My DirecTV Complaint Filed with the BBB/FTC

I recently cancelled my service with DirecTV after two years of using them.  I had no issues them, but with our new daughter on the way, we were looking for ways to save money, and this was a cut we decided to make.  Unfortunately, their refund practices have put a bitter taste in my mouth, and I am posting a copy of my FTC complaint against DirecTV.


----- Begin FTC Complaint Text -----

I cancelled service with DirecTV on June 14, 2011.  A charge of 88.98 was put on my CC on June 16.  I noticed the charge on June 18 and called them that day.  They told me 86.01 had been credited back to me.  I took that to mean, the refund had already been applied to my CC, and expected to see it back on my card within 10 days.

I had not seen the refund the by July 2, so I called them back that day.  I was then told that the credit had been applied to my account, but that they do not process refunds back to the CC until 30 days after the credit has been applied to the account.  They verified that my equipment had been returned to them, and there were no further upcoming charges, but still said they were unable to refund my card immediately.  I let them know that this "policy" is potentially costing their customers money, as interest can be charged to the CC for these transactions that have refunds due.  They again stated they were unable to process the refund.

I let them know I would be disputing the charge with my CC, which I have since done, and they encouraged me to do so.

I filed a complaint with the BBB on July 2 in hopes of opening up a line of communication with DirecTV, and give them opportunity to review and ultimately revise their refund policy.  I received their response on July 14:

"We regret to hear of any unpleasant experience you have encountered with your refund request. There are a number of steps involved for any company before a refund is processed.  We owe it to our customers to make sure that we meet all requirements of law and that refunds are only processed when valid. Refunds typically take 6 to 8 weeks to process from the date of disconnection, or the last transaction on your account.  We appreciate your feedback for our review, but we are unable to change the way refunds are processed.  However, in an effort to amicably resolve your complaint, we expedited your credit balance of $86.01 to our Finance Department to be reviewed for an immediate refund. Please allow 5-7 business days for a refund to be processed to the credit card on file. If the payment has been disputed with your credit card company and it is returned to you by them prior to the refund being processed on our end, the amount will be charged back to your account as a double refund will not be provided. We again regret the delay in receiving your refund, and thank you for allowing us the opportunity to address your concerns.

Respectfully, DIRECTV Office of the President"

As you can see, DirecTV had no interest in opening up a dialogue on this topic.  I am, therefore, escalating my complaint to the FTC, as I believe this practice is hurting consumers.

DirecTV is unjustifiably holding its customers refunds for 30 days before processing them back to the CC.  Not only does this cause inconvenience to their customers, but in same cases, it costs their customers extra interest charges that cannot be refunded back.  This practice needs to be stopped.

Note: As of July 21, I still have not seen my refund posted to my CC account.

Back in Labor and Delivery

We are back in L&D as of about 11:00am. Just more contractions, despite taking medication meant to keep them from occurring.

Not really much more to report at this point. Keep looking here for more updates.

Released

Things were pretty quiet last night. They increased Katrina's frequency for taking a prescription that keeps contractions at bay, and that seems to be the key at this point. As such, they are satisfied and releasing her. I expect we'll be out of here by 10:00 this morning.
Thanks for your prayers everyone.

Overnight in Labor and Delivery

We're back in L&D tonight. Katrina had a flurry of contractions beginning at 4:40 this afternoon. Just to play it safe, and make sure everything is fine, we came in.

Things still look fine at this point, but they want to keep her overnight for observation.

One humerous note, during the ultrasound, our little girl reached up and punched the cerclage! Okay little one, we know the cerclage works, but there is no need to test the structural limit of it.

Will keep everyone posted, but no need to worry. In case you're still trying to do the math in your head, we're about 23.5 weeks.

Kylee 2.0? Not today!

Hey everyone,

I wanted to update everyone to explain the events from the last couple of days.  Katrina and I thank you so much for your prayers!  Some of you are not yet aware of what has transpired, and this will fill you in and catch you up.

First, a little background.  Most of you know, but I know a couple do not, that our first child, Kylee, was born in Oct. 2009 at 22 weeks (4 months premature).  She only lived a couple hours.  There were many unanswered questions about why this occurred, and we knew very little.  We know that when we got to labor and delivery that evening, Katrina was already dilated to 4cm.  From doing an amniocentesis, we know the amniotic fluid was heavily infected, and therefor the infection was heavily absorbed into Kylee's body.  The actually bacteria causing the infection was never revealed.  This made determining the source of the bacteria nearly impossible to establish.  One major mystery remained - did the infection cause the opening of the cervix, or did the opening of the cervix introduce the bacteria that caused the infection.  For those that need a biology lesson, the cervix acts as the barrier between the baby and the outside world.  It's a muscle, and it is to remain tightly closed until the baby is ready to be born.  That's the family friendly definition for our context :)

Fast forward to Monday morning.  We had our scheduled 18 week ultrasound with the high-risk specialist.  We were able to confirm that our expected baby is a little girl (Yaye!), and all measurements came back fine, as well as visual confirmation of all major organs and appendages.  Then the doctor focused on Katrina's cervix.  They watched it for a couple minutes, and then we saw it ever so slightly begin to open, just a hair, then close again.  It opened again, this time a little longer.  This was enough for the doctor to become concerned, especially with what happened with Kylee.  This could be the very early stages of pre-term labor.

