Update on broken Direct TV receiver

[Ozz]

I got to thinking, a Direct Tv with Tivo receiver costs around $350.00, maybe I can get Direct Tv to send me one....
I asked Sue to get them on the phone, a person, that is. My fuse is too short to try and communicate with a robot. She is very easy going and not riled quickly, so she called, she tried broken receiver, Direct Tv not working and many other words and phrases that the robot did not understand, I have found out that it also does not understand much of the language we used in the Navy...
I told her to tell the robot that we wanted to pay a year in advance...we got someone with a temperature around 100 degrees then.
I got on the phone, described our difficulty in traversing the Corn maze they had set up for the customers, she was a humorless drone, but eventually got me hooked up with a real nice girl in Colorado or somewhere. I told her the receiver was on the fritz and I wanted to have one shipped to Texas. She said she would have one here in Two days. I'm thinking, this is going pretty well now...
I asked her if we could just call her directly next time we had a problem, but we all know it doesn't work that way.
So Two stars for Direct Tv. All you have to do is get through the Corn maze.

[bncinwv]

Sounds like Directv came through for you also Ozz. I had an HD receiver suffer a terminal fate at the house, one phone call and two days later had a brand new unit in hand. They even paid the return postage for the old one. Bottom line, a phone call will usually resolve Directv matters if you can convince them to send the unit and not make a service call (that will cost you).
Bingo

[mail2us]

I understand the corn maze Oz speaks to.

I generally dial 800-531-5000 and hit option 2 for tech support even if it may not be. I call during working hours or after 9-10 PM as choices and never on weekend when I'm competing with the pay per view types for sports, etc.

I always get their first names, call them by their names and that often helps.

You can also send them an email which I found to be more efficient and prompt to solve my problem. I think overall DirecTV has improved and so far I'm not challenged to learn a new language! Dennis

[SlickWillie]

Sometimes if the robot asks you to key in an account number, if you key in all zeros, it will take you directly to customer service. Don't know if that will work on DirecTV or not. I suppose the old robot gets confused, and needs a warm body to help him out.

[Waynem]

When I get a company robot and really want to speak to a human, I just punch in about 20 or 30 zero's. If that doesn't work I try the # key. Usually one or the other will get me to a person. Although, sometimes it's difficult to understand the broken engrish! :-)

Edit: p.s., You can always ask the robot to speak to someone in "billing." They seem to want their money faster than to let you talk to customer services. Once in billing, ask to speak to a CR person.

Is that "bait and switch?"

[bsmeaton]

I'm torn - I'm not sure if it's easier to speak to a robot, or to an agent from Budapest that learned English yesterday

[rogue]

Ozz, when you get the robot, just say "Customer Service" to its question or response. About 2 or 3 times and you get through, but then sometimes you are on hold for 5 or 10 minutes before a real person answers.

Brad, at least with the robot you will understand the question/answer that you do not like.

[richfaa]

Try this on those robot systems..When they are asking you to punch 1 for this 2 for that , etc. try punching Zero even if that is not a option.In a great many cases it will connect you with a real person even tho that person may be in Bangladesh. When my name comes out as
Reccharrd..we know we are in for a interesting conversation with....Jeff...or David.. The bunch of zeros' also will work at times.."that is a incorrect response, please stand by while we connect you with the next available Representative. Have a nice day Reccharrd..

[simonsrf]

Dish replaced our receiver in about 5 days delivered. The bad thing was that we had 50 hours of DVR recording on there before the Hard Drive decided it wanted to delete all of our programs....at that point if they hadn't sent the new receiver right away...we would be Direct TV customers.

Dish also paid for the shipping both ways of the old unit and the new unit...not bad!

[Ozz]

50 Hrs.! Man, how big was the hard drive? Maybe mine will be a larger capacity one on the new one. They did say the return would be free as well.

[simonsrf]

Ozz,

I don't know for sure how many hours they can carry, think mine is about 80 hours or 80GB. I heard somewhere that you can attach a separate hard drive that will give you more HD space. At the cost of HD's getting the extra time/space would be nice especially with the writers strike.

Recently saw a 300GB HD for $69.00. Just plug 'n play the USB and you've got an extra 300 hours of recorded programming. I'm not an expert on these matters, but think someone will fill in the blanks.

We try to save up recorded programs so we don't have to setup the dish all the time, especially travel days.

[Ozz]

Thanks, I will see what shows up at the door. I really like the storage aspect of the Tivo. Really makes the commercials go fast on triple speed playback too!

[snfexpress]

A couple of my employees were trying to get through to Fed-Ex to confirm delivery of an important package. The computerized robot system wanted English word requests. After trying many, many different requests, one of my gals said "MORON"; the response from the system was "Transferring to Customer Service"...

[Ozz]

That is too funny!

Hey, I got my unit in, it has a 100 hr. capacity. Haven't hooked it up yet, clearing off all the goodies I have recorded.