Awesome billing error in my favor, and now I'm moving

[stonecold]

Ok I been out in the hosptial a bit the last couple of weeks and now I back better then ever after surgery . So lets tackle this .

1. would dtv back charge this person. Honestly I dont know based on what I seen the past the answer is gnerally no if they do it generally no more then 1 month back.

2. Consiering I am her I foward on the link to this thread to our audit team to look for regular cstomers with 5 dollar bills. Some times it best to just leave it at there a billing error in my favor and just end it at that.

3. You could hired an indepenting to do the work and then call us up to change the service address or do it online your self.

 

[Big Dawg 23]

When I have encounter similar billing issues and I will call. Now after I call once and it continues it is not my issue. I did my honest approach and called the error out.

In my current job I deal with billing delay. I financial handle a $32 Million dollar business. There are many hotel owners out there which are not honest. I have had glitches hit where our billing didn't generate for 4 months and the customer says nothing. When call them they say your fault and not mine. I did have a customer call us on an over billing for 33 months. They demanded a fully refund. That amount was $24K. I could have said past 90 days you our out of luck but I had my company issue the check. Yes this is different scale and my company does $7 Billion is sales.

In the end Karma will get you. You are best to just try calling and have them correct it now. Just imagine if Direct says here is a bill for $65 X 12=$780, due in 30 days.

 

[Ronnie-]

And to the rest of you haters, come on now, if I were your relative or best friend or whatever, you know you'd surely be telling the person to keep it. I do not believe you for one second that you'd jump on them and tell them how they gotta call DTV and adjust their bill up to the correct price. Just because I'm some random person through the internet that doesn't mean I'm any less than the real life humans you interact with on a daily basis ;-)

Actually, I do have some friends that have had similar situations such as this, and if they ask my advice, then I advise them to do the right thing and get it corrected. If they dont, then I mind my own business.
Since YOU brought it up, you had to expect that you would get some advice or comments that were not in line with what you want to do. It appears however that you do not want to hear that and will do what you feel like doing anyway.

Soooo, I guess you do that, and I will go back to not caring. Fair enough?

 

[cave1376]

What the op is doing can be considered theft. I hope the op doesn't start a negative post about D* when D* finds the $650+ error in her billing and back bills her. She knows she is in the wrong by not reporting the billing issue to D*.

 

[vurbano]

For 10 months now I've been paying just over $5 for my Directv. It *should* be close to $70 a month if not more. No, I didn't intentionally do anything to get this, but when I upgraded my equipment & package at the 1 year mark last year I ended up with this awesome billing error in my favor since then.

I have purposely not called Directv for the little quirks here and there that I've run into (like I only get channel 5 in my bedroom and not the living room, so I must watch Greys Anatomy in my bedroom - boofrigginhoo, but for a $65 savings every month, I sure as hell am not gonna call and complain! haha) But now my dilemma is that I'll be moving soon, and I think it's safe to say if I call DTV and arrange the whole moving thing, I'm sure either the CSR will notice something is up that I've been paying very little for a long time now, or whatever the case may be.

1.) Can I just move my satellite myself? I'll be moving to another apartment complex, so I could just try my best to mimic the angle the dish is pointed from neighbors, and keep tweaking it until I get a signal?

2.) I would be willing to pay an independent contractor to do it if I knew for sure that someone from the real DTV wouldn't be tipped off to look at my account.

Or 3.) Just suck it up and admit my practically free ride is over. But buuuut it was so much fun getting random movie channels and never knowing from one day to the next which movie channels I was getting for free hahaha!

Or even 4.) If I called DTV and did it the legit way by asking for their assistance, and the CSR says something about my bill, could I just say something like my stepdad or whoever works for DTV so I get a discount? Lol. Does anyone get that great of a discount that would be believable?

Yes, I really am a cheapo. Don't hate on me because of it haha. And ethics? HA! That went out the door years ago It would be different if this were a mom and pop joint that I knew honestly would hurt from losing the couple dollars from me a month... but as you can see I obviously don't effect DTV from losing $65 a month from me, afterall it's been 10 months this has been going on and they haven't caught on.

There are snitches galore here

2. Considering I am here I will foward on the link to this thread to our audit team to look for regular cstomers with 5 dollar bills. Some times it best to just leave it at there a billing error in my favor and just end it at that.

I would immediately cancel or block the credit card tied to the account and quit Directv.

 

[spaceghost]

Don't listen to the hypocrites. 1st off, you're not stealing anything as you did not initiate this error. Its up to your judgment on whether you want to continue this free ride.

They will not back bill you, and in the event they choose to get nasty with you, they can only go up to 90 days. Most of the time, its backdated to the beginning of the bill cycle or fixed for that day. Don't fret about that.

If you're moving locally, it won't be an issue to do it yourself. There are plenty of videos on youtube to show you how to point the dish. Of course you need to figure out if you have a line of site or not. If you can mount the dish and get the cables ran, you can probably flag down a direcTV guy and pay him 30 bucks to repoint it. Just tell him you move alot and you used up your free movers or that you do not want to restart your contract.

