I seem to only be really motivated to post here when I'm pissed off about something. I'm not sure what that says about me, but it is what it is.
Last night I was watching TV with my kids and they wanted to go watch a funny, but idiotic, television show called "Workaholics." I tuned to channel 249 which is Comedy Central and it gave the same error (771) it gives on the rare occasions that weather blocks our satellite service. I returned to the channel I came from and it was still working fine. I checked a few other channels and all of them were working except for 248 and 249. Now, I didn't check every single channel, but I checked all the ones I regularly watch and these two were the only ones out of commission.
I went online and dug around to see if there was any chatter about outages on DirecTV specifically for FX or Comedy Central, but turned up nothing. So I called DirecTV's customer service line. After fighting my way through their ridiculous voice response system I finally got to speak with Crystal. Crystal clearly knew nothing about DirecTV's systems or how they worked, but had a script that was meant to deal with any situation. Crystal had me unplug the power to my SWM. She couldn't tell me what the SWM was or what it did or even what that acronym stood for, but doggone it unplugging it and plugging it back in was going to solve my problem. Anybody want to wager a guess what the result of unplugging the SWM and plugging it back in was? If you guessed that none of my channels would now work, you'd be correct.
Her troubleshooting script led us right to me having absolutely no TV service at all. The 771 error (searching for satellite signal) had now become a 771a (problem communicating with the dish). I told Crystal that I was going to be a very, very unhappy customer if I just went form missing a couple of channels to no service at all.
"I apologize that almost never happens." Which I discovered was complete bullshit since their technical forums are littered with post after post about this 771a error. Maybe Crystal's script also told her to never admit that this was a widespread issue.
"I'll get you scheduled to have a technician come out and look into the issue. The earliest I can get somebody there is Thursday morning." A service call usually costs $50, but Crystal wisely waived that charge and helpfully told me that I could still watch the programs already recorded on my DVR or I could watch shows online using their new DirecTV Everywhere service. I helpfully told her that if I wanted to watch things online I'd cancel my DirecTV service and just use services like Netflix and Hulu Plus and maybe if I find I like watching things online due to this problem that's just what I might wind up doing.
So I'm pissed to say the least. I get that things break, really I do. I mean I make my living repairing computers. But you know what? I have enough experience with the things I repair to know that if it is experiencing certain symptoms you don't attempt to apply certain fixes because it will break it worse. I'm 100% convinced that if the person I had reached on the phone had any real knowledge of their systems and wasn't just following a script, they would have recognized the symptoms and known that the steps the script said to try would break it worse.
Wow,that stinks, Jeff. Sorry you have that problem. I dunno how you kept your composure. If that had happened to me, I would have told him that NO, they just made it impossible for you to watch ANY TV and the repair person better show up within the hour, thank you very much. When they said that couldn't be done, I would have demanded to speak to the President of DirectTV and yes I know he's probably at home or having fun but he has a cell phone, doesn't he? Of course none of that would have done any good but I would have surely made that untrained customer service person rue the day she was born.
ReplyDeleteHoly cow, you repair computers for a living??? How did I not know that? Can you repair mine?
Seriously, I had a post early in the month about a nasty computer virus I caught and to this day I am still having issues with it. I was hoping some of my more geeky readers would have had some suggestions to offer, but I guess you didn't read that post, or decided not to offer free advice.
OH WAIT...you did read that post, or at least part of it. But you claimed you stopped reading it as soon as I said something you objected to (it was about a movie you hadn't even seen) and refused to read the rest of the post. It was after the movie review that I talked about my computer virus and my failed backup restore event. In fact, my experience attempting to restore my backup was similiar to your experience with DirectTV!
I thought I offered up AdAware and Malwarebytes as suggestions for clearing up the virus. Usually those coupled with something like AVG or Symantec Antivirus will do the trick for me. The real trick is if you have a virus that is smart enough to reroute your DNS so you can't reach the Malwarebytes websites you have to be able to find the program and disable it or jump in ahead of it to make the changes you need through Safe Mode or VGA mode.
DeleteThe problem is that in the corporate environment we are so terrified of our clients' data being breached that if there is even the whiff of a virus we usually block the computer from connecting to the network and just completely reimage it. So I don't have a lot of experience from my job at cleaning up viruses. Any that I've done have been for my kids or acquaintances who begged.
Thanks, I do remember those suggestions, but I think you made them to me on grrouchie's site. I got rid of the main problem by finding a product from Anvisoft, then installed it, Malwarebytes and ESET security suite. That got me operational but I still have two problems.....annoying "recommended for you" pop ups in the lower right corner of my browsers, and "link stealers" which will randomly take me to incorrect, possibly malicious websites instead of the link I'm clicking. It's so bad that when I am on my own blog, and I try to click on the "stats" page or the the "new post page", I get diverted to someother site.
DeleteMalwarebytes usually blocks the site if it is a bad sight, sometimes the sites are totally legitimate sites. Weird.
I tried rerunning the Avisoft product which promised to fix it, and from that moment on, my system became unusable again. After much fooling around, I found that by just removing the Anvisoft product, I can use the computer again; but I still have the annoying popupos and hijank links issue.
