Misdirected

Interesting little nugget I just discovered. Did you know DirecTV has a department designed specifically to offend and annoy:

DIRECTV's Outbound Telesales Department is a department within DIRECTV that engages in telemarketing to existing DIRECTV customers.

Here's how this works. You call DirecTV with a billing or service issue - don't worry, you will - and then they put you on some sort of list that generates endless automated calls. They don't tell you you're being added to a list. They just go ahead and do it. Allegedly, adding your cell to the Do Not Call Registry should - according to DirecTV's website - protect you from the flood. I'm not convinced.

I started to make the connection after my first couple of service calls mysteriously triggered tens of robocalls. At that stage, every call I made to DirecTV included a "please don't put me on whatever list it is you've got I don't want to get calls from you about anything at any time thank you very much" request. Not one operator hesitated. Not one asked for specifics. They all knew. In fact, the last rep I spoke with spilled the beans by confirming there was, in fact, some sort of list. Case closed.

But still...isn't something inherently wrong with this practice? Why should I have to opt out of sales calls, especially if no one's informed me I've been automatically opted in to begin with?

No wonder DirecTV's got a long trail of documented complaints over at The Consumerist, including its fair share of stories related to Do Not Call registry violations and fines.

Don't even get me started on the installer who showed up high as a kite or the one who refused to do the work because it was too late in the day.

I've now got cable.