Directv Problems in Vermont

UPDATE I highly recommend anyone having trouble with Directv contact use this form to contact the office of the president of Customer Care. Very shortly after sending my contact information I received a phone call from John. He was very helpful and resolved the problems we were having with customer service. I would be interested to hear if others in Vermont are seeing video problems and having their audio drop. If so, we can confirm this is an issue with the local channels' conversion to digital.

I would be interested in hearing if others in Vermont are having problems (audio and video) with their Directv service.

We had Directv installed in June of 2008, and have had problems with both the customer service, and the product itself, since installation (it's now almost December of '08).

I'll skip the specific customer service issues we faced for another time, but a quick run down includes being lied to about the installation date, being lied to about the cost for removing the extra "locals" dish, being lied to about the equipment being grounded, being lied to about how much the NFL package costs, being lied to about receiving an upgraded receiver, being lied to about a new satellite dish, and general rudeness from them.

We noticed the first day we had Directv satellite television that the audio dropped periodically, and the video would become very "pixelated". We may go an hour without the issue occurring, and other times it was so bad that we had to just turn off the television, it was unwatchable. They typically appeared on local channels, but did witness it on the movie channels as well.

We have had technicians at our house probably a dozen times (still have the paperwork), we've had four replacements of receivers (two each time), new LMBs, and the problems are still occurring.

My wife has been dealing with Directv trying to get it fixed, and has been very patient. The surprising thing is that Directv is now saying it isn't their issue (whose issue would it be, we pay Directv?), and they are not willing to provide us with the warranty at no cost, even though the problem still is not fixed.

How can a company not provide a warranty for a product that has had problems since purchase which have never been resolved? The protection plan they offer is a small $5~6/month, and they will not provide it while we continue to deal with the audio and video issues, which means we may have to pay for technicians to come out. Strange since the problem started immediately and has not been repaired.

My parents also have Directv, live in Vermont, and are not experiencing the issues. They do, however, have a separate dish for the local channels. At installation we had this dish as well, but it was taken down by the technicians to "fix" the issues. It did not fix them, obviously.

Does anyone else in Vermont have problems with their Directv service, particularly the local channels, and have the one HD dish?

I may make another post in the future with the specifics of what we've experienced with the customer service, and maybe post some video on YouTube of the problems so people know what to expect from Directv in Vermont. We've interacted with many Directv customer service "professionals" over the past 6 months and the trend we've seen is that they lie to their customers to get off the phone.

I'm interested to hear what others are finding. Comment here or contact me through the link above.