March 20, 2007
Keeping Customers
The San Diego outlet of Cox Communications tries to keep customers from switching to DirecTV:
The company recently sent a letter to subscribers who purchased the "MLB Extra Innings" package last season offering a 100 percent rebate for anyone who signs up for the MLB.TV broadband service - an $89.95 value that includes video for every out-of-market game and audio for every game.
The offer affects a little more than 3,000 people in San Diego County, said Bill Geppert, vice president and general manager of Cox San Diego. Cox is the nation's fourth-largest cable operator with 5.4 million subscribers.
"You can't go wrong with free," Geppert said.
San Diego is one of two places where if you switch to DirecTV, you lose your home team's games, so switching doesn't seem to be a real option here. Still, it's a good move to try to keep the customers that might want to switch.
Update: Has any one switched to DirecTV? Was the process easy? How much did they charge?
Posted by David Pinto at
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I moved from a house with Time Warner into a Direct TV house. There are more day-to-day problems with Direct TV, and there is no HBO On Demand. Also, if you travel at all and have a laptop, MLB.tv is much cheaper and portable. The quality is not as good, and if you have a wireless connection it pauses and sometimes falls out, but better than nothing on the road.
The switch for us came last Friday, and aside from the learning a new system, new channel numbers, etc, all is well.
The cost for a four room setup would have been free, but we took the opportunity to add a fifth room which added $49.99 to the total cost.
We don't do Pay-Per-View, or HBO On Demand, or any other services like that, so I can't comment on those features.
In fact the only issue I have is the enforced three month free preview of HBO and Cinamax. These aren't channels I want, but they are included for three months as a bonus when you sign up, and it would cost me to have them removed now. DishNetwork did the same thing when we signed up with them a couple years ago.
Once the account was active I was able to add MLB Extra Innings via the DirectTV website without any problems at all. Overall that process was easier then I remember Dish Network being. And of course only DirectTV customers can do that at all right now.
For the record, I live in my own home in Portland, Oregon. My "home" team would be Seattle, and those games will be blacked out of MLB Extra Innings, but I will have those games elsewhere on DirectTV if I want. I really want to watch the Red Sox, which is why I'm spending the money at all. If all I cared about was Seattle I wouldn't need much more then basic service.
~Mark
I totally disagree with the first commenter's assertion that there are more day-to-day problems with Directv. I've had it now for 12 years and have had not 10 percent of the problems I always had with cable. You don't get as many outages (cars plowing into telephone poles interrupting service) with the dish... and the picture quality is way better. The real problem looming ahead is that apparently Comcast is pondering forming more local sports networks, filling the void of failing Fox regional systems. If your team's games moves to a Comcast channel or sports network, you're not going to find it very available to Directv.
I ordered it last week; it's being installed tomorrow morning. We'll see how it goes...
I can say this: Signing up was easy. I didn't have to talk to anyone... just filled out everything Online...
David,
Aaron Gleeman mentioned in his comments he's had Direct several years and does not want to go back to that crappy cable. I found that funny, as many of your comments act like that cable ad where the guy throws out his dish.