Direct TV Question

For anyone that has Direct TV - do you go through Pegasus or pay your bill directly to Direct TV? We had Direct TV installed in July and our provider is Pegasus. Anyone that I have asked at work has never heard of Pegasus. Direct TV has a special going on for TIVO and since our provider is Pegasus which handles rural areas we aren't eligible for TIVO according to what Direct TV tells me.

CJA

 

what was the special for tivo? we have direct tv - service is provided to us by Pegasis as well. Guess they are the reseller.

 

Yes, Pegasus is a reseller. I have Pegasus and I have TIVO. You have to call DirecTV directly to active your TIVO. You will end up getting two bills. One for your programming services from Pegasus and one from DirecTV for TIVO. I know it seems silly, but that's how it works.

 

We also were hoodwinked into Pegasus and now pay extra for local channels plus the $1.50 royalty to Directv. The bad part is no one tells you of Pegasus or the extra charges until after everything is hooked up and the dish bolted to the roof (too late to do anything at that point). We complained to Circuit City in Sterling where we bought the equipment and got them to refund us $90.00 which is the difference in cost for the first year.
Pegasus has exclusive rights to our zip code. This is controlled by the NRTC (National Rural Telecomminications Co-Op). The NRTC was set up so people in rural areas could be serviced. What makes no sense it the fact that Purcelleville and Winchester don't use Pegasus. They get service directly from DirecTV. Is Ashburn considered more Rural than those two areas?
I think it's all a scam.

"The right to be heard does not include the right to be taken seriously."
--Hubert H. Humphrey

 

I have DirecTV and the DirecTV DVR (Tivo). I had it before I moved. I have heard of Pegasus, but as far as I know they have never been involved in my service. I only get one bill. I used the DirectTV Mover's deal when we moved. You may want to try calling DirecTV directly.

--Joy

 

I also have DirecTV (no Tivo). I bought it from Best Buy a little more than a year ago when I got completely fed up with Adelphia. I get one bill from DirecTV for local channels and my DirecTV package. As far as I know, Pegasus is not involved in my service in any way.

 

No Pegasus here either. Just walked in and bought it at Circuit City 3 years ago. One bill - from DirecTV.

 

I had Direct TV in Sterling for 5 years. We moved to the Broadlands in September and I was told I needed to deal with Pegasus. I did not get a warm and fuzzy after talking with them, as I preferred dealing directly with Direct TV, using DirecTV's website for programming, etc. Why do I need to suddenly use a reseller? I guess I could have installed my dish myself and not dealt with them but I chose to try Adelphia.

The cost of the cable modem ($59 without cable) & Direct TV, versus cablem modem and digital cable saves about $10-20/mo. Am I satisfied with Adelphia, not 100%, the boxes are extremely slow to respond to the remote control and the menu system is a PITA to use as it always comes up to channel 1, even if I'm on HBO at 201!!

 

It's definitely sounding like something fishy's going on. We had DTV in Florida, and did the Mover's thing when we moved up here last winter. When I called DTV in April to hook us back up, they said we had to go thru Pegasus, too. That was a mess in itself - they subcontracted the installation to a 3rd party who was hiring a bunch of new people so we had to wait several weeks, and then when we finally did get hooked up, we knew more about how to do it than the installer. It finally took 1/2 dozen calls to get the account transferred properly, plus we had to get new cards - ours were not compatible with Pegasus. I wonder who we could contact to find out why some of us get to use DTV directly and others of us have to pay the extra cost of Pegasus. Any thoughts? cj

 

I wonder who we could contact to find out why some of us get to use DTV directly and others of us have to pay the extra cost of Pegasus.


That is what I would love to know. Ashburn has a total of 5 zip codes and all of them except 20147 and 20148 are serviced by Direct TV (that includes 20146 which is just for PO Boxes at the Post Office). It almost seems like it is a mistake that 20147 and 20148 fall under Pegasus - people I know that live in Leesburg and Sterling also go through Direct TV. The special for TIVO on Direct TVs website is the TIVO box plus free installation for $99. When I asked Direct TV if I could order TIVO box from their website they said no because 20148 falls under Pegasus and I would have to contact Pegasus. I called Pegasus and they said they wouldn't honor the $99 price but they could get me TIVO for $256. It doesn't make sense that it is all Direct TV but the service we get is totally different. If anyone knows any way we could go about getting 20147 and 20148 changed to Direct TV PLEASE PLEASE let me know!!!

