A Corporate Practice That I Don't Understand

As you know I’ve got a new spiffy TV with HD capability. I still have not solved the inability to see (versus hear, which I can) DVD’s but that’s another story.

I had DirecTv and have switched to Dish. I didn’t cancel the DirecTv until today and I predicted to friends how that would go. I waited a week to make sure there wasn’t some huge problem with the new service, and there wasn’t.

A couple of weeks ago I’d gone online to check on upgrading to an HD dish and receiver. I then called. The rep confirmed what I’d read online, though I’d been a DirecTv customer for about five years, it wanted to charge me $220 bucks for the dish and receiver and about $6 more a month for the roughly equivalent programming that Dish offered.

I like what I had with DirecTv, so I asked if they would waive the $220, several times in several different ways. Nope. I pointed out that if they didn’t I would move to the competition. Sorry to hear that but nope.

So I moved. Today, the first thing the nice lady asked was why I was leaving. I briefly told her. She started to offer the switch to the new dish and receiver at no charge. I cut her off and explained in more detail that I had asked for what she was offering at length and had been denied.

I understand that companies are in business to make money; but, there’s a point that they are dumb. When it’s clear that you are going to lose a client that it makes economic sense to keep, don’t you bite the bullet and make a bit less money? The stupid thing is, if I had been a Dish or cable customer and called DirecTv for the service, they would have installed the stuff free and given me a break on pricing just like Dish did because I was new to it.

Oh, and the HD stuff is cool. You’ve never seen golf until you’ve seen it in HD. I have to figure out how to have someone carry around an HD camera when I’m playing. Then I could watch the replay as I line up and be able to see the individual grains of grass that will govern the break of the ball as I hit it. Amazing.