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Evening Gentlemen

Let me lay out my issues we will see if anyone has any good Ideas.

I have a HR21 in the living room and a HR20 in the bedroom

The 20 is the least issue, however its hard drive is getting so loud its starting to wake me up at night, I have had it since 2005/6

the 21... oh man

-I have to reboot it every 3-5 days because it locks up completely.
-I know you have to wait several hours before its usable again, but running a search on the box locks it up for 45 minutes MINIMUM, ive seen it take 90 mins
-changing channels - 2-5 minutes
-bringing up the guide or DVR list - 2-4 mins
-deleting recordings.... well I started deleting 5 episodes of top gear (SD) almost 30 mins ago... still going
thats all the big stuff

CSRs, called last tuesday, spoke to a guy, walked me through the troubleshooting, for 2 hours... most of that time was waiting for the thing to respond
he spoke to a manager/supervisor, then said they would be replacing it... confirmed the address, etc... he gave me a reference number but my dumb ass didnt write it down (I have only had this reciever for a year and last time it went smoothly)
Apparently he didnt notate the account or get an order in... I would guess it was a system flake but...?

So noticing no DVR today I call in to inquire.. nice lady answers and doesnt see me even calling in other than hitting the phone tree... wonderful... so I Am a little annoyed but nice to her, she starts walking me through troubleshooting... first step, swap the satellite cables... live.. ummm let me just send a voltage spike down the line... somehow it didnt fry anything thank god. of course that didnt fix the issues... next step... look at free space on DVR... 38% her words "that dvr only has 5 (not 500, and wrong anyway since it has 320) gigabytes of space, and it has to stay above 50% to work properly" i was befuddled, she even refuted my logic when I said the one in the bedroom sits between 3 and 5% free... she didnt get the fact that I dont set things to always keep... I know I need to keep some free space, but 50%.... noooope. She also went on to tell me that it is like a computer in that it has to have space to put things... I agreed, except that it deletes the oldest stuff when it needs to... so then she goes and I love this "well I Can offer you an upgrade for $200" my response was a belly laugh and a no, though I did press her for info on the model... an hr21-500... sigh.. I gave up and nicely asked her to transfer me to retentions...(this was over the span of the troubleshooting, a good 45 mins worth)

Enter Cancellations (yeah wrong dept, didnt realize it until later) I told the nice gentleman about my problems, asked nicely many questions about items available to me... best he could do to fix all my issues was to offer a 300 dollar upgrade to a hr34 and take the hr20 and replace it with a non dvr hd receiver... told him 300 was way too much (I would have taken 100 and possibly 2, I am not unreasonable, and havent had an upgrade in 5ish years) he said he could transfer me to retentions... oh crap... at this point I thanked him and got off the phone politely...

So here I am asking for you guys thoughts and or help

Is there an executive escalations I can talk to (not retentions) I am not trying to get something for nothing, I am trying to be compensated for paying for service I am not getting, and willing to pay a little to get things resolved... seriously.

I am very willing to drop directv altogether, but I had dish in the past... didnt like the customer service... I can deal without the AMC networks. Other than that would be overpay for time warner... no way. If I have to suffer with dish for 2 years sobeit, but the hopper (yeah I know it has issues) would suit my needs just fine and is 99 dollars for everything I would need.

I would much rather stay with direct and either get 2 new/working good/properly DVRs OR go tot eh whole home HR34 and H(wahtever model) for the bedroom, I already have a H21 in my office connected to my slingbox and TV in there... I would move the bedroom receiver in the office but I foolishly didnt run 3 coax lines in here (1 is cable for modem) only 2.

I do not have DECA or SWM, I do have whole home over my Gig network (Directv is VLANed off)

I ahve done the factory reset about 9 times in the last year on the HR21.

And if anyone needs to know my background. I work in IT, I manage 2967 (actual number as of today) Servers (only about 900 are physical) for a large government entity.

Please help... anyone who has info on who I can call or email... I am going to attempt to refrain from calling tonight because I am very aggravated...

I know it is just TV, thats why I am trying not to get too worked up about it.