fix my rainy day blues on Monday
DirecTV deserve kudos for being proactive and wanting to help. It is a rare trait these days.
Simon Barrett
5 users commented in " DirecTV And Rain – A Surprising Update "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackIt matters because it is in public online as opposed to written correspondence. Hope they work on it and fix the gremlins.
Also, send rain. The drought is back in a big way in North Texas as well as across all of Texas. Not gotten noticed yet by the media due to the drought across the heartland,m but we were deep in drought too.
I had a similar experience. had trouble with their customer service getting a problem addressed. Tweeted my complaint. Voila Solved.
So, did they fix it?
The hand picked and very polite service guy checked the entire installation. He also was blunt about the fact that heavy rain and heavy cloud cover can cause problems. Doh! That was the whole point of my original article, the ads don’t bother to make mention of this feature!
About two hours after he left we had a downpour and out went the TV hahaha.
Well, at least, it is the best installation possible.
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