When Allison Connolly and her family moved out of their Plaistow, New Hampshire, home last May, she canceled her DIRECTV account and says she followed the company's instructions for returning her equipment, dropping the box off at the local UPS store.
"A month later I got a bill saying that the equipment hadn't been returned and that they were charging me $196 and some odd cents," Connolly explains. "I figured sometimes the timing can be off — maybe whoever received the equipment didn't relay it to billing. I had the receipt UPS gave me at the store. They were able to pull the transaction of whatever dock it was left at, at the address where I sent it. Once I had the proof I thought, OK, this will be easy."
But Connolly says it was anything but easy to clear up the issue.
"They asked me to submit the proof to DIRECTV.com/bill pay, or some dispute department, which I did," Connolly says. "I sent all the proof, the tracking, and thought again, OK, should be done now. Then noticed on my credit card statement that they had gone ahead and charged the credit card that I had on file for them with that amount."
She says the company even informed her that her account was now in collections. So, Connolly disputed the charge on her credit card.
"Visa reversed the charge, sent me a letter in the mail, saying, 'You're all set, we agree,'" Connolly explains. "At that point, I did think it was over, but a month later, I got the same bill from DIRECTV, where they bounced the charge back to me."
That's when she reached out to NBC10 Boston Responds for help. We contacted DIRECTV, and asked them to take a look at her complaint, and they immediately corrected the problem.
In a statement through AT&T, DIRECTV said: "We provided a refund and were happy to work with the customer to resolve this."
Connolly said she is happy it's over.
"You guys were great," Connolly said. "It was a very fast turnaround. It was exactly what I needed, basically taking me from thinking I was dealing with a black hole to having it fixed."
Whether it's TV equipment or a product you're returning for a refund, it never hurts to snap a picture of what you're packing up and the return label on the package you're shipping. And hold onto all of your receipts and tracking information until you confirm that your package was received on the other end.
