Posted on 02/19/2008 6:02:11 AM PST by JZelle
You'd think that in a slowing economy, companies would be trying to hold on to every potential customer. Not DirecTV. The satellite operator is weeding out customers, and it has no problem with fewer people signing up.
In a conference call with analysts this week, CEO Chase Carey said the company has a new focus on "quality subscribers" (read: ones with money). It finds these subscribers by analyzing their income, age, home ownership, education and other metrics, Carey said in an earnings call with analysts. (Transcript here). DirecTV puts those customers into different categories to figure out who's valuable and who's not, and it's going after the valuable ones.
"We developed in the last couple of years a much more sophisticated customer segmentation set of tools that are unique to us," he said.
Does that seem the tiniest bit creepy to you? I know companies do this kind of demographic research all the time, but I'm always surprised to hear about how thorough they are.
Another mark of a "quality" subscriber is that he (or she) won't quit, and in that respect DirecTV is doing something right: Monthly churn has hit an eight-year low of 1.42% -- a desirable number for any subscription service.
The flip side of this focus, of course, is that DirecTV is steering clear of subscribers it has deemed less than desirable. It's mainly doing this with two policies: requiring that customers have a credit card and that they commit for 18 months (up from 12 months).
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.moneycentral.msn.com ...
I have had Dish Network in the Seattle area (known for clouds) for over 10 years, and what you are saying is an old wives tale cooked up by cable companies. I have also had Comcast, for my internet, during that same time. The amount of time that I have been without satellite coverage over those 10 years was ZERO. The amount of time that I have been without cable would tally up to close to a month.
The fact is, cable goes out at least as often as the electricity does, and for the same reasons. Trees hit and break the lines. Now, before you give me falderal about how if you dont have electricity you could not watch anyways ... one, I have a generator so I could, and two, it takes the cable companies a lot longer to fix the lines than it does the electric company. 1 year ago I was without electricity for 10 days, and without cable for 2 weeks.
bttt
DirecTV just enable my the Video On Demand (VOD) feature on my HR21 HD recorder and it ROCKS.
I hope they consider me a “quality” subscriber.
Then that explains why the cable guy and telephone guy kick my dish pole evertimes they come to my place. I have a corner lot, and the phone and cable companies have big junction boxes in the corner of my yard...........
What I object to is all the paid-programming with DirectTV. Is that the case with cable as well, does anyone know?
Where are all the programs and movies?
You will not believe FiOS. I’ve had it for almost a year here in Florida. Phone, Internet and TV. Internet is blazing fast and HD TV is stunning. (Verizon Employee of 46 years so there may be some bias)
I thought that when you move Direct TV goes with you for free?
If they are doing that ... then I think you need to go talk to their employers, because vandalization will knock out any service ... including phone and cable. Personally, I would threaten to sue thier employers if I ever saw that behavior, even though it would not actually do anything to my signal, because the obvious next step for them would be to actually try to damage my dish in some form.
They fought this tooth and nail two years ago when somebody in Congress proposed it. The excuse was that it would be too hard to implement, but the open secret is that practically everybody would eliminate two-thirds of their channels.
And breaking out the pricing for sports channels would lay bare how much of the typical cable bill goes directly to overpriced athletes. Nobody in the TV industry wants you to know how much you could save by cancelling ESPN.
CU put DirecTV ahead of every source except Verizon fiber in picture quality. All the other cable companies were lower in quality than satellite. I can't say from personal experience. My only comment is that signal loss in rain is unusual. I suppose it depends on your local weather. I find it less annoying than waiting for a service guy to show up.
They can indeed promise you that.
I had dish for 4 years and switched to dir tv over HD & sports programming. Once it went beow freezing, LNB’s had probs, lost most hd channels, no heaters in LNB’s. Dir TV lied to me for 6 months saying I was only one with probs. I wrapped back heat pad & insulation around LNB’s and corrrected the prob myself; those filthy liars. Finally they admitted it was their defective lnbs, a year later when they had redesigned them. Dish never lied to me.
I like center ice, super fan, but if dish offered the same programming, I’d go back to dish in a minute. Cust Serv at dish was so much better and they were straight up with me all the time; don’t cha just hate liars over and over.
ESPN and ESPN2 are two of the channels I would cancel if I could. I don’t watch football, basketball, or hocky and they generally don’t carry Detrot Tiger baseball or NASCAR.
Cost me just over $100 upfront for two of the top of the line receivers with DirecTv. I’m happy, never lost a signal yet.
I waiting for some kid to cut across my yard in the dark some summer night. The dish is in a dark unlit area..............
Yeah, and they can promise me free healthcare, too!.........
Now THAT is creepy.
DirecTV also lost my business for lying.
Was a customer for around 15 years, but gave up on them a couple months back. Too long a story to tell, but I still don’t have the final resolution. They owe me money now and I ‘ll have to get on the phone for a couple hours to get it straightened out.
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