DirecTV loses 1.2 million customers

What did they expect? All summer long they pissed off people with blackouts and didn’t want to offer subscribers any incentive to stay after coming off promotion.

I just had our best 3 months since 2015 selling Comcast, sadly at the expense of AT&T.

All summer long customers where running away from AT&T

And yet Comcast still lost 238,000 TV subscribers.


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And yet Comcast still lost 238,000 TV subscribers.


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And how many internet customers did they gain?

The video business is dying.

I don’t know if anyone here knows this, I don’t sell residential Directv anymore. We are strictly commercial when it comes to Directv since April.

I do the following...

Directv commercial Hotels/assisted living
Directv commercial bars/restaurants
Directv commercial private offices
Comcast residential
Comcast business
Spectrum
Spectrum business
Cox
Optinum
Viasat
Orby

Directv has gotten that bad, with the higher credit threshold to qualify, Lack of AT&T internet in most areas, the 2 year regular pricing and the fact AT&T has been pushing dealers to sell high priced cell phones, it has become almost impossible to sell without having to flat out lie to people that the price will go up after a year.

Most sales people would lie about the second year pricing, knowing when the prices went up, Directv would extend the discounts to keep them.

Then In response to the 2 year pricing issue, what does Directv do? They raise the first year rates so it’s not such a shock in year 2.

What they should have done is take the discounts and averaged them out so the pricing remains the same for 2 years.

The problem is nobody wants to pay regular rates. Be honest with people, and it ends up costing you a sale.

I lost one today where a lady wanted to switch from wow internet to Comcast and wanted to do a self install.

Thought she was going to switch out the modem and be good...

I try to set customer expectations and let her know a pro install was likely required. I just should have shut up, handed her the modem over the counter and let her find out the hard way.
 
Could Sinclair buy DirecTV? They own many stations, so arranging network carriage should be easy. Ditto the subcarrier channels, like MeTV or Comet. And third-party channels, like Fox News, Weather Nation, etc. shouldn't care who carries them. Eyeballs are eyeballs!
 
Look, I get the fact that some folks are upset about the way things are going but again, ATT is in business for one thing and one thing only...to make money...and they are doing just that. You can't look at the number of video subs any more than measuring the success of ATT based on landline subscribers.

Do you folks not remember the days when DTV was widely mocked as di-wrecked-tv?

Times change. Technology changes. ATT management knows this, hence the three-year roadmap they released with the earnings. Does anyone here really care what technology is used to deliver the programming you want to see?

While I choose to get it through satellite right now, I could move to fios, xfinity or streaming tomorrow if I wanted to.

Choices are good. Embrace it.
 
This right here hits the nail on the head. ATT is all about profit and cares nothing about its employees or the quality of service. They save a ton of $$ laying off lots of employees who monitored on air quality and now rely mostly on automated equipment that cannot catch all the glitches that human eyes could. Yea its much cheaper, but some glitches and impairments can go on for hours and hours because the automation is not capable of catching it.

All the Engineering folks that did research on newer and better ways of delivering service and newer receiver designs, gone. Most of the people who maintain the broadcast equipment, gone. All this equates to more outages for the customer while showing profit for ATT.

ATT is in business for one thing and one thing only...to make money...
 
They still have over 22 million video customers.

Yes, they are still very much a viable business. That said, if we are counting their total video customers, they lost over 14% in a year. That is a huge decline, and that is saying something coming from someone who used to work in the newspaper industry. It does seem like they are losing customers that weren't making them much in the way of profits as well, but losing over 1 million customers in a quarter is still quite a big deal IMHO.

If you look at AT&T more holistically, they are raising rates across all product lines, and they've even started adding equipment fees to new Fiber accounts or those that get a replacement router. I get that they need to pay down their debt, but at what point do the higher fees drive away your customers?
 
Threads like this make me feel like I am in the 1920's. You people sound like a bunch of buggy whip manufacturers talking about how a car will never replace a horse. Get over it people..

.streaming is the future only because its 2 way communication rather than one way satellite. Its much easier to customize advertising and collect viewing habits. Satellite will still be around much like landlines and fax machines but eventually the last satellite will die a slow painful death and a industry will disapeer

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But satellite has proven more reliable than cable or fiber delivery.


Threads like this make me feel like I am in the 1920's. You people sound like a bunch of buggy whip manufacturers talking about how a car will never replace a horse. Get over it people..

.streaming is the future only because its 2 way communication rather than one way satellite. Its much easier to customize advertising and collect viewing habits. Satellite will still be around much like landlines and fax machines but eventually the last satellite will die a slow painful death and a industry will disapeer

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Yes...but its about 2 way communication now that we move away from a traditional channel to more VOD...cable is just too dang expensive in its present form...yes there will always be people who like what we have now but when the satellite bill hits 200+ even those will fadeaway
But satellite has proven more reliable than cable or fiber delivery.

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I’m sure AT&T will be fine with 1.4 million less subs.

What good are some of these customers if you have to consistently discount their bill to keep them as a customer?

Then the same customers expect free service calls and upgrades to their equipment.

I have a feeling a lot of these discounts are to keep the customer on the books as a number to keep Wall Street happy.

If you do the math, most of the time when a customers promotion goes away, they call in and cry and get their promotion back.

