Though I haven’t changed my position that Cancellation Fees Must Die, it was interesting to discover that DirecTV was/is monitoring social media for brand mentions, since someone from the DirecTV Office of the President left me a voicemail this morning due to yesterday’s post (and my Twitter mention).  I called “Veronica” back when I got back to my office 45 minutes ago.

It’s clear to me that I didn’t “follow their rules” and shame on me. Perhaps you think that I’m not justified in raining-on-DirecTV’s-parade with my rants — and I could probably get in to the inferior quality of their supplied DVR as another justification for my buying a DVR replacement at Best Buy — but suffice to say that due to a broken DirecTV DVR I had a choice: go to Best Buy and have DirecTV service back up-n-running within two hours, or what I now know “their rules” required. Those rules dictated that I contact them for a replacement DVR (and $5.99 per month in a service contract to “protect” their inferior product) while waiting what….3 days for the replacement to arrive by courier and thus be without service?

Since you and I “agree” to allow our conversations to be recorded (you’ll hear that boilerplate mention by DirecTV’s voice response system at the beginning of the recording below), so legally I can record it too and have done so in order to post it so you can hear the reason for their call (I edited out my phone/account number, the music, and got right to the interaction with Veronica).

The punchline? They’ve got me and one could argue that I don’t have a leg to stand on and — having run strategic alliances with a major software company where contracts are at the core and I read and understand every nuance — I should know better. You’d be right, but I’ll wager you don’t read Terms & Conditions of your satellite, cable, Google apps, Twitter and the hundreds of other Web apps you’ve signed up for, have you?

I’ll give them their $280 cancellation fee. But if the more than 40,000 views and pages of comments on this Target Trutech post (or searching on “Trutech” showing it as the #2 link in Google) is any indication of the attention this and yesterday’s post will surely receive, I’m going to guess DirecTV will find that being just a touch more reasonable with someone who’d been a customer for nine years might’ve been a wiser investment than a phone call of no value to either side, and the nickels-n-dimes they’ll get with their cancellation fee.

After more than nine years and nearly $6,000 spent with DirecTV, I cancelled the service today since I’ve chosen another route for obtaining HD programming.

The problem is that more and more companies are making it very difficult to cancel (AOL and now Vonage are the best examples of creating barriers to cancellation by not answering the phone, putting you on hold forever, and other such goofy practices), and DirecTV has proven to be no exception.

One barrier to switching to a competitor is a practice, which I view as unethical and bordering on criminal, of putting in onerous terms and conditions that make it very difficult to cancel or make a switch by taking any change made during a contract, extending the term automatically, and applying cancellation fees if you choose to cancel. Most people make a change at some point during their time with a company and thus the unethical company can keep stringing people along indefinitely.

In addition to that, you and I have almost no recourse if we want to alter the contract before signing, negotiate or simply not pay these draconian fees. If we choose to tell them to go pound sand and withhold payment, they systemically say “F” you and turn you in for collection, eroding your credit rating.

Today’s DirecTV example is illustrative of this practice. Back in February, my DirecTV DVR went on the fritz and I went to Best Buy to replace it. Activating it at home later that evening, I was told that I’d wasted my money since they would’ve shipped out a replacement unit at no cost! We went ahead with setup, I returned the defective unit anyway and continued with service until today.

Turns out that the Best Buy receipt for that DVR had an agreement on it that said I was ‘leasing’ the DVR and was therefore signing up for a new two year agreement! Yeah I know, I should’ve just returned the one I bought after discovering they would’ve sent a free one or found another way, but I’ve got better things to do with my time than dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’ with all of the crappy terms and conditions we’re all supposed to adhere to with services like this one (and T’s and C’s that say right in them that the company can change them without necessarily even notifying us! How’s THAT for a blank check?).

The DirecTV cancellation fee? $280. Think I’ll fight it? You bet your ass I will, and if things don’t work out with my other option, DirecTV will never, ever be considered as an option again and I would strongly caution you to take great care if you opt to use them.

UPDATE 12/17/08: Received call from DirecTV Office of the President. Post here.

In this down economy, people have been asking me (since I have a reputation as a gadget freak) what would be great gifts for this holiday season and would be ones with "a high geek factor and a low price."

The Flip Mino HD has been one I've recommended at $229 as has this Asus netbook at $329.

Usually I've rarely had good luck with low-end products that purport to do big things that more expensive gear performs, but the two above are exceptions to that rule.  So I was naturally skeptical when the box arrived for me to evaluate the $129 Pinnacle TV for Mac HD USB mini stick (more info on it here).

I opened it up, installed the software, and waited the 15 minutes or so that it took to seek out all the possible stations in my area the included antenna could pick up. To say that I was stunned, surprised and delighted when suddenly a gorgeous high definition TV station appeared on my Apple 24" Cinema display, would be doing this little product a disservice!

Every available over-the-air station worked flawlessly and it was easy to switch back-n-forth between channels. As I fooled around with it and viewed some content, I realized how much I would've loved having this device when the debates were going on (too often I had stuff to do at my desk and could've had live TV running watching them, instead of having to record the first half and watch it later).

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The Bumble Bee is a site I stumbled across a couple of years ago and it became a permanent fixture in my RSS reader. Prior to the Collaborative Technologies Conference in Boston (now called Enterprise 2.0) two summers ago, the site author, Ken Thompson, sent me an email and we connected at the conference.

The guy is a delight with an engaging presentation style and his ongoing analysis of teaming and collaboration — with biomimcry as his guide — was the catalyst for his thought leading blog and the impetus for the development of his Web messaging applications (unbeknownst to me until I met him, Ken is an accomplished software architect, team lead and business leader) which include SwarmTeams for businesses and SwarmTribes for consumers.

Ken has written a book called “The Networked Enterprise, Competing for the Future Through Virtual Enterprise Networks” which I found incredibly enlightening. When Ken sent me the manuscript and I wrapped my head around his approach, I realized its importance as enterprise organizations embrace “2.0″ and map their businesses, organizations and cultures on to our increasingly networked world.

My ongoing reading of Ken’s blog, the nature of his swarming software for messaging, and the fact that he’s an incredibly smart and all around good guy has compelled me to try to find a way to get him on your radar screen. If you’re involved in enterprise or organizational level teaming, communications or are trying to understand what it means to be a virtual enterprise in a networked world, turn to Ken and absorb what he’s delivering.

After the jump, a very short paper from Ken Thompson on small firms, big firms and regional economies as an introduction to him and his thoughts.

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