A while back I was in the military, and one of my secondary responsibilities was to manage our unit’s morale and recreation program. We primarily brought in money by operating vending machines and selling some food during lunch. While we spent our funds on a number of various events, such as picnics and outings, one of the more popular things was us having DirecTV, including all the great add-ons, such as NFL Sunday Ticket and MLB Extra Innings.
As the program manager, I was responsible for setting up our DirecTV service. I made sure we got the best negotiated price, arranged for the installation, and paid the bills. For the most part, this was a relatively straightforward satellite package; really, the only difference was that instead of the service being in a single person’s name, it was a corporate account, so it was in our unit’s name. There was one potentially complicating factor, however. Our unit was going to be disbanded* in 9 months, and the typical DirecTV contract is for 1 year. I communicated this to our salesperson, and he said that this would absolutely not be a problem, annotated this on the account, and included it in the contract.
(*Units being disbanded is not uncommon. For example, units can be disbanded in association with BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure), upon completing specific missions, or decommissioning of naval vessels.)
Over the next 9 months, we all thoroughly enjoyed our satellite programming, and sometimes we even purchased special PPV events (e.g., UFC), and all bills were paid on time. When there was about 1 week remaining prior to our unit being officially disbanded and remaining personnel to be redistributed to several hundred different units, I called up DirecTV to inform them that we would be stopping our service. As a bonus, I was going to hand over our dish and receivers to a nearby unit that was just starting the disbanding process, and they would start new DirecTV service and utilize it for about a year. This, no doubt, was a win-win for both DirecTV and the other unit.
As you probably expected, I was told by customer service that we were in a one year contract and we would have to pay a $350 cancellation fee for early termination. Supervisor after supervisor told me the same thing, until finally I was told I’d get a call back from a “special” department.
I did get a call several days later, literally on the day that we were saying our goodbyes and disbanding the unit. The agent told me that we would not be required to pay the cancellation fee, but we would have to send a letter announcing our circumstances on command letterhead. I informed the agent that we unfortunately no longer had computers and printers, let alone letterhead, and that for all intents and purposes, we were effectively a corporation going out of business. He claimed that if DirecTV didn’t receive the letter within 3 weeks, we would have to pay the cancellation fee. Apparently it didn’t matter that it was already annotated on the account. I exclaimed to him that there would not be anyone to pay the cancellation fee, but of course to no avail.
About a year later, I get a call (on my mobile) from DirecTV collections department, asking me if they had reached our military unit. I told them that I used to be affiliated with the unit, but it no longer exists. They then asked who was responsible for paying the bills, and I said “we’re out of business – there’s no one here anymore.” Wisely, the collections agent asked, “The military is not out of business, so who can I reach to pay the bill?” More wisely, I gave the agent the phone number to the office of the Undersecretary of Defense Comptroller’s office. For those of you who have tried to reach someone via a government phone number, you’d know the endless labyrinth of phone systems in which this collections agent was about to embark.
A couple years later, and maybe once or twice a year since then, I get a phone call from DirecTV collections, and with a smile on my face, still hoping to have the last laugh, I kindly say, “you must have the wrong number.”
