DirecTv billing "tricks"

If you are going to sign up for satellite TV, be aware of a few billing"tricks" used by DirecTv (and possibly DishNetwork). The introductory discount rebates and so-called "free trials" have catches. The discount rebates offered to decrease your monthly bill for some introductory period--say 10 or 12 months--will not go into affect for about 8 weeks (3bills for me), and until then you have to pay full rate. AND it is not retroactive, so if you are supposed to get a 12 month discount, it'll be for months 4-15, not 1-12. This means to get the discount you are signing up for a longer contract than they indicate in their contracts. This is simply misleading advertising. They have all the info on my account that the discounts are supposed to
apply, but refuse to apply them since they are not yet "processed", which is bunk. If they can flag the account that the discount applies,
they could've just applied the discount with a slight amount of geputer programing.Perhaps more importantly for many people are the "free trials" that gee with a new customer sign-up. They are indeed without a monthly fee, but if you cancel them, the $10 cancellation fees apply. They do not tell you this when you sign up (and didn't even tell me when I cancelled.) This would not be such a big deal, but you get a "free" magazine (they didn't even tell me they were going to send this), "free" equipment repair insurance and free HBO for 3 months. (Hopefully since this was both HBO and Stars, etc, only one cancellation fee will apply!). So, you will be paying $30 in cancellations/change service fees. Only take the "freebies" that it's worth $10 to you to try out. I understand a cancellation fee if I call and say "I want to add a service" and then after a few months I discontinue it, but I find it deceptive to apply this on "free" offers. I'm sure it meets all legal qualifications, but when one hears "free trial", one doesn't generally think of cancellation fees--and, as I say, they didn't even tell me about the free magazine when I signed up--it just appeared in my mailbox.Customer service in billing is generally not very helpful. Almost any gepany I have ever dealt with has known more about what was going on and been more helpful. For instance, when I called about the discount on my first bill, I was told it would be applied retroactively to the second bill--that it took 20 days to apply. When I called about the discount after the second bill was when I was told it would only apply after 6-8 weeks. I take notes during these calls, and I read back to the customer service agent what I understand him to have said, so I am not mistaken about what they told me.