Best Buy Says It Will Cover Part of Your DirecTV Bills - Gizmodo Comments

Best Buy Says It Will Cover Part of Your DirecTV Bills

Murph1908 — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:06:55 EST

DirecTV HD blows. I got constant pixellation, 2-3 second periods of black screens, weird sound anomalies, all only on the HD channels. I had a tech come out 4 or 5 times, the dish replaced, the receiver replaced, additional hardware added to the line, but none of it could ever get it fixed. I got so fed up with them I switched to (gasp) Comcast, because they offered half off for a year.

As I had hoped, FiOS became available in that period, and I have ditched the company I voted for as worst in America.

And DirecTV tried to hit me with an early cancellation fee, even though I had been a customer for close to 4 years. It took a stern letter stating their not upholding their end of the deal to provide an adequate HD product to get them to back off.

BTW, even one of the techs stated that DirecTV was having trouble with their HD signal quality.

Murph1908

Best Buy Says It Will Cover Part of Your DirecTV Bills

Barion — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 04:25:03 EST

I love Best Buy. Back in 2000, they had a deal where I think you could get $400 in merchandise for free if you signed a 3 year contract with MSN. Well, I took advantage of that and got a 25" TV, a DVD player, and a nice high-back leather computer desk chair. I couldn't have afforded to pay for all that up front, and I didn't have good enough credit to put that on a Best Buy credit account, but this enabled me to get that merchandise up front and pay $19.99 a month for three years, for about $720, which is actually better than if I had put it on a credit card and made the minimum monthly payments. At the end of that term I cancelled my MSN account that I never used. I was very happy about that deal. Of course, since then, my credit improved to where I got an American Express Gold card, so I'd never need to do something like that again.

But I would definitely do this DirecTV deal if I were in a position to buy a new HDTV (to replace my 34" Sony Trinitron HDTV) and add DirecTV (to replace my Time Warner cable) service to my house...but I won't be able to afford that until next January, and this deal will be over by then.

Barion

Best Buy Says It Will Cover Part of Your DirecTV Bills

havok2022 — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 03:02:56 EST

It's the same deal they have been running, they just changed it a bit to protect themselves. Before HD Advantage gave you $300 off the price of the TV if you signed up for DirecTV as a new customer. However people were canceling the service to exploit the deal. Now instead of saving $300 instantly, you save $360 over the course of a year. Just started this week.

havok2022

Best Buy Says It Will Cover Part of Your DirecTV Bills

Part-Time-Viking — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 22:34:31 EST

Weird, I work for the company and I have yet to hear this...

Too bad I loath DirectTV.

Part-Time-Viking

Best Buy Says It Will Cover Part of Your DirecTV Bills

Xavoc — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 16:08:05 EST

@s017jrs: Everyone can have a bad experience at a place, regardless of how good of service is given. It's just the nature of things.

I sent a laptop in for a broken reset button (missing is more like it), it came back a month later with a damaged case that shoved a piece of plastic under the bottom row of keys on the keyboard when you closed the battery compartment. So, I sent it back in. It came back 3 months later with a note that read, "Unable to figure out what is wrong." Rather than call me and ask, they just kept it for 3 months. (Strike two.)

So, they've had my laptop for 4 months at this point. Except that, my girlfriend needs the laptop to do her schoolwork. They give her a loaner w/ no software on it, and send her on her way. Any request for an ETA on when her machine will be back is met with, "Well, you have a loaner, why does it matter?"

Manager fedexs the laptop overnight back to repair (the only nice manager I dealt with at the store), it comes back 6 weeks later with a not saying it is repaired, only it isn't.

Basically they had damaged part of the case while fixing it, and weren't going to pay to replace it. Instead I got a new machine from them on a year-old laptop.

See the above for what happened during purchase.

In the 12 years since that time I have purchased about $30,000 in electronics/appliances/whatever that Best Buy could have sold me.

And you know what? I haven't had a bad experience purchasing electronics since.

