DirecTV

We've had DirecTV for over a year now. Before that for several years we had used Cox, which is the terrestrial-based service that is available in Tulsa (previous to that we were using a service called Heartland Wireless which is now gone) I was dissatisfied with Cox for several reasons. First of all, I wasn't happy with the availability of the service; it seemed like sometimes we would lose our cable signal, and sometimes it would remain unavailable, for no apparent reason. An recent example of this... ahem... "commitment to service" happened during last December's ice storm; my father-in-law was lucky enough to only lose power for a couple of hours total, but his Cox digital cable was out for over a week. For much of that time he was getting a digital signal, but no channels. When he called in later to ask for a refund, they gave him a tiny $10 credit on his bill. What's up with that?

Another thing is that I don't like Cox's practices if you are late paying your bill. I regularly got charged huge penalties for being late... something like a $25 penalty for being late on a $45 bill. Positively ridiculous.

Then there's Cox's advertising. I can't STAND their commercials. They are annoying at best (the cartoon man with the big chest) and dishonest at worst (especially the ones when they blast satellite providers for downtime and that sort of thing, when I've had MUCH less downtime with DirecTV than I ever had with them!)

With DirecTV, as soon as my power came on after the ice storm, my DirecTV came back on. If I forget to pay a bill and my DirecTV shuts off, I get on the Web site and pay the bill (no late penalty!) and it comes back on automatically (occasionally we have to call customer service to get it to switch on, but in general that's just to get it to happen sooner rather than later). And DirecTV's advertising doesn't grate on my nerves, although anyone is subject to a bad commercial or two every once in a while. :)

The only (very minor) gripe I have with DirecTV is that they don't have true local weather inserted into the broadcast on The Weather Channel. They just show you the regular satellite feed... you may have seen it from hotel rooms or whatever. You get local temps for like Boston, Dallas, New York City... the big cities. Tulsa isn't one of those big cities. On Cox you actually see the local NWS forecast and some local radar. There's a button on the DirecTV remote marked "Active" that brings you to their "Active channel" which has a basic local temperature forecast and the current conditions, so that's kind of useful, but it would be nice to see the actual text forecast and local radar (the Active Channel doesn't have local radar). On the other hand, the Weather channel's "Local On The 8s" is only available on the "8s" (and not even 24 hours a day on the 8s), while the Active Channel is available every minute of every day.

We LOVE the DVR! Of course, you can get DVR service with Cox (and probably every other cable TV system in existence, at this point) as well.

Anyway, if you've been thinking of DirecTV (my father-in-law has) or if I've convinced you, call them at 1-866-443-8869. Here's the channel packages they have... very similar to other cable TV services. If you subscribe, be sure to mention my name and account number: Michael Jones acct #062953050. You'll get $50 off, free DVR or HD, and free shipping, and I'll get $50 off too (here's the info). (If you're reading this after February 26 2008, the offer may be different, so ask about it and make sure you give them my account number if they want to know who referred you!)