DirecTV Review

SWANTON, VERMONT -- DirecTV has a monopoly on the out-of-market NFL football games. I live in a condo and am unable to attach a satellite dish to the building or on a pole in the yard. DirecTV offers Sundayticket.TV now which streams out of market games live. After being passed around various channels with the customer support team for roughly four hours total, after reassurances from various employees and faxing personal documents for review, I was denied anyways and told that "We are not trying to provide football games for everyone under the sun."

They have the ability to accept my payment and let me watch the football games that only they can broadcast, yet they chose not to. I don't think it's fair to have one company be the be-all-end-all of NFL experiences. The NFL should think of allowing more than one company to dole out its wonderful experience to out-of-market fans.

ARIZONA -- I was given the NFL Sunday ticket for free as a promotion. I cancelled the following Spring through CenturyLink. Several months later, I got a letter from DIRECTV saying I needed to phone in to cancel. I did just that. However the sales guy would not stop selling the product. He even informed me that if I didn't stay on the line, the cancellation would not be completed. Sooo, I had to keep saying "no" to his endless suggestions as to "why" I should keep the NFL Sunday ticket. If that's what DIRECTV has to do to sell this, then I doubt it's worth the money.

Also, during our conversation, another sales representative yelled in the background "I made a sale!!" And everyone clapped and yelled. My sales representative replied, "Sorry about that. It's someone's birthday here." PLEASE! If they are celebrating like that for one sale, then I'm guessing they aren't getting a lot of sales.

SANDY SPRINGS, GEORGIA -- NFL Package very slow. Works half time. Save your money. 0/5 rating!

I got NFL Sunday Ticket because my favorite team's games are out of market for me. I am sorry I did, because it has not been very useful. The quality of the broadcasts is high. However the service is difficult to use and lacks some of the most basic features you expect from cable TV (such as the ability to record games). Worse, DirecTV's customer service reps don't appear to know much about this service. I've wasted literally hours with them on simple problems they couldn't solve. Every other channel allows me to schedule to record a game, usually 7-10 days ahead of time. The games I record stay recorded so that I can watch them again at a later date.

This is not true with NFL Sunday Ticket. Because of awful programming, DirecTV does not assign specific channels to specific games. Therefore you cannot set a game to record while you are away on vacation. If you do manage to record a game live, that recording vanishes after a fairly short period of time.

I spent an hour and a half on the phone and got escalated to a supervisor who gave me false answers about this (answers that showed that even the supervisor knew nothing about NFL Sunday Ticket). They insisted I had to record from the Guide, not through the Menu's search. When I pointed out that the games were not listed on the Guide, they simply said, "We cannot help you." Another 45 minutes with their online chat support got me the real answer: unlike every other sports channel out there, NFL Sunday Ticket gives you no way to schedule recordings ahead of time.

So if you don't travel and will be in front of your TV every game, you may find NFL Sunday Ticket valuable. If you want to record a game, however, it's pretty useless. You can also watch games on mobile devices (if you enjoy watching sports on postage-stamp sized screens). I tried this and couldn't get it to work. Maybe you'll have better luck than me.

OSHKOSH, WISCONSIN -- DirecTV (now part of the AT&T family) has now stooped to the level of auto-renewing people for services that they had for free LAST year in order to take money from their customers. Since I was a new customer last year I actually received HBO, Showtime, and NFL Sunday Ticket for free.

This year I was auto signed up for NFL Sunday Ticket, and not only could I not get a refund for the 3 months that I did not WANT or use this service but I also could not cancel the 2 remaining months of service. I am appalled at the tactics and also the procedures that were used to swindle me out of money. I will be canceling after I am finished complaining about this on every review site.

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA -- They advertise 'Every game, Every Sunday', and cannot deliver anywhere close to that. I understand that games are to be blacked out every now and then, however we are 11 weeks into the season, and they have blacked out every game for the New England Patriots except for 1. I purchased this service to specifically watch the Patriots. Now I'm out $220, and don't even get to watch what I'm paying for. Sounds like a pretty good scam DIRECTV is running over there.

I contacted DIRECTV about this, and they told me that they cannot provide a schedule of blacked out games in advance, because they only know hours before the game airs what they will be showing. To people that are considering purchasing the Sunday NFL Ticket, you are gambling away your money to this provider, because you don't know what you will actually receive for your money. Don't waste your time, or money.

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS -- I had to cancel my account because DirecTV gave me an NFL package effective July 2014 without my consent. On my initial contract in October 2013 I refused NFL package and never used it because I did not know that I had NFL package. DirecTV added the NFL package to my plan without my consent and started charging me an additional $40-$70 every month over the last three billing cycle.

When I noticed the increase, I called to cancel the NFL package. DirecTV informed me that they could not cancel the package because I was bound by contract. DirecTV is also charging me an additional $240+ for cancelling an invalid contract. I'm trying to contact the CEO for DirecTV to make sure that he understand the fraudulent practice of his company.

CHEBOYGAN, MICHIGAN -- We signed up with DIRECTV in July 2012. Part of the promotional at the time was Showtime, Cinemax and the NFL TICKET free for X number of months. After realizing the promotional had ended and we were now being charged for those promotional channels we called to cancel. We basically said we just want the basic. "No more premium channels". Well guess what? The NFL Ticket is not a premium channel. So consequently when the NFL season started again we were automatically signed up. Unfortunately, we do an automatic payment and did not realize till just recently that that we had been being charged for this channel.

When we called their customer service department we spoke to a Lenny who was no help. Not even sorry. It was our fault we didn't cancel. When asked to speak to a manager or supervisor we got Nathan who was not much better. We were suppose know the difference between premium channels and NFL. Plus there are only certain time you can cancel the NFL and we were supposed to know this too.

Our contract is up in 6 months. We will change service - they are not the only game in town. It is just really sad that you have a company out there that couldn't care less about trying to keep their customers happy. I don't blame Lenny and Nathan, this obviously comes down from the top.

EUGENE, OREGON -- I received my bundled CenturyLink bill that included the DIRECTV billing and just happened to really look at it. It seems that DIRECTV decided that I needed NFL Sunday Ticket for some reason. I immediately called DIRECTV and was told that it was too late to cancel and they could not refund the monthly charges either. I asked to speak to a supervisor and was put on hold, no one ever answered and I hung up after a half hour.

MACON, GEORGIA -- I just received my bill and never really looked at all the charges until today. I noticed I was getting charged for NFL package that I did not request. I had this problem last year and thought I had this solved. Little did I know, it was happening again and they assured me next year this will not happen again. LOL, my contract is up soon so I will be switching to Dish. Thanks for all you do DirecTV!