Xavoc

Best Buy Says It Will Cover Part of Your DirecTV Bills

s017jrs — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 15:27:29 EST

a friend of a friend used to maintain bestbuysucks.com. It was a huge collection of BBY horror stories. Not sure what happened to it, maybe he just got sick of doing it.

s017jrs

Best Buy Says It Will Cover Part of Your DirecTV Bills

Xavoc — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 14:55:04 EST

@typoink: Perhaps, but once upon a time in a former life far far away I worked there. I watched the customer service at that company die a horrible death. I even have my own horror story involving their repair services.

When they managed to invoke their own no-lemon policy on their warranty due to this, I was insulted by the Supervisor & Manager @ the store for not purchasing the extended warranty again. This was after another manager had insulted me when I was trying to get the initial issue resolved.

I wrote a scathing letter to the DM (who I knew personally) and managed to get the supervisor demoted, and the manager reprimanded. The manager never spoke to me ever again even though I had known him for years.

So, yeah. No thank you. As I've said. I'll happily pay more, even a few hundred, to not have to shop there ever again.

Xavoc

Best Buy Says It Will Cover Part of Your DirecTV Bills

s017jrs — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 14:50:00 EST

@HeartBurnKid:
If that's the case, you are not getting a discount that locks you into anything then this is a killer deal!
Buyer beware tho, BBY doesn't exactly have a great (or even good. hell, they give shitty a run for it's money) track record.

s017jrs

Best Buy Says It Will Cover Part of Your DirecTV Bills

TerryinSt.Paul — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 14:45:41 EST

I've had Direct TV for Five years now and my wife and I were talking about getting a new TV and high def service. I wonder if I can upgrade my service and buy a TV and still get the discount? If I can then count me in!

TerryinSt.Paul

Best Buy Says It Will Cover Part of Your DirecTV Bills

typoink — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 14:42:17 EST

@Xavoc: Y'know, I'd agree with you for almost anything OTHER than HDTVs. I actually think BB's a decent store for them, simply because, unless they changed it since last I looked, they have a broad, exploitable return policy, which is handy when many companies don't consider dead pixels a problem. Their prices aren't great, but they're not AWFUL either.

typoink

Best Buy Says It Will Cover Part of Your DirecTV Bills

jeremywjones — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 14:13:30 EST

I bought my TV through best buy about 3 weeks ago. I signed up for Directv at that time and best buy gave me $300 off of the TV. When I was on the phone with directv the lady gave me $20 off a month for 12 months, through rebate. That was a really good deal. You had to buy a TV over $999 and you had to register for HD service. The $300 off of the TV was instant.

jeremywjones

Best Buy Says It Will Cover Part of Your DirecTV Bills

Xavoc — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:52:27 EST

Sorry, this would break my #1 rule of electronics purchasing.

Rule #1) Never buy anything from Best Buy requiring you to plug it in.

I will go somewhere else, and happily pay more, for service.

Xavoc

Best Buy Says It Will Cover Part of Your DirecTV Bills

HeartBurnKid — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:49:20 EST

@s017jrs: Thankfully, they're just giving a discount on the DirecTV service, not giving a discount on the TV if you sign a DirecTV contract. So you're not locking yourself into anything, as far as I can tell.

Of course, DirecTV makes you sign a 1-year contract in order to get your equipment for free, but IME, they're very good about you breaking it; you just have to send the equipment back to them. They'll even send you prepaid FedEx boxes for it. And they don't need the dish back, just the converter boxes, access cards, and remotes, which is a plus.

HeartBurnKid

Best Buy Says It Will Cover Part of Your DirecTV Bills

yellow73 — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:39:13 EST

What a joke

yellow73

Best Buy Says It Will Cover Part of Your DirecTV Bills

bbyemp — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:27:20 EST

You make the comment of them not wanting to provide the HDMI cable.... If you get an Directv HD box, they come with an HDMI cable inside.... more research might help

bbyemp

Best Buy Says It Will Cover Part of Your DirecTV Bills

s017jrs — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:23:31 EST

Remember when ya used to get $300 or so off a computer when ya signed up for AOL for a year or 2?

It was a friggin nightmare. God forbid you have a legitimate need to get out of the contract...
No thanks BBY, thanks for trying tho.

s017jrs