DirecTV added customers as bills jumped to $92 a month
February 18th, 2010, 12:21 pm · 7 Comments · posted by Tamara Chuang, a.k.a. The Gadgetress
DirecTV continued to add customers in the fourth quarter last year even as customer monthly bills inched upward.
But the satellite TV provider’s 119,000 net new subscribers in the fourth quarter was nearly one-third less than the 301,000 subscribers it added a year earlier.
The company said that declines in the last quarter of 2009 were due to competition, a weaker economy and more stringent credit and spending policies. In other words, investors should be happy that DirecTV was able to get more money out of existing customers — or $92.36 a month, up $1.90 or 2.1 percent from 2008′s fourth-quarter average monthly revenue of $90.46
What made bills go higher? Price increases, and more customers subscribing to HD channels, DVRs and NFL programming, says the company. That helped offset lower revenues on pay-per-view events and new customer offers.
Overall, DirecTV ended 2009 with 18,560,000 customers, up 5.3 percent from 2008. Its average monthly revenue per subscriber was up about 1.9 percent, or $1.58, to $85.48.
Like every other TV service provider, DirecTV continued to face higher prices from TV channels. Last year, these programming fees rose $766 million to $9.1 billion. That’s a 9.2 percent increase from the prior year! Programming fees are usually the biggest expense for every TV company. And failed negotiations sometimes lead to public disputes like the New Year’s Eve showdown between Time Warner Cable and Fox TV.
Regardless, those higher fees often end up raising customer bills. So far this year, DirecTV has announced 5 percent rate hikes for most customers. See earlier story “DirecTV prices going up in 2010 too.”
The financials: DirecTV lost $32 million on revenues of $5.98 billion. The loss was due to its November merger with Liberty Entertainment. Excluding the merger, the company said its net income would have been $454 million, which was up from the year earlier’s net income of $332 million on revenues of $5.31 billion.
Read the company’s earnings report HERE.
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DirectTV tried to rip me off by engaging in fraud back in 2003, and for that reason I will NEVER use their product, ever again.
Too bad, b/c I liked DirectTV, but once you start engaging in fraud that is the begining of the end of your product line.
YUP!!! WHAT CAN WE DO? WE CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT THE TUBE!!
I have DirecTV and my bill isn’t that high. Though I only have 2 receivers, one being a DVR. I don’t mind paying to get the channels I want. What I don’t like is when you live in a place and they say that you have to use a certain cable provider. People shoudl be avle to pick who to use wherever they live.
Johnny I’m curious to know how they engaged in fraud. I don’t want to be a victim of fraud if they do that.
I can second to Johnny and answer your question. Let’s start with…. the $480 cancellation fee. Its in your service agreement. They don’t mention a word of it when you sign up over the phone and you don’t get a copy of the agreement until after the installation. You don’t even have to sign it. You have 24 hrs after installation to cancel or you will be hit with a $480 fee. By getting it installed, you are agreeing to a 1 year subscription. Secondly, WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE!
I’m regressing… my boyfriend and I moved here about 5 months ago. My neighborhood is restricted to using only Time Warner or DirectTV. We chose DTV since it was cheaper and a better package. The rate was good for 6 months, but due to service issues after the installation, we were able to negotiate and extend the rate we had for 12 months.
Continuing on… when the new year rolled around and at this point, we’ve only had DTV for 4 months, but our next statement was twice as much as we have been paying for. We called DTV numerous times to be put on hold for 30 min. or longer. I’m sorry, but sometimes there’s too much that need to get done that I can’t be spending a half hour on the phone to speak to a customer service rep. When we finally got through to speak to a rep, we were told that they had no record of our rate so we have to pay the original price for it. Ugh… check our payment history and you can see we’ve been paying the same amount for months now. So, even after escalating the call to a supervisor, they would not fix the problem. Naturally, we said then “we want to cancel our account”. To get a response back, “okay, there is a $480 cancellation fee”. So, we then tried to downgrade our service. Apparently, you can upgrade, but you can’t downgrade without canceling your current account, first. More BS.
In the end, we had enough of it and hung up. I did a bit of research online on this and it’s evident that something is wrong with DTV. There is currently a class action lawsuit against them. Over 35,000 complaints have been filed with the BBB. The BBB rates this company an “F”.
My advise… don’t sign up for DTV unless you are willing to go through some headache.
its now a year and a half contract
Directv rips people off but we let them do it.Hey it’s our fault we pay a bill using a credit card , we should know directv is storing it to use later if they feel like it.It’s our fault the marketers lie to us when selling us on the product , afterall directv does hire former used cars salemen to sell their product.We are the ones that don’t have a microscop to read directv’s contract , it’s our fault we order the NFL sunday ticket , being directv has the exclussive for it.So don’t blame directv hire a lawyer when you plan to buy from directv so he can explain things you may not understand.
My experience with Direct TV…my reciever box broke after 6 months
I pay the $6 per month insurance….so they sent me a replacement via Fed EX…..ok so far so good
It turns out they added TWO YEARS to my contract because I added new equipment ! I could not believe it……when I called to complain a rude rep told me that “I had a contract” and that was the rule when adding new equipment!! after 2 months of phone calls I finally got it resolved…….way too much trouble and too many phone calls to deal with…after my 2 year agreement I dropped DTV