Canceled DirecTV

For those considering DirecTV, here are the facts.

DirecTV suckers you in with low prices that are locked in for a year. The catch is that you must sign a two year contract to get the bait and switch prices that expire after one year. I satisfied my two year obligation as of this month and just called to cancel.

When I first got DirecTV, my bill looked like this:

Choice Package: $58.99 / mo

HD Access: $10 / mo

DVR Service: $7 /mo

Two receivers @ $5 each = $10

But then the credits started rolling in and looked like this:

Discount for having AT&T DSL: -$5 / mo

First 12 months rebate promo: -$24 /mo

Extra credit for activating my 12 month rebate on their website: -$5 /mo

Total DirecTV before taxes: $51.99 /Mo

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Then during the course of that two years, my promo credits expired, including the one for having AT&T DSL, and DirecTV also had a price increase.

Then my bill started looking like this:

Choice XTRA (which is like a $5 upgrade from Choice): $65.99 /mo

HD Fee: $10 /mo

DVR Service: $7 /mo

Two receivers @ $6 each = $12 /mo

Total DirecTV before taxes: $94.99 /mo (If I stayed with Choice it would be $90 or something)

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Let’s assume I stayed with Choice and was paying the $90 a month total. That’s still nearly a 75% price increase after your credits expire and they still have you on the hook for another year after that happens.

DirecTV advertisements never mention the hidden fees of HD access and they don’t talk about receiver rentals, so this represents about 300% over their advertised service prices by the time you get a year into your contract.

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What happens if you decide to cancel after seeing your bill go up 75%?

DirecTV has an Early Cancellation Fee: It amounts to $20 for every month left on your contract. If you cancel with the year remaining, they will charge you $240 just to get rid of them.

DirecTV has a system in place to renew your contract when it is nearing completion.

Don’t accept any “upgrades” to your equipment unless you are willing to restart your two year contract at that point. DirecTV made me an unsolicited offer to upgrade my boxes when I only had a few months left on my contract. After I said OK, the rep tried to rush past the disclosure that this would start my contract over on day 1. I ended up declining the upgrade.

If your receiver fails and you do not have the $5.95 /mo Protection Plan.

They will replace the receiver but they will start your contract over at day 1. If you have the Protection Plan, they won’t restart your contract. I was lucky enough to not have an equipment failure in that two years. You might not be so lucky.

Also, be warned that DirecTV will charge you between $40-$70 for every service call where a technician has to come out to your house if you do not have the Protection Plan.

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I am an adult. I should have remembered “Let The Buyer Beware” or “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”, but like many people, the sound of a satellite TV system for “only $35 a month” in big bold letters appealed to me. It’s never going to be what they say it is and your bill will go up every time a “credit” expires or whenever the MAFIAA feels like handing DirecTV a price increase that DirecTV turns around and makes you pay then for.

I’m posting this and admitting I screwed up in the hopes that it saves someone else the two years of being saddled with satellite TV, where the price only goes up no matter what you do, the service is marginal, and they keep trying to sneak in a contract extension through the back door every time you turn around.

Vista 8: Now with 500% more Microsoft spyware.

With Vista 8 it’s all about SUCKERS, SUCKERS, SUCKERS!!!!

For kicks, I loaded up the Windows 8 “Consumer Preview” in VirtualBox.

I was expecting the usual. More crap that nobody asked for. More anti-competitive Microsoft tie-ins. More lock-in with Microsoft services. More EULA mess. More spyware. I found pretty much all of this.

The setup process was much like Windows 7 up to a point, except there are now three entire pages full of toggle switches where the user must agree to sacrifice their privacy to use Windows 8 fully, in addition to a EULA written in legalese that goes on forever, which nobody who isn’t a lawyer will fully understand. If they don’t, then there will be huge swaths of missing features. (And since it is proprietary software, you absolutely cannot trust anything it says or does, so the choice is misleading anyway.)

As Dr. Richard Stallman has said, Windows is malicious software. Their privacy policies open up the user to all kinds of abuse for simply agreeing with the EULAs (which are mandatory if you wish to use Windows), and in the EULA you agree that Microsoft can slip in updates or change the EULA at any point in the future. So, if there is something malicious that Windows currently does not do, then it would be very easy for them to slip that into an update and push it out tomorrow.