If you do the math, most of the discounts are about $50/mo. They are better calling the customers bluff, letting the customers cancel and keeping the ones paying the higher rates.

Also you will notice many providers offering auto pay with paperless. They do this because people rarely login online to look at their bill.

It’s much easier when the bill is a line on their credit card, rather than a paper bill they can see in writing. Most complaints happen when the bill comes in the mail
 
Threads like this make me feel like I am in the 1920's. You people sound like a bunch of buggy whip manufacturers talking about how a car will never replace a horse. Get over it people..

.streaming is the future only because its 2 way communication rather than one way satellite. Its much easier to customize advertising and collect viewing habits. Satellite will still be around much like landlines and fax machines but eventually the last satellite will die a slow painful death and a industry will disapeer

Sent from my SM-G950U using the SatelliteGuys app!

Eventually streaming will become nearly as expensive as cable/satellite. Plus, the market has become extremely oversaturated with all this Disney+, Hulu, Peacock, Netflix, etc... I don’t see streaming completely killing satellite and cable until fiber becomes available in much more areas. And that won’t happen until at least 5 years from now.
 
Eventually streaming will become nearly as expensive as cable/satellite. Plus, the market has become extremely oversaturated with all this Disney+, Hulu, Peacock, Netflix, etc... I don’t see streaming completely killing satellite and cable until fiber becomes available in much more areas. And that won’t happen until at least 5 years from now.

That’s the whole problem considering streaming doesn’t require a fleet of trucks and service people and besides the internet there are no satellites or infrastructure.

The only thing streaming providers need to do is come out with their own box and branded remote. Eliminate all the stupid apps and make it behave like a traditional cable box. This is the only way they can win over the older generation.

I think the streaming providers should pay more to the programmers so everyone is on a level playing field
 
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Streaming business are not so hot right now either, who's to say at&t will be successful with it, people want value and at&t is not that good at that.

Sony shutting down PlayStation VUE cut the cord service

Good riddance

There is a 110 room hotel in Detroit that the idiot contractor who remodeled it didn’t install any cable wiring.

Hotel put Roku Tv’s in each room and had about 40 play station vue accounts.

I think it was 1 account per every 3 guest rooms.

It was horrible for the hotel to explain to the guests how to use it
 
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Threads like this make me feel like I am in the 1920's. You people sound like a bunch of buggy whip manufacturers talking about how a car will never replace a horse. Get over it people..

.streaming is the future only because its 2 way communication rather than one way satellite. Its much easier to customize advertising and collect viewing habits. Satellite will still be around much like landlines and fax machines but eventually the last satellite will die a slow painful death and a industry will disapeer

Sent from my SM-G950U using the SatelliteGuys app!
I don't think you can rely on Streaming at this point ...

2 way communication, don't need that if its mainly for Viewing habits (thats why I always opt OUT of that whenever possible.)
I don't need Commercials directed at me .... if they have no 2 way communication, they don't know what I like and I don't have to worry about a directed commercial.

I rarely watch commercials any ways.
 
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JZ4K, that is quite the news about PlayStation Vue ending.

Just the past few days I was looking into it on their forum.
You couldn't believe the ammount of angry customers because of recent software updates
screwed many things up. One was being able to skip commercials which got taken away on several channels.

And apparently their customer service became non-existant. Now we know why.

sony is such a great company. lol
they can't be trusted at all these days.

I can remember when they were THE premiere company and had great support but it all ended around 1990 -1992.
Even for pro video products they are lousy to deal with.

I'm sure the other streaming companies will gladly take their customers.

Had laugh the specs on their DVR would only save recordings 28 days.
Not even one month.

bjf
 
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Good riddance

There is a 110 room hotel in Detroit that the idiot contractor who remodeled it didn’t install any cable wiring.

Hotel put Roku Tv’s in each room and had about 40 play station vue accounts.

I think it was 1 account per every 3 guest rooms.

It was horrible for the hotel to explain to the guests how to use it


Wouldn't that be highly illegal? AFAIK PSVue doesn't offer a commercial license. It will be even more horrible for the hotel when they go bankrupt after getting sued.
 
JZ4K, that is quite the news about PlayStation Vue ending.

Just the past few days I was looking into it on their forum.
You couldn't believe the ammount of angry customers because of recent software updates
screwed many things up. One was being able to skip commercials which got taken away on several channels.

And apparently their customer service became non-existant. Now we know why.

sony is such a great company. lol
they can't be trusted at all these days.

I can remember when they were THE premiere company and had great support but it all ended around 1990 -1992.
Even for pro video products they are lousy to deal with.


I'm sure the other streaming companies will gladly take their customers.

Had laugh the specs on their DVR would only save recordings 28 days.
Not even one month.

bjf
You sure use a awfully broad brush with your statement there ...

Sony still is the Premiere company when it comes to TV's (high end anyways) ...

You make it sound like they are terrible with everything.
 
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No...people just won't subscribe....tv is not what it used to be
Eventually streaming will become nearly as expensive as cable/satellite. Plus, the market has become extremely oversaturated with all this Disney+, Hulu, Peacock, Netflix, etc... I don’t see streaming completely killing satellite and cable until fiber becomes available in much more areas. And that won’t happen until at least 5 years from now.

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