AND THE BEATING GOES ON

When it comes to television service it's either cable or digital and after years of being tortured by cable suppliers I finally bit the bullet and got me some Directv. Today when I went to pay the bill I saw that there was a $70 charge for a service call back in May when a very cute boy came and adjusted my dish which wasn't getting the proper signal. The picture had been breaking up during the day, but I thought it was wind, or rain, or leaves and it worked fine at night which was really the only time I watch tv.

The cute boy told me he was surprised I was getting any picture at all because the dish had been set too far. Since the equipment had all been installed by Directv and there was nothing wrong with it other than the fact that the dish needed an adjustment I thought it would be a no charge visit. Wrong! I called Directv today and told them that I dispute the charge and I was told that they're not responsible for anything except sending the signal.

Huh?

What about the guy that came out and installed my dish? How did he find my house, or know what to do unless Directv told him? Was he some random dude standing out in front of Home Depot looking for work? How can a business not be responsible for the work done by it's subcontractors? Joshua, the voice on the end of the phone over at Directv answered the phone like I just woke him up from his nap. He wasn't very helpful but he did transfer me to Julio over at technical so I could dispute my bill.

So even though the subcontractor is a business whose work Directv is not culpable for, they are able to transfer phone calls to them. So I explain to Julio that I am disputing the charge because my equipment works fine, it was just set up wrong according to the cute boy who fixed it. Sadly for me he didn't write anything on the work order. I mean he wrote nothing - didn't write what the problem was or how he fixed it or anything. It's just a blank piece of paper that I signed to verify that he was at my house.

So now I have to go and dig through all my paperwork and write one of my special letters to, I'm not exactly sure who, I'm only sure that they are not Directv, because Directv isn't responsible for anything their subcontractors do - although they do bill customers on behalf of the subcontractor. The company I remit payment to is Directv.

It all sounds a bit like a racket to me. But evenso - you couldn't get me to go back to cable for anything. Even though I miss the weather channel and public cable access programming, even though no one at Directv seems to want to claim any responsibility for shoddy work done by ???, I hate cable so much I would rather spend the evening making shadow puppets than depend on them for service.

I really wonder if it's worth the aggravation? There's nothing worth watching on tv and getting it to work right always feels like some kind of ritual torture.

Do I want my MTV that bad?