This morning, I had to cancel my Amex card and order a new one with a different number. All because DirecTV has been billing us for six months for an account we don’t even have.
The first mysterious charges showed up in the fall, and we contacted them to explain that the charges were in errror. We don’t have DirecTV, or any services they provide. They told us that we needed an account number to complain, which was a problem because we don’t have an account. So they said to contact Amex, which couldn’t provide an account number, only a billing reference, but allowed us to dispute and therefore not pay the charge.
The following month the same thing happened. And the month after that it happened again. Gerald started getting increasingly frustrated with the calls to DirecTV. Apparently they got irritated with him, too, because the charges didn’t disappear—they started duplicating. Two charges (for different amounts) last month. And FIVE (yes, five) this month. That was the last straw—it’s hard not to interpret this as malicious on their part, since each attempt at resolution leads to increased inaccurate billing.
Apparently we’re not the only ones having problems with DirecTV. In fact, fraudulent billing to people without DirecTV accounts seems to be a common complaint.
Changing credit card numbers is a serious pain in the ass, because we have a number of things that are regularly billed to that card. I really didn’t want to have to do this. But we didn’t really have another option, since we couldn’t even get through to a supervisor at DirecTV’s billing office. (And now that I’ve read the stories linked above, I’m sure we did the right thing by changing my card number.)
So…be careful with DirecTV. Check your charges. Monitor your bill. And don’t count on any assistance from “customer service.” You can bet we’ll never do business with them in any way in the future.
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