 

[raoul5788]

There are snitches galore here

Is that another word for honest?

 

[raoul5788]

Thank you Bob and Vince, finally some genuine posts! And I'm there with ya guys on that one. Does anyone ever go over their bills every month with a fine toothed comb and see what they find? Many of us get over charged from places monthly. And you'd never even know unless you look at every single bill every single month. I, for one, am constantly calling TMobile to get things changed. And yeah I've even had to call DTV in the past to have stuff edited. The worst was when I signed up for their automatic payments from my checking account - bad idea, never doing that one again! It just so happened my first month of automatic payments with them they royally screwed up my account and charged me close to double what it should be. And who is the one that has to rearrange things in their account to make sure other payments are covered while waiting 2-3 days for the credit to return. Did I ever end up with something in return for all my hassles? NOPE.

It's BS and heck yeah I'm going to try to keep my free ride going as long as possible. As for karma, I'm really not worried about it. I can say DTV is the first to ever royally ever screw up my bill like this, and I really doubt I'll ever get it back after it goes away. But in all reality I think of this as karma biting DTV in the butt, not me.

And to the rest of you haters, come on now, if I were your relative or best friend or whatever, you know you'd surely be telling the person to keep it. I do not believe you for one second that you'd jump on them and tell them how they gotta call DTV and adjust their bill up to the correct price. Just because I'm some random person through the internet that doesn't mean I'm any less than the real life humans you interact with on a daily basis ;-)

You say hater, I say person with integrity. That's not you, BTW.

 

[raoul5788]

But buuuut it was so much fun getting random movie channels and never knowing from one day to the next which movie channels I was getting for free hahaha!


And ethics? HA! That went out the door years ago

These two lines from you original post says it all.

 

[raoul5788]

Don't listen to the hypocrites.

How is it being hypocritical to tell the op that she should be paying for her services? Is hypocritical the same as honest?

 

[markfp-1]

Not true. If your bank makes an error and deposits a million dollars in your account and and doesn't catch it for a few months, does that mean you can spend it because you didn't make the error? Of course not, if you did, you'd go to jail.

 

[jwgreen68]

Sounds to me like the OP isn't seeking advice but looking for others to justify what he is doing as right.

She ordered the service knowing that it would cost her $75. Pay it. Be honest about it with Directv. There's even wiggle room to say that you had just noticed it. Would you order food and leave without paying for it? Fill your car full of gas then drive off without paying? Theft is theft, no matter how you try to spin it! You're no better than the guy shoplifting video games from Wal-Mart.

Why come to this site bragging about getting something for free that the honest people have to pay for? It appears to me that's the only reason you joined. So, do the rest of us a favor. Pay your bills, shut your mouth, and try to be a productive citizen. The rest of us will pray that you haven't brought children into your mucked up world and iffy moral values!

 

[Jimbo]

Directv employees get their service for free.

Not all of them.

 

[Jimbo]

MsSarcastic, assuming that your posts are legitimate, and I'm not convinced of that, have you ever heard of karma? If you haven't, or if you don't believe in it, you will at some point.

I too have doubts about this being a real situation.

 

[Jimbo]

The way I see it, the OP WANTS to get caught ...
Why else would she come to a PUBLIC forum that D* is on and BOAST that she only pays $ 5 p/m for services ...

Or did the OP not realize that D* is on this site regularly ?

 

[trinidex]

1.) Can I just move my satellite myself? I'll be moving to another apartment complex, so I could just try my best to mimic the angle the dish is pointed from neighbors, and keep tweaking it until I get a signal?

2.) I would be willing to pay an independent contractor to do it if I knew for sure that someone from the real DTV wouldn't be tipped off to look at my account.

FWIW...answers to the first two...

1.) Yes you can.

2.) A contractor could care less about your DirecTV bill, they'll do they job and you'll pay them.

 

[trinidex]

Or did the OP not realize that D* is on this site regularly ?

OOPS

 

[Darrell S]

Please don't feed the trolls.:

 

[TDK1044]

I suspect that D* will not persue the issue. I wonder though what the OPs reaction would be if she ran a company that someone like her knowingly stole from because of an accounting glitch. Would her attitude be "Oh well, I can afford it". I think not.

 

[spaceghost]

How is it being hypocritical to tell the op that she should be paying for her services? Is hypocritical the same as honest?

Ethics is ethics. Whether its .05, $5 or $50. Most people would keep quiet about a billing error and keep riding it to the end. I've worked customer service before. At least 50% of my calls were about billing errors/billing questions. The number of customers who reported a billing error in their favor was very rare. It was much more common to find one complain when an error in their favor was fixed.

So I would venture to say many of the same people who are implying the OP is unethical would also over look billing errors in their favor, whether its $10 or $75.00 a month.