So, we were immediately sent to labor and delivery, where the doctor followed and immediately did an amniocentesis and sent a sample of the amniotic fluid to the lab to look for any infection.  Results came back an hour or so later showing none! First hurdle cleared.  The next step was to keep Katrina overnight for observation.  They wanted to monitor her for any contractions.  The plan now was to do a cerclage, which is a procedure where they sew the cervix shut.  This reinforces the strength of the muscle to help hold the baby inside, and ensure that it stays closed.  They scheduled this surgery for 7:30 Tuesday morning.

I'm happy to report the surgery was very successful.  They monitored Katrina and our daughter the remainder of the day, and released her about 4:30 yesterday afternoon.  She's now home, on moderate bed rest for the next couple of weeks.  Baby appears to have not even flinched during all of this.

We learned some things.  This early opening of the cervix is very possibly what occurred with Kylee - we were just too late in catching it.  The leading theory now is that the cervix was too weak to stay closed and began to open, introducing the bacteria that caused the infection.  Katrina was born 3 months premature herself.  After her, her mother had a cerclage for Katrina's younger brother and sister.  So there is now a well established history.  More than likely, a cerclage will be scheduled for any future pregnancies.  In the case of our new child, we hopefully caught this early enough, and treated it properly to keep our little girl safely in the oven for a much longer time.  There's a possibility she may come early as well, but hopefully not for another 3-4 months.  The bare minimum doctors like to see is about 25 or 26 weeks - which is about 8 weeks away.

Continue praying for more baking time! We appreciate all the prayers you have given the last couple of days.  We look forward to introducing all of you to daughter when she's born - hopefully later, than sooner (don't hear that flipped around too often, do you?).

Thanks everyone.  We love all of you.
Jared and Katrina

We didn’t know we were buying a dis-investment!

Today, I’m struggling with our house.  We bought our house in April of ’07.  If you look back at home pricing trends, you will see that this was just as home prices were beginning to fall.  It was so early, in fact, that it was still thought that the “lower” prices at the time were still the residual of a typical slow winter market.  Time would prove this explanation false, of course.

We’ve already realized our home is not big enough to entertain more than about 4-6 guests at a time, unless we use the back yard, which is not an option during the cooler months.  As we begin to move closer to expanding our family, we are starting to feel a little cramped as we try to figure out how to transform one of our three bedrooms from an office,  back into a bedroom.  The desire for a bigger house with more space, and at least one more bedroom is growing.  But with our property valued at roughly $60,000 less that what we owe on our loan, we’re pretty much stuck.

Sure, we could pay the difference in what we sell our home for, and what is left on the loan.  But that first entails having the money first.  We don’t have that kind of money.  And even if we did, that prospect of losing $60,000 on a home we bought just three years ago does not bode well for me.

It’s frustrating seeing the sizes and prices of homes today.  If we had just waited 1-2 years to buy our home, we could have had something with a lot more room, that we could conceivably be happy in for 30 years.

And then you hear about all of these government assistance programs.  Yet, because we have not owned our house long enough, and because we have always made our mortgage payments on time, we do not qualify for ANY of it.  I hear of people intentionally defaulting on their home loans to get out from homes they upside down in, and the government programs bail them out.  So the government programs help the dishonest, and does nothing for those of us honest home owners, who unknowingly got stuck on the wrong side of the housing bubble.  Here we were, thinking we were going to be building some equity, and instead the opposite has happened.  We bought a home, and our equity went a long ways in the opposite direction.

Another frustration that comes with this, is the lower interest rates.  We got a fairly descent rate a the time of home purchase, but then rates fell quite a bit.  Again, because we are honest, on-tme bill payers, we are not able to get into these lower rates.  We can’t refinance, due to our negative equity, and there is no program that qualifies us to get into these lower rates.   Therefore, we have no way to lower our monthly payments.

We remind each other that God has put us in this home for a reason.  Sometimes we find comfort in that, other times not so much.  Today is one of those times that I’m finding it hard to take comfort in that.  I do know that there IS a reason, it’s just not always easy to see that.