Grossman family west

Before you subscribe to DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket, you should be aware of some offensive hidden price-gouging policies. As background, I am paying for two services, currently:

1) The NFL Sunday Ticket, at about $250+ for the season. This allows me to watch nearly any NFL game on any given Sunday. While expensive, DirecTV is upfront and clear about the pricing, so I have no complaints. I understand the “deal” here and can chose to subscribe or not.

2) A monthly “HD Access” fee. A DirecTV Customer Service rep described the point of this fee to me via email: “In regards to the HD Access, this allows you to get the HD versions of any channel in your programming package that is simulcast in HD.” I pay this $9.99 fee every month, so I get HD versions of channels. This also applies if I buy a set of movie channels (e.g. HBO): If I do NOT pay the regular HD access fee, I only get low-def HBO channels. If I do pay the HD Access fee, then I also get the HD versions of these HBO Channels.

Here’s where DirecTV’s deceptive policies start: it turns out that the DirecTV HD Access fee DOES NOT GIVE YOU ACCESS TO THE HD SIMULCAST OF NFL GAMES. That is to say, the $250+ I pay for NFL Sunday Ticket PLUS the monthly $9.99 “HD Access” fee only gives me the low-def version of the NFL Games (and that the DirecTV reps explanation “[the $9.99 monthly HD Access fee] allows you to get the HD versions of any channel in your programming package that is simulcast in HD” is a lie). 

If I want the HD SIMULCAST version of the games, I have to pay an EXTRA $99 for that. This is particularly offensive because it seems like it should be an identical situation to movie channels. If I buy the movie channels as an add-on to my programming package (just like NFL Sunday Ticket), the regular $9.99 HD Access fee DOES include the movie channel HD simulcasts. But not for NFL Games from the NFL Sunday Ticket.

The policy is inconsistent and price-gouges NFL Sunday Ticket customers. BUYER BEWARE OF DIRECTV!

This is the problem with monopolies. They can get away with ridiculous policies like this that, frankly, should be illegal (if a lawyer with extra time thinks that there’s a class-action suit here, I’m happy to be named).

This is a follow up to my recent post about Delta Airline’s Customer Hating Policies. I went back to Delta.com today–I leave for my trip in a day or two and decided I’d make a last-ditch effort to use my apparently worthless 140,000+ Delta Skymiles. Much to my surprise, it looks like the website no longer offers the “helpful” online chat feature with Customer Service that they once offered.

Of course, this now means that I’ll have to call. But the details of a call are more difficult to post on my blog (very conveeeeeenient…). Maybe I’ll figure something out. WordPress seems to have a feature that allows me to embed audio…

I seem to have made some traction by blogging about bad experiences in the past, so here’s another:

Don’t buy anything at MicroCenter. They sell two types of computer products: those from brand-name manufacturers that you can get online for much less money, and generic white-label items that are total junk.

Last month, I made the mistake of heading to MicroCenter to buy the latter. In spite of the fact that major manufacturers sell PCs for $500 or so (I didn’t need a monitor or any fancy specs), I headed to MicroCenter in search of a deal. Sure enough, I found a “PowerSpec” (MicroCenter brand) tower for about $420, with “good enough” specs (2 GHz Athelon, 500 MR Ram, 150 GB HD).

I was content with my purchase until, 5 weeks later, the system clock started acting up. Whenever I turned the computer back on, the clock would be wrong (usually, the date as well as the time was totally off). Sure that the PC was still under warranty, I brought it into the Cambridge MicroCenter, where I purchased it five weeks earlier.

The service was absolutely horrific:

1. Although they knew that they couldn’t even look at my computer for 3 days, they would not schedule me for a service appointment then. They insisted that I drop my computer off NOW so it could sit on their bench for 3 days until they got around to it. Mind you, my computer was mostly fine, so I’d be losing it for NO reason–they just didn’t have their act together to draw up a service schedule. When pressed, the woman on the phone explained that “it just couldn’t work that way.” Apparently, MicroCenter doesn’t hire employees with enough competence to use a calendar. Good thing that Dr offices, automotive service repair shops, and restaurants have managed to crack this very complicated problem.
2. Even though I had purchased THEIR brand of computer from THEIR store a mere 5 weeks earlier, they charged me $85 JUST TO LOOK AT IT! I was horrified.
3. They somehow managed to break my computer and “fix it”, thereby keeping the $85. That is, they called me and told me that they couldn’t get it to boot (the ONLY problem I had was the clock when I had brought it in). Magically, though, when they tried to boot it, they claimed that they couldn’t–that they had to “safe boot” it and reinstall a video driver.

These are just the facts. I leave out the fact that the actual customer service was frustratingly slow, that the salespeople were pushy (like used car salesmen) when I was considering a purchase, and that the service reps were disinterested with me, their jobs, or the quality of their service.

There is absolutely no reason for you to go to MicroCenter. Just skip it. The stuff that they sale is junk (and they know it because they don’t offer free repair for even 35 days) and the name-brand products are cheaper elsewhere. Do yourself a favor and stay away.

Cheers,
joel