{"id":595,"date":"2008-10-21T10:34:36","date_gmt":"2008-10-21T17:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bspcn.com\/2008\/10\/21\/5-things-directv-does-not-want-you-to-know\/"},"modified":"2008-10-21T10:34:36","modified_gmt":"2008-10-21T17:34:36","slug":"5-things-directv-does-not-want-you-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/2008\/10\/21\/5-things-directv-does-not-want-you-to-know\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Things DirecTV Does Not Want you to Know"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Written by Master Blaster<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

5. Protection Plan<\/p>\n

When your DirecTV equipment breaks down, you will have to pay about $80 for a service call, unless you shell out $5.99 per month for the protection plan. Instead you could wait until you have a problem, call to add the protection plan to your account (don’t mention you have a current problem), call back the next day to schedule a $5.99 service call.<\/p>\n

4. Upgrades<\/p>\n

If you have fulfilled your contract with DirecTV, call them every six months and ask for a free upgrade. You can get additional rooms, new equipment, HD receivers, and DVR receivers.<\/p>\n

3. Retention<\/p>\n

Ahhhh, retention the magical customer service department that can get almost anything done. The retention departments job is to keep you from canceling your account. Retention representatives get bonuses if they can get you to stick with DirecTV, so they are always willing to help.<\/p>\n

The key is to pretend you are going to cancel your account. I have had to evoke the magic retention word a few times when dealing with regular customer service, and every time my problem was immediately fixed and a credit added to my bill. Just tell the regular customer service rep. that you have had enough and want to cancel your account. Once they transfer you, tell the retention agent what is going on, and they will do whatever they can to keep you. If they do call your bluff, just say you have to sleep on it and you will call back tomorrow to cancel.<\/p>\n

2. Phone Lines<\/p>\n

DirecTV receivers can not send pay-per-view billing information back to DirecTV unless the receiver is connected to a phone line. That means if you disconnect your receiver from the phone line, and order pay-per-view with the remote you will not be billed. Some receivers have safeguards to prevent or limit this.<\/p>\n

1. Receivers are Untraceable<\/p>\n

As long as you disconnect your receivers from a phone line, DirecTV has no idea where that receiver is geographically. That means one receiver could be at your house, one at Grandmas house across town, one at your best friends house, and one in your R.V. You would have to be handy enough to install a few satellite dishes that you bought on Ebay, and run some coax cable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Master Blaster 5. Protection Plan When your DirecTV equipment breaks down, you will have to pay about $80 for a service call, unless you shell out $5.99 per month for the protection plan. Instead you could wait until you have a problem, call to add the protection plan to your account (don’t mention […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}