I haven't tried AdAware....is it compatible with Malwarebytes and a regular anti-virus program?
Thanks so much for your input, and good luck again with your DirectTV issues.
I've never had an issue running AdAware with Malwarebytes and Symantec. I can't speak for any other antivirus software packages though.
DeleteWhat operating system is on the infected computer? Perhaps I could connect with you via email or some form of instant messenger to walk you through a few potential fixes for the DNS redirect or to eliminate the popups. It seems clear though that your malware program is still running in the background on your computer and hasn't been fully cleaned.
I'm running Windows 7, Jeff. That's a heck of a generous offer, wow. My email address is on the blog. I was thinking of getting the paid version of Malwarebytes and see if their tech support coould help me.
DeleteYou fix commputers? :) My new BFF!
ReplyDeleteDirecTV and Comcast have such crappy customer service. You should ask them for a reduced rate for the month that this happened in. DirecTV has done that for my mom in the past.
I'm definitely calling to complain, but I'm going to wait to see what happens for the service call first. Their standard offer is to give you movie channels free for like three months. I'll either take that or see if I can get them to give me a discount on the NFL Sunday Ticket.
DeleteIronic, considering their humorous series of commercials that claim your life will be ruined because your cable service is unreliable!
ReplyDeleteWell so far I haven't sold my hair to a wig shop or had a grandson that wears a dog collar, but we did recently take in a couple of stray cats.
DeleteOddly enough, I have only ever had great customer service from Direct tv.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'm 1/1000 :)
I've always had great service from the customer service reps I've encountered when it was just to discuss a bill or change my service. This was my first time calling in for technical support and I was less than impressed. Maybe I expected too much, but I expected at the very least they wouldn't make the problem worse.
DeleteIt's really no different than any big company though. They hire first level techs that don't really know anything, but can follow a script. They kick it up to a second level tech only in very specific situations or if the customer freaks out and demands it. I didn't because I was just pissed and ready to be off the phone before I said something really offensive or unfriendly that I'd regret.
I understand completely.
DeleteI recently had someone from customer service at a casino call me to find out why I haven't been playing at their casino recently (really?).
So, I could tell she was reading from a script and I threw everything in the book that I could think of at her to see if I could get her to actually have a real conversation with me or if she would just keep going from the script.
Needless to say she was not good at deviation and even though the next part of the script made no sense to our "conversation" she just kept on going.
What a Trooper - she earned her $10/hour.
My kids have much higher standards (perfection) than me. They hate our cable and internet provider (Comcast) and our cell phone company (US Cellular). However, they are better than what we had before.
ReplyDeleteA man after my own heart.
ReplyDeleteRecently Verizon cancelled one of my favorite channels and on one of the Verizon forums where people were bitching about it one of the happy-happy moderators decides to chime in and inform us that altho Verizon is canceling the channel it is still available on the Internet with Verizion FIOS Internet. I couldn't resist, informed little Mary Sunshine that if I wanted to watch Internet TV I would drop Verizon and my 2 and a half buck monthly bill and subscribe to Comcasr Internet which was a lot cheaper and then afdded a few other choice remarks, mainly about er intellect level, no swearing mind you. Another moderator decided my criticism was unwarranted and deleted part of my post, which when i found out made me decide to question her ancestory as well as her intellect. Wound up being banned from the Verizon boards, whether temporary or permanently I didn't read far enough to find out. Don't you just hate flunkies?
Did Rob ever get his problem ironed out? Has he run a total Malwarebytes scan and I mean total including the heuriristics or did he just run quick scans or even rely on auto-proect if he has that feature? Usually a total scan will solve the problem but I do know of some attacks that dig themselves in so deep that you sometimes need to go in to DOS mode to root them out. Of course the problem with that nowadays is everyone configures their drive NTFS which is useless under DOS. Can't even redo system configs anymore since noone gives you discs anymore, it's al on a partion on the HD. If Rob is still having problems send him my way, I'll see what I can do long distance. I'm better hands on but some times I can spot something in Hijack This reports. Spent the last 15 years of a 25 year IT career fixing many such problems not to mention one time having a nephew in college with every music dl program known to man.
Wolfshead, thank you very much for the offer. In fact, I did get my problems fixed. It wasn't just running Malwaryebytes tho. I contacted their customer support when that didn't get rid of everything and they walked me thru a few steps that totally fixed the problem. Ended up running something called "combo-fix" under their direction. That did the trick.
DeleteI was so impressed with their product and especially their customer service that I did a whole blog post about them, you can read it here: http://robvegaspoker.blogspot.com/2012/06/thank-you-malwarebytes.html
They are a great company. And again, thanks again for your nice offer, Wolfshead!
No problem Rob, glad you got it fixed. I keep a copy of combo-fix handy with all my other virus hunting tools but for me it is either the second to last or last resort as you can really screw up your computer if you make a mistake running it. You should also keep a copy of hijack this around and a spare ccopy of Malearebytes where you have changed the .exe file from mbam to some other name .exe A lot of those viruses(virii?) now disable Malwarebytes so you need to fool them. I keep mine on a flash drive for emergencies.
ReplyDelete