CJA

 

Here is the link to NRTC (they are located in Herndon). According to the people I talked to at Direct TV that are responsible for giving certain zipcodes to companies like Pegasus so that they get a certain share of the Direct TV market. There is a phone number and email address on the website - maybe if we contact them we can get our zip codes changed to Direct TV (since we are not in a rural area) or if they can't do that maybe there is something they can do to ensure we have to same quality of service as the people who get their service from Direct TV.

http://www.nrtc.org/home.cfm
e-mail: mailto:info@nrtc.org
Phone (703)787-0874


CJA

 

Just for the record, we've lived in Loudoun County for 15 years and have always had cable. Before Adelphia, it was Cablevision...that was bad. When we first got Adelphia....it wasn't the greatest, but we have absolutely no complaints now, they have improved. We have broadband and digital cable and love it. We had considered DirectTV, but after hearing people say that it goes out if it's windy or rainy, we decided to stick with Adelphia for now....even during the hurricane, we still had our cable. I could count on one hand the number of times it has gone out.

 

We have had DirectTV for 3 years in December. We bought the equipment ourselves at Best Buy I think, installed it ourselves and then called DirectTV to activate it. Maybe Pegasus has gotten our zipcodes more recently. The DirectTV customer service has been great, I think they just won an award for it. It seems strange about this discrepency in who you pay the bill to. Fortunately we hadn't even heard of Pegasus until this forum topic.

 

I sent an email to NRTC asking them why certain parts of Ashburn where stuck using Pegasus. I got absolutely no reply from them.
As for switching to cable, we can't even get cable. We have been in our house for over two months (new development)and Adelphia hasn't hooked up the street yet. After 6 weeks of waiting for Adelphia we gave up and ordered Directv just to get stung with Pegasus AARGHHHHH!!!!
But I must admit the picture quality and channel selection are superb.

"The right to be heard does not include the right to be taken seriously."
--Hubert H. Humphrey

 

I have Dish and I love it! Better quality of transmission than Adelphia and I did not lose it during Isabel but I did lose it for a half hour during that storm two weeks later but such is Satelitte TV.

I absolutely LOATH Adelphia. When I first moved in they tried to scam me out of 80 bucks saying I had to pay $20 per connection in my Bell Atlantic Home Wiring Hub. Then I had an outage for over 24 hrs on a weekend and found out that their customer service was in Norfolk and they could'nt tell me anything. I wish COX could come to Loudoun. Hopefully the rulling from the FCC maoking Cable companies open up there lines to ISPs will allow something like Earthlink to come in a provide cable modem.

 

Just a note on this issue. Before we moved, we had DishNetwork (WHICH WE LOVED!!!). Tried to move it to the new house and couldn't get it set up because of the trees in the yard. The installer told us to try Direct TV because their sattelite is higher in the sky. Called Direct TV, they took our info and told us and installer would contact us to set up the install. They charged us the $49 fee. We never heard from the installer. Thankfully, we had the name and extension of the Direct TV guy we talked to. After a few phone calls to him (nice guy and tried to be very helpful), the installer FINALLY called (it took about a week and a half). We were told by the installer that he did not work on Saturdays (which Direct TV had told us they could accomodate). At this point we were certainly not willing to take off work. Finally, we got a phone message from Direct TV that went like this: "Due to installer incompetence, it appears that we may not be able to service you and we have refunded you $49". They were very apologetic and nice, and the credit appeared as promised on my credit card bill. I can only assume the installation was to be done throught Pegasus (we are 20147 zip code). If Direct TV every takes over our zip code, we would definitely sign up. Until then, we are stuck with Adelphia. After reading the messages on this board, I'm actually a little relie[V]ved to be stuck with cable...

 

I agree with you....Adelphia isn't the best cable company...I, too, would rather have Cox, but right now we don't have a choice. However, we have Adelphia Digital Cable in addition to their high speed internet and we have no complaints. Plenty of stations to watch, more than we will ever watch. Cable Outages are very rare.

 

we use Dish Network and love it. Three rooms with different receivers (one of which is DVR). No installation fee or purchase fees (all equipment is "rented"). Only one bill directly from Dish Network. Works like a charm. Have only lost signal twice. Once for two minutes and the other for about 30 during the hurricane. Would highly recommend it.

 

Re post from mdcrim
For what it's worth. A company by the name of Action Antenna installed out dish http://www.actionantenna.com/. (they are who Circuit City hired for our install). They were great!! Very fast, friendly, knowledgeable and courteous. The mounted the dish and set up three boxes in about 45 minutes.

"The right to be heard does not include the right to be taken seriously."
--Hubert H. Humphrey