DTV switch causes ripple effect
Posted on November 3rd, 2008 – 3:43 PM
By Randy Salas I’ve had DirecTV for 10 years, so I thought I wouldn’t be affected by the DTV transition. I was wrong.
It turns out that the crush of new viewers switching to DirecTV in advance of the federally mandated transition to digital television on Feb. 17 has created a huge backlog of orders for installers. (I would imagine the same is true for Dish and cable TV.) How long? It took more than four weeks for an installer to come to my house to upgrade my setup to high-def. When I asked the tech if the DTV switchover was the reason for the delay, he said yes — but not for the reason I thought, sheer numbers. He said that DirecTV is giving those new customers priority and that longtime customers who “just need upgrades” are being sent to the back of the line. The reason is obvious: DirecTV wants to cater to new customers because it knows the old customers aren’t going anywhere.
The news isn’t all bad for loyal customers like me. Normally, an upgrade to a high-def setup costs $200 for DirecTV’s HD receiver with DVR. When I ordered it, I told the customer service rep that I thought that was too high, especially for a longtime customer. She said, “You’re right. How about $19.99?” I quickly said, “Sure!” That included installation, and I got her to throw in an HD add-on programming package free for six months, instead of $5.99 per month, with the option to get it free for six more months after that. That was a decent trade-off for the inconvenience of having to wait.
