Under the heading of "How stupid is that?" comes my latest interaction with DirecTV.
I called this morning to add the Setanta channel - they specialize in international sports broadcasts. Notably Premier League games (Liverpool is on today!), Rugby World Cup, etc.
Ok.. their Web site is messed up and won't let me subscribe so I call them and bypass the phone tree (saying "operator" many times in a row 'til they give up).
When I get the guy on the line, he is hard to understand (somewhat broken English) but I finally get him to grok that I want to see in my Channel Guide only those channels to which I'm subscribed. This is something I can do with the competing Dish Network satellite system.
Not an option.
So I have to go through all 1000 channels and select manually those channels to which I'm subscribed and build a custom guide. This could literally take a couple of hours.
They should shoot the damn PM (after drawing and quartering) who designed this system. Or the VP who said "but we want our customers to see everything we are offering" more likely. Idiots. They are "working on the problem".
Seems like its been a problem for at least four or five years now. I could likely code the solution in an afternoon.
Very frustrating but something I'll likely have to do since I cannot abide constant reminders that I cannot watch something because I haven't subscribed to it. I have the Premier package (all NFL games, all movie channels and Setanta) and there are still some 300-400 channels I cannot view.
I'm going to need a couple of bottles of red wine to get through this task, I can tell.
Posted by artandscience at September 22, 2007 09:37 AM