Another Fiasco with Direct TV

As long as you do not need customer service from them, all is well, but the moment things do not flow, then all hell breaks out.

The bottom line is that we have been negotiating with them since March about whether we put our service on hold or not, they say we didn’t and we say we did. We have asked for supervisors to return our calls and they never did. We sent letters, emails and made several phone calls, each with no solution. A few calls were met with them not even listening and just screaming at me. We asked them to shut us off in the meantime as they continued to threaten to do so and we tested our system the first of April and could not get service, so we continued to negotiate, or so we tried to but they would not return our calls, letters or emails.

Then the most ridiculous thing happened, they attempted to retrieve money from our bank account without any approval or authorization with a debit card that we had previously used to make a payment. Not just once but over the course of 3 days, they attempted to take thousands of dollars in different amounts over 15 times. Thank goodness we had less than $5 in this account so all that happened was it was being declined but if it was a bank, they would have charged us at least $30 for each attempt they made, which would have added up to several hundred dollars. Luckily, this was observed the day before our direct deposit was to hit this account and we shut it down, which then caused a huge inconvenience for us to get our direct deposit.

This has always been a concern for us because over 10 years ago our identities were stolen and our credit rating was severely damaged which we have never totally recouped from, so we are always a bit apprehensive about credit or debit cards. That was one of the reasons we chose to go with a reloadable card from Wal-Mart, which can be used to pay bills, receive direct deposits and can be used just like any other credit card except you do not get any credit. What is on the card is what you get, it processes immediately and does not allow any overages at all and does not charge for any of those overages because it never pays them, it just declines them.

This is a warning to all consumers that if you pay your bills online, as many of full-time RVers do, then be aware that this too may happen to you, they have access to your account and they claim they have all legal rights to do so. We plan to pursue this into the highest courts to see just exactly what our rights are as consumers and just because they have our account information what right they have to just take it from our account without our immediate approval.

If any of our readers have any suggestions on who we should contact, please zip us a comment. This by no means is over; it has only just begun…