Several asking about the 'process' of playing their game. In general, you need to:
1. Call to disconnect and listen to their spiel then politely decline. If not under contract, set up cancellation for first available date if you plan to stay with them. Better offers don't become available until the account is in a 'disconnected' status. If it's waiting to be canceled, they call that 'pending disconnect' and offers are limited.
2. On disconnect date, watch for confirmation e-mail. It usually comes in around 4 AM Central Time on the actual disconnect day.
3.
WAIT 24 HOURS MINIMUM before you call. This is important and can help you get better offers. For some reason, you have to wait until the following day to call 'winback'. Much better offers should be available. If you call before that, you also run the risk of them reconnecting your account to generate offers then disconnecting it again wiping those offers away like what happened to me and several others. I would advocate waiting 48 hours to call.
4. Call one of the many 'winback' numbers offered up on here. A few to try right away are
888-333-0804,
410-919-2969 and
855-407-4780. Be aware if you are an older DTV customer, the 410 number might not have your information. Do not call the regular customer service line because it's almost entirely devoid of English speakers who will understand what you are asking for and with your account in a disconnected status, they can't do anything anyway.
5. Tell them you canceled but then got a call from this number advising you to call back or you got an e-mail saying "Come back to DTV" with that number. It doesn't matter if you did or not, they will never validate it. If by some rare chance, the person questions you or says no you didn't, just hang up and call back and say the same thing. It
will work eventually.
6. Tell them whatever story you want to fit the narrative. You canceled due to price, only have DTV for Sunday Ticket, etc. This gives them a platform on which to sell you. The typical good 'winback' offer they give is 40-50% off monthly package price, free Sunday Ticket Max, free HBO/Cinemax/Starz for 3-6 months, free reconnection and a $200-300 Visa gift card w/ one year contract commitment. If you aren't offered all of these things or their equivalent, politely decline.
DirecTV has offers available via what they call 'loyalty hearts' which is a rating system from 1-5 based on length of time you've had their service, package you paid for before discounts and number of AT&T products you have. The higher any of these are, the more 'loyalty hearts' you will have and the better offers they will make to keep you. For example, I was told that as a 15-year customer with only DirecTV Choice package and no paid add-on's besides the occasional boxing PPV fight here and there I had 3/5 loyalty hearts. That was enough to get me the standard winback offer above. If I had a higher package or more services like internet or cell w/ AT&T, my hearts would be higher and it would be easier to get the best deals. Anyone below three hearts will have a tough time. I only know this because a rep was talkative while I was waiting for her to check something - I don't think she was supposed to share that with me because when I mentioned it to her supervisor, he stuttered and stammered and didn't want to acknowledge that I was right but did.
7. If you decline an offer from #6, just keep calling back and saying the same thing until they bite. Eventually it should work. I would highly advise to
not play around with these guys and think "well this is as good as it's gonna get". Almost always, it's not. They count on consumers like us not knowing our understanding that the offers being given are lowball ones.
8. If all else fails and you have to have Sunday Ticket, you can submit a formal complaint to the Office of the President of AT&T
here and submit a BBB complaint
here. There are several e-mail addresses floating around out there for executives but I haven't found one that is confirmed. These are more extreme routes but will get you a response. If any company - even one as large as AT&T - doesn't respond to a BBB complaint, it goes against their accreditation and shows up on the BBB website as a non-response. Too many non-responses can make them lose the accreditation. The company gets the complaint 1-5 calendar days after you submit it and the business has 30 calendar days to respond.
If going this route, remember to be factual in your summary. Stuff like "YOUR COMPANY IS TOO *$@%ING EXPENSIVE" or "I DESERVE FREE SUNDAY TICKET" or similar won't get you very far. Lay out facts and state that others I know of with similar tenure, packages, etc. have gotten the aforementioned 'winback' offer so I am respectfully requesting the same. You can also note any poor experience with their CS teams which you might have because they are aplenty.
It's a headache but it's the system they have in place so we play their game. Best of luck to everyone still working the system and congrats to those who have successfully hunted down their deal for this upcoming year.