article – To make this story more meaningful (so you don’t think I’m a complete idiot), you first need to read my DirectTV cord cutting yesterday’s article. But if you don’t want to read that article (it’s really good by the way…) here’s a quick summary…
Once upon a time, at Gadgeteer’s house…
In early January, I told Jenny that DirecTV was planning to raise their prices and I thought we should try cutting the cord, we’ve said it many times but never really tried it. I got a thumbs up from Jenny so I called DirecTV and told them I wanted to pause/pause the service while we were trying to stream.They offered me one $50 off my bill per month for 1 year If we do not suspend service. I said I would talk to my spouse, but wanted to pause for a moment. We’ve had DirecTV service suspended in the past when we were doing home renovations and couldn’t watch TV (we only have one TV in our house) and were happy to be able to stop and not be billed for service when we weren’t using it. I ended my call with DirecTV with the service suspended.
Later that night, we played a show and walked back and forth not knowing what to watch next. Jenny wanted to put HGTV in the background while we were surfing, which is what we usually do, and she gave me a pained look when I told her we couldn’t do it right now. Then I asked her if she wanted me to call DirecTV the next day for a $50 monthly discount. She said yes. This ends our cord-cutting experiment – at least that’s what I think.
The next morning, I called DirecTV to restore/unsuspend service, but was told I couldn’t do that and my suspension must be kept for at least 30 days. I’m complaining because it’s a very stupid policy. But these complaints fell on deaf ears. So I hung up the phone.
And then a day later…
I was talking to my sister on Marco Polo (an app similar to Facetime, but not) and a number I didn’t recognize came in, so I declined the call, but a few seconds later I saw that I had a Voicemail has been transcribed into text.
My immediate thought was that I called my DirecTV account recovery too soon, they would let me do it after all. So I called the number and received the regular DirecTV tunes/dings, the same recordings, phone tree instructions, etc., which I dealt with a few days ago. When I got a call from a DirecTV rep, he asked for my PIN and then what I needed. I told him I got a voicemail saying I was eligible for a $50/month discount for 1 year and I wanted to accept the deal, explaining that my account is currently suspended and another person I spoke to Said they couldn’t not cancel it. The new guy said there’s no reason why I can’t get my account back, he’ll do it for me. Then he told me that I could get 50% off for 2 years and also choose the HBO/Starz or ESPN sports package. I was confused as this was very different from the deal I had offered before, I told him. He explained that a special deal is now underway. My spiderman was starting to tingle so I asked him to tell me my DirecTV account number and he kept me on the line and came back in a minute with my correct account number and even told me what my final bill amount was. My Spider-Man feels calm…until…
He told me that in order to get this deal, I have to pay for the first 5 months and then charge normally for the next 2 years. My feeling came again…then he told me that I had to pay through an eBay account, and if I didn’t have an eBay account, I could get an eBay gift card and use it. At that point, with my Spider-Man senses on full alert, I laughed and told him to try it, thank you for the scam, and hung up on him. I then immediately called REAL DirecTV and changed my PIN and asked them to add a note to my account about the fraud attempt. The guy I spoke to said he had 3 or 4 calls in the last month about the same scam. Just like everyone else, he can’t reactivate my suspended/suspended account.
If I hadn’t dealt with DirecTV a few days before the scam call, I’d never have been in a scam, but in fact, they were able to give me my account number (by using my PIN code) from the recorded greeting to the phone tree… uh) make me believe it’s real – for a few minutes.
Oops, I’m a liar kind of person! When I get a call from a scammer, I like to mess with them, asking them stupid questions over and over and even asking them to spell words until they get tired and hang up on me.
The moral of this story…
I’m embarrassed to include this story in my original cut the rope Yesterday’s post, but after seeing how popular this post is, I decided it was important to share.
Liars are smart, friends beware!
