It's Nice To Be Wanted

I cancelled my DirecTV service that I have had since 2002 and switched over to AT&T UVerse. I called to cancel my service on Sunday night. Since then, two and one half days later, I've received ten calls to my house from a 1-800 number that I've since found out is owned by DirecTV. Ten calls - averaging four times a day. They haven't ever left a message, but I can see all of the missed calls courtesy of UVerse's digital phone service, which logs the missed phone calls for me.

For the record - I didn't particularly have any problem with DirecTV. I thought their customer service, for the few times I used it, was generally good and effective. And I didn't have any real issues with the DirecTV service itself - I grumbled when the prices increased, of course, but not to excess.

I dropped DirecTV because (a) UVerse was cheaper, especially once I bundled in HDTV upgrades, (b) UVerse provided better functionality than DirecTV (in particular, the Total Home DVR), (c) the UVerse TV/Phone/Internet combo was cheaper and a better deal than the corresponding DirecTV/SBC/Earthlink combo I had at the time, (d) UVerse stuck in a $400 rebate, and (e) there wasn't a contract period with UVerse, so I felt I could switch back if the service proved unsatisfactory.

Now, I told the DirecTV customer support person when I cancelled that I already had started service with a new provider. So there really isn't any reason for ten calls in two days. I've now forwarded calls from DirecTV to come over to my cell (another nice UVerse service), so I can catch one of these calls and hopefully bring them to an end. Hopefully, this won't prove to be an ongoing problem. But I think it is an indication of how cutthroat things are for cable/satellite providers right now that they would put this much effort into holding onto a customer.