As you will note in my last post, I woke up to watch the Red Sox face the Oakland A’s in Major League Baseball’s Opening Day in Japan. Tokyo is thirteen hours ahead so the evening start time made for a 6:00am start here.
Coinciding with opening day is my oldest child’s first round of MCAS tests. So I wanted to make sure he had a big breakfast and a good start to the day. I had planned to offer (not sure anyone would be kooky enough to take it) Hot Dogs, Peanuts and Ice Cold Coke! (in my best ballpark vendor voice). And make the morning a big event.
Baseball, ballpark food and fun. Except there was NO BASEBALL!
Scrap all that. I spend most of the morning before they left for school figuring out what the hell was wrong with the television and why the Sox game was not coming on. Troubleshooting this and double checking that. I finally gave up and hopped on the phone to call DirecTV. A generic automated message about service outages comes on the line. Well at least I knew it wasn’t just us.
At this point the stress level in the house was a wee bit higher than I had hoped for test day. But all in all the boys handled it well. I never did get around to hot dogs, but peanuts were had, no Coke. They would have been pumped to get Coke at all, let alone for breakfast.
I sent DirecTV a pointed email:
I realize that no service anywhere can promise or provide 100% uptime. But to have multiple channels, INCLUDING NESN (ch 623) down on the morning of the OPENING GAME OF THE BASEBALL SEASON is unacceptable.
I was very upset to find no coverage upon waking up, and waking my children to watch the Red Sox game this morning. I had a special morning planned with Hot Dogs & Peanuts planned for breakfast! By the time service was restored it was well past the time my kids had to head off to school. Needless to say they were crestfallen!
I expect that there will be some concession made to my account in form of a credit for service interruption.
I am not just looking to cash in on your screw up, but I have to tell you I was/am VERY UPSET about this.
I have been happy with DirecTV and am a long time customer, but this incident was a MAJOR slip.
Please let me know what you plan to do about this to try to make it up to us.
Very Upset,
PG
All I have gotten back so far is a couple very generic blow off emails. One telling me things I already knew and to call them if I want to discuss compensation as it is “a request better discussed over the phone”. Sure, let me take MORE time out of my day and make this a bigger inconvenience to me! Not cool.
The other response I got was to let me know more of what I already knew and to inform me that ESPN2 and NESN would both be showing replays of the game at 2:00 PM EDT & 2:30PM EDT respectively. Oh, yeah… that email came at 3:30PM EDT. Grrrrr.
I am not done here. I will call them, on my terms when I am good and ready. They better do the right thing.
12 responses so far ↓
1
Xbox4NappyRash
// Mar 25, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Call Oprah. She’s good with that kind of stuff.
Xbox4NappyRash’s last blog post..Supplementing Spencer
2
Rick Astley
// Mar 25, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Hmmm… they want to handle compensation conversations over the phone? Sounds like they don’t want a paper trail. Go get ‘em, PG!
Rick Astley’s last blog post..Killdeer egg
3
Pocklock
// Mar 25, 2008 at 8:43 pm
We got blacked out too here in CT. I was SO upset. Opening day glitches are just NOT allowed.
Oh - and gotta love Manny for just doing what Manny does!
Pocklock’s last blog post..The Blinkie Poll
4
Theo Epstein
// Mar 25, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Dear Mr. Glennon,
We were going to blow you off, until you informed us that you were going to feed hot dogs to your children for breakfast. Do you know what goes into those crappy things? L & A, baybee. L and A! We felt it was our duty to alert child services.
Sincerely,
DirecTV
5
Ed (zoesdad)
// Mar 25, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Not too far removed from the ire around here when our cable goes out before a Notre Dame Football game. Go get ‘em, man.
Ed (zoesdad)’s last blog post..They Have a Pact with the Devil
6
freehold
// Mar 26, 2008 at 9:29 am
crestfallen!
7
Jeff
// Mar 26, 2008 at 9:36 am
Too funny (for me that is). You are so diplomatic. Instead of saying they were crestfallen I would have probably been a little more… um… “colorful” if you will. But then I’m sure you’ll get better results than I would have too.
Jeff’s last blog post..March Malaprops
8
struglas
// Mar 26, 2008 at 10:31 am
they got some nerve. even i know you don’t get between a sox fan and their baseball.
idiots!
struglas’s last blog post..throwin’ up the dooce
9
Stephen
// Mar 26, 2008 at 11:19 am
Having similar issues with NASCAR.com. I posted a rant yesterday.
Stephen’s last blog post..Tweets for Today
10
Seatown Squids
// Mar 27, 2008 at 12:54 am
Boo Hoo, you missed 7 innings out of a minimum of 1458 (not counting extra innings or post season), we’re going to lose our b ball team (but we get to keep the name, logo and colors)
11
soapbox mom
// Mar 27, 2008 at 9:17 am
Yeah, I agree with Rick, they probably don’t want a paper trail. AND, they’ll probably put you through seventy five recorded messages that will take an hour to get through (”If you have DirecTV, press 1″, “If you live in MA, press 2″, “If this call is about baseball, press 3″, “please press * to return to the main menu” and so on).
Sorry, Pat.
But, man, your intentions were good! Hot dogs, Coke and peanuts. Wow. What a treat. It’s the thought that counts…
soapbox mom’s last blog post..A Great Family Vacation - in San Francisco (!)
12
Jeff B
// Mar 27, 2008 at 11:59 am
PG,
Here is my email to Direct TV and there reponse. I to am a loyal Direct TV customer and die hard Sox fan. Read below!!
Subject
This morning?
Discussion Thread
Response (Gary C ID W2871) 03/25/2008 07:19 PM
Dear Mr. Balou,
Thank you for taking the time to write.
I see that you have already spoken with one of our agents and it appears that they were able to offer compensation for your difficulty.
We experienced temporary technical difficulties early this morning which resulted in some channels not being available to customers (the majority of our channels were not affected). We have since corrected the problem.
In the case of the Red Sox game, any customers who have NESN or ESPN2 in HD were able to see the entire game. For customers who watch NESN in Standard Definition (SD), we were able to bring the channel back at the top of the seventh inning. For customers who watch ESPN2 in SD, the channel came back on later, after the game was over.
We deeply apologize, particularly to Red Sox fans, for any inconvenience this may have caused.
I hope you find this information helpful and thank you again for writing.
Sincerely,
Gary C ID W2871
DIRECTV Customer Service
Make the most of DIRECTV by registering your account on directv.com. You’ll learn about exclusive online promotions, new features of DIRECTV and the latest programs and packages. Visit http://www.directv.com/register today.
Customer 03/25/2008 01:13 PM
DIRECTV FEEDBACK MESSAGE
Name: Jeff B
Status:
[Account Number:
[Phone Number:
Email Address: jeff.ballou@hendrickauto.com
[Topic Selected: Programming]
Details: What happened this morning was unacceptable. I have been a direct tv loyal customer since 1999 and have bought many extra sports packages and looked forward to watching the first baseball game this morning only to have it not on because of some techical issue. Please, my father has direct tv his worked fine and got the game and my brother has direct tv and he got the game on ESPN2. I demand and deserve a better explanation and quite frankly deserve some compensation for what I have been thru. I pay
so much in sports packages and could not get the game this morning. I deserve something as a loyal customer. What happened to customer service….??????
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