Does Anyone Have Problems with Center Ice & Direct Kick (or Sunday Ticket)?

644 Views 5 Replies 5 Participants Last post by Billsfan69, Jul 11, 2008

jyafink

Discussion Starter · Jul 9, 2008

The thing that tipped me over the boiling point with TWC is their horrible handling of Center Ice and Direct Kick. There have been numerous occasions over the past couple years where games didn't start on time, games got cutoff early, the screen would go blank halfway through and stay that way, sound would come with no picture or vice versa, or I would get a "you are not subscribed to this channel message." They used to send technicians to the house who would of course tell me everything was perfect. It wasn't until I called to disconnect service that they let me talk to an upper level manager who admitted these package are not very popular in the grand scheme of things and that they had to apply their limited bandwith and resources to make sure the channels people watch most often operate smoothly. It's gotten to the point where they are giving me $35-50 credit every time I call, but missing the games and being on the phone with them for an hour or more every 2-3 weeks is not worth it. Does anybody have similar problems with the games on DirecTV and their handling of sports subscription packages? If so, what are they, how bad is it, how often does it occur, how long does it take to resolve, what do they give you for your troubles, etc…? Thank you.

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pbg

· #2 · Jul 9, 2008

jyafink said:
The thing that tipped me over the boiling point with TWC is their horrible handling of Center Ice and Direct Kick. There have been numerous occasions over the past couple years where games didn't start on time, games got cutoff early, the screen would go blank halfway through and stay that way, sound would come with no picture or vice versa, or I would get a "you are not subscribed to this channel message." They used to send technicians to the house who would of course tell me everything was perfect. It wasn't until I called to disconnect service that they let me talk to an upper level manager who admitted these package are not very popular in the grand scheme of things and that they had to apply their limited bandwith and resources to make sure the channels people watch most often operate smoothly. It's gotten to the point where they are giving me $35-50 credit every time I call, but missing the games and being on the phone with them for an hour or more every 2-3 weeks is not worth it. Does anybody have similar problems with the games on DirecTV and their handling of sports subscription packages? If so, what are they, how bad is it, how often does it occur, how long does it take to resolve, what do they give you for your troubles, etc…? Thank you.

If you were a reader of the Center Ice thread you'd recall that there were issues at the beginning of the season, primary with getting D10 up to speed, and with some authorization issues that seemed to be cleared up after the 2nd month of season.

Nobody likes missing their team in action, yet in the grand scheme of things, if you were still having problems while averaging $42.50 in compensation every two & a half weeks over the 8 month season, I'd say Direct did at the very least, a pretty fair job in easing the pain of those missed games in comparison to your initial investment of the Center Ice Package.

To me it seemed after the first month or so, things really settled down. With the dual feeds, and copious amounts of HD, there was always some good action to be had on almost every night of the season

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jyafink

Discussion Starter · #3 · Jul 9, 2008

Thanks, but I was talking about those idiots at Time Warner Cable. I just wanted to see if DirecTV has the same problems because problems with the games is one of the top three reasons why I want to get rid of TWC. It appears from other messages I received that DirecTV doesn't have those problems or they are very minimal when they do.

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Eben

· #4 · Jul 10, 2008

DirecTV is not nearly as bad as your experience with TWC; occaisionally I get erroneously blacked out of a game, but that's not the norm and overall I've gotten the games as advertised.

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celticpride

· #5 · Jul 10, 2008

I have had NBA league pass on directv since 1995, and they are very reliable except fo acouple ties this pass season where i lost the signal 2 games in a row right at the 2:30 mark. but in those 13 years they have done a excellent job,the games always start on time and sometimes they even keep the feed on for an extra 20 minutes or so after the game is over. I can only recall missing 2 celtics games in all these years blackout for some reason both times it was the celtics playing at the milwaukee bucks. I would be very surprised if you had those kinds of problems you described with directv unless it was equipment malfunction. I think you will be very happy with any of directvs sports packages, just keep in mind directv has no control over what ever blackout rules the professional leagues have.

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Billsfan69

· #6 · Jul 11, 2008

jyafink said:
Thanks, but I was talking about those idiots at Time Warner Cable. I just wanted to see if DirecTV has the same problems because problems with the games is one of the top three reasons why I want to get rid of TWC. It appears from other messages I received that DirecTV doesn't have those problems or they are very minimal when they do.

I had problems with Anaheim ducks games being blacked out on NHL network. Turns out they had Buffalo zip codes as being in the Ducks broadcast area, but this was fixed. As for Center ice, I didn't notice too many problems. There were some hiccups when D-10 first went live, but these cleared up pretty quick. As for those idiots at Time Warner, they are the reason I have Directv now.

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