PS. I work for a third party online bill payment provider, so I live and breathe eBills and online bill payments all day

Correct me if I’m wrong but my interpretation of the above letter is that you may continue to PAY the bill through your current online bill provider but you just won’t receive the actual invoice via your online bill provider. I know its a hassle either way because you won’t know how much you have to pay but thought I would just point that out.

I interviewed with Bridge Worldwide about a year ago and ultimately my family and I decided to stay in North Carolina. Our company is the second largest retailer of DIRECTV in the US, and because of the introduction of the Marketing with Meaning concept, we are making a push online through substantial testing to make an attempt to create more meaning in our Direct Response efforts. (60 days into project, so we have a long way to go…) We met a great company along the way called Marketing Experiments to guide us.

When I joined up here, we got rid of Time Warner and switched to DIRECTV. Not because I work with the brand, but DIRECTV really is the most superior video product on the market that is 100% focused on increasing the customer experience. Also, how else could I watch Bengals games living in NC?

With every product, there will be horror stories. I encourage you to make the switch. If you are interested, let me know and I will personally make sure that you get set up.

Looking forward to the book.

Jason

A year later when I moved, I was charged an “early cancellation fee,” even though I’d been their customer for 6 years. They explained by saying that I agreed to their terms of service when I put a new box in service, locking me in for two years from that day. This even though I went to a brick and mortar store and bought my own equipment, and even though I never received a paper copy of this supposed agreement.

Repeated calls to their customer service yielded no relief and only by disputing the charge with my credit card company did I get my $200 back.

They can now spend all the dollars they like on ad buys that ridicule cable companies’ ill-regard for their customers, but firsthand experience tells me they are no different. I don’t know what the dollar value of a new customer acquisition is to DirecTV, but trying to screw me out of $200 has guaranteed that they’ve lost me forever.

Blackshaw is exactly right. If DirecTV treated their customers well, they would have the word of mouth to back up the marketing message they are now trying to get across- that they treat the customer differently.