My New BATV, DirecTV and My Policy

On Friday night, Tay and I hauled a Sony 60" LCD Projection TV from my office, courtesy of Poppinfresh, and set it up in her livingroom. I call it my big-ass TV.

I've never had a TV larger than 27". I sat there and was absolutely mesmorized. Needless to say, I spent the better part of the weekend watching hockey and football on the huge screen and was pretty useless to Tay. I had just gotten DirecTV a few months ago to get the NFL package, so the timing of the TV was perfect.

And then I called DirecTV to upgrade our standard receiver to an HD receiver. The guy I talked to was pretty annoying and the background noise in his office was deafening. I could barely hear him. I was thinking that DirecTV must be operating sweatshops in Indonesia for their existing customer service lines.

He told me what it would cost. It sounded reasonable and I said "okay, go ahead and ship the bad boy". And then he tells me something else.

"I'm going to have to charge you an additional $50 because you haven't been a customer of ours for that long"

"What?"

"You've only had service for two months, so we will charge you $50 which will be returned to you in $5 increments over the next ten months"

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. Surely you did a credit check on me when i signed up for service in the first place. I don't see a need for such nonsense."

"Sorry, that's our policy"

"You know what my policy is?"

"No."

"You can go fuck yourself for the $50!"

I hung up the phone. Sure, it was pretty juvenile but it sure felt good. I guess DirecTV must be doing pretty good to treat their existing consumer base so shabbily. I guess paying your first two bills on time is not enough for them to float you a $99 HD receiver.

Well, they can kiss my ass. I'm sure at some point, they'll offer a free upgrade and I won't have to pay a dime. What a bunch of jerkoffs.

Sure, I'm cheap and now I won't have HD for the rest of the NFL season. But I'll be damned if I send DirecTV a $50 loan, so they can provide me with a HD receiver.

How ridiculous.