spugbrap’s blog

I got an email from DirecTV recently, telling me that prices are going up. They linked to a PDF with new pricing info. It looks like the price of just about every subscription plan/feature they offer is going up by $2-5/month. It was not customized for me, though–it was very generic.

To find out how much my own rates were going to increase, I had to login to my account on directv.com. When I got there, though, I had a very hard time figuring out exactly what my current plan is, and how much I’m currently paying for it.

See, the problem is that I signed up with my bank to receive e-bills from most of my billers, including DirecTV. For some reason, because I usually like to view and pay all of my bills from one central location (my bank’s website), DirecTV will not allow me to view any of my bills–past or present–on directv.com.Here’s what I got when I tried to view a bill (to see which subcription package/rate plan I’ve been on for the past few years):

Our records show you are signed up to view your DIRECTV bill through your financial institution, or another bill paying web site, and not through directv.com. Because the DIRECTV online bill view service allows you to view your bill at only one web site, you are unable to view your bill at directv.com.


To view your bill here instead, you must first discontinue the online bill view you set up at your other bill paying website, by following the instructions they provide. Once de-enrolled from their bill view feature, it may take up to 30 days before you can view your bill statement at directv.com.


In the meantime, you still have access to all other directv.com account functions, including making an immediate, one-time check or credit card payment. Thank you.To ensure the privacy of your personal information, this message will no longer appear once you close the pop-up browser window.

I don’t understand the point of preventing me from viewing my bill from multiple locations. I encountered this same odd behavior with Verizon in the past. Does anybody know why they would do this? I could understand limiting users to having monthly e-bills sent to only one bank. But I think you should always be able to view your account information, including at least the most recent bill, on the company’s site, itself.

To make matters worse, it can take a month or two to get them to start sending e-bills to a bank, and then it can take a month to stop them from sending e-bills to that bank. That huge delay puzzles me, as well. Online customer account management and B2B communication should be instantaneous. 30 days is worse than snail mail! Couldn’t DirecTV print out my bill, send it to my bank via horseback mail carrier, and have someone at my bank type the bill into their system in less than 30 days? Ugh!

Anyways, my rate increase is about 5.5%. Oh well, not like I have much choice. It’s Comcast or DirecTV, here, and I’m happy with my DirecTV DVR that I got before their agreement with Tivo ended. I tried Comcast cable for a while, last year, but I couldn’t deal with the horrible Scientific Atlanta DVR that came with that.

**UPDATE BEFORE POSTING**Okay, I’ve been meaning to blog about this for several weeks, now. I logged into my account at directv.com, a few minutes ago, and I was able to see the name and price of my subscription plan right at the top of the main Account Details page, in a section called “Activity Since Last Bill.”

Click the above link to see the expanded Activity Since Last Bill section from my directv.com Account Details page.

I’m not sure if I just didn’t notice/find this link when I was looking for it, a few weeks ago, or if they’ve since made some changes to their website. I think I’m seeing a lot more DHTML/AJAX going on, so I’m thinking they made some UI improvements recently.

Unfortunately, the “View Bills” link still takes me to that page quoted above, where they tell me that I can’t view my bill on their site since I signed up to be able to receive e-bills on my bank’s site. Hmpf.

I was browsing an online store earlier, trying to find a certain orthodontic product that I didn’t know the name of, when I finally found it.

There were no useful details about it on that site, though, so I just wanted to copy and paste the official product name into a google search. My efforts to do this simple task were denied, though, which confused and annoyed me.

I thought my Firefox may have been choking on the fact that I had a lot of windows and tabs open, but decided to view the source anyway. As it turns out, there was some javascript code (shown below) to intentionally [attempt to] prevent printing or text selection. WTF?!?

---

//Disable Printing
document.onselectstart=new Function(’return false’);
function ds(e){return false;}
function ra(){return true;}
document.onmousedown=ds;document.onclick=ra;

---

This was easy enough to defeat, though, by entering this in my location/address bar:
javascript:void(document.onmousedown=ra)In IE, an additional step was required:
javascript:void(document.onselectstart=ra)

I’m not sure what they were trying to accomplish. All I wanted to do was research the product before buying it from them, but intentionally made that difficult for me, so I will not be purchasing anything from their store.

As I was getting gas last night at the new Safeway Fuel gas station in Bristow, VA, I noticed a sign posted saying that Safeway Fuel stations run on 100% Wind-generated electricity. How odd, I thought, for a petroleum dispenser to run off natural energy sources. Sounds good in theory, though. Seems like it’s a good idea to use renewable, natural energy sources whenever possible, so I went ahead and checked out the website that was posted on the sign.

I wondered how they could get electricity from a different place than every other home, business, etc. around. It’s not like there are any huge windmills in the vicinity, and it wouldn’t be feasible to run a direct electric line from wherever they DO have huge windmills to this little gas station. According to the Safeway Green Power FAQ, they pay for the wind energy facilities to deliver an amount of electricity to the electricity grid (the power delivery grid that everyone is connected to), equal to the amount of electricity used by all of the Safeway Fuel stations, corporate offices, and San Francisco Stores.

I hope others will follow their lead, unless there’s some negative aspect of this that their information website is neglecting to mention. I didn’t find anything negative with a quick google search, though. For now, I’m just happy that they built a gas station closer to my house, which often has the cheapest gas around (especially with a 3 cents/gallon discount with your Safeway card, or a 6 cents/gallon discount with a prior grocery purchase of $50 or more). Not bad.

Trying to do some long-overdue housecleaning on my hard drives, and keep running across little tidbits that I’ve saved for one reason or another. From a file I called “dumbverizon.txt”, comes a quote from some piece of Verizon DSL literature from a few years ago that I thought was funny:

Due to the sophistication of DSL service Verizon Online does not guarantee that your service will be uninterrupted or error free.

I think it speaks for itself. :)