They’ve done this sort of thing before, countless times. Anyone remember how “Windows Genuine Annoyance” wasn’t originally part of Windows XP?

Anyone remember when Windows XP and Vista would simply lock you out of your computer and forbid you access to anything even if the software was legally licensed and Microsoft just happened to screw up?

Idiot Exploiter being in Windows 98 without an uninstaller got Microsoft some DOJ attention, but it’s literally EVERYWHERE in Windows 8, and it’s more malicious than ever.

Here’s what you agree to send to Microsoft now to get a fully functional copy of Windows 8 if you take the default settings (Some of these have been a requirement of various Microsoft apps and Windows in the past, some are new. This is in addition to anything mandated by their EULA, so you can’t opt out of all of it even if you tried):

Every site you visit in Internet Explorer.

Everything you download with Internet Explorer.

Every URL you click on in an application from the Windows store, regardless what browser it opens in.

Every web resource that an application loads.

Every application you have installed on your computer, regardless of where it came from.

Your EXACT location. (Via IP geolocation or GPS coordinates.) when you use an app that uses this feature. Note: GPS coordinates are accurate to within a few inches.

Crash data for any application that has a problem, including a memory dump. (Those can include personal information like passwords, site login data, your bank account information, truly any information the app had in memory when it crashed.)

Which parts of Windows Help you have read, and what URLs you clicked on in that.

You agree that they can force application updates on you, silently, even to install malicious features,even if you didn’t want the update.

You agree that they can update Windows, including for the purpose of stuffing in more malicious features, even if you didn’t want the update.

Applications can use your name, account picture, location data, and various Windows Live features, as you.

Perhaps most disturbing at all, the Windows Store and many of the applications that come with Windows that can’t be removed, like their messenger program that censors its users and spies on what they say, require you to sign up with a Microsoft Account (which is, I guess what they’re calling Passport these days), and to fully utilize the software store, you have to link a major credit card/debit card to your account and agree to anything Microsoft or apps you use try to charge to it.

You agree in the EULA that Windows can update things like their Windows Media Digital Restrictions Malware and you won’t try to stop it.

The US DMCA makes it illegal to try to break their Digital Restrictions Malware, even if it’s because it fucked up and you’re just trying to use the content you “bought”. Or because Microsoft’s latest DRM’d music store flops and they take down their license renewal server. Happens.

If you use any of Microsoft’s “Cloud” features, you agree explicitly that they can share your information with advertisers or the federal, state, or local government units with or without a valid search warrant, and you also agree that you hold Microsoft harmless if they fuck up and delete your data. So don’t upload anything expecting to ever get it back out. But, these are problems with most cloud services, which is why you shouldn’t use them.

We live in an age where the government doesn’t even need warrants because people tell them everything they want to know, willingly. How many criminal cases has the government been able to make out of data that Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Facebook have turned over? We might never know.

These reasons, and many more are why it’s time to consider making the move to Free and Open Source software. There’s no 20 page EULAs, no “activation”, no spyware, fewer headaches, and no bullshit.

Big companies have proven time and time again that they are not to be trusted with your information. Why do people agree to give them more and more of it all the time in light of this abuse?

If you need a starting point in learning about Free and Open Source software, what it is, and more reasons you should be replacing your proprietary software with it, here’s some places to read up about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open_source_software

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_and_open_source_software_packages

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

http://www.opensource.org/osd.html

In short, there’s probably a suitable free and open source replacement for almost everything you use, even for operating systems such as Ubuntu and Fedora, office suites such as LibreOffice and Caligra Suite, even replacements for Photoshop, like The Gimp. Of course that’s just naming a few.

Look Daddy, I’m feeding your credit card to the ponies! OM NOM NOM NOM!!!!

Switch now, and you will not only have the peace of mind that nobody is using your computer against you or effectively leasing your own computer out to you, or using your software to censor or spy on you, but also that they can’t rack up fraudulent credit card transactions from an app that is targeted to your children which sells them pretend apples and hay to feed imaginary animals with.

One Apple customer was recently in the news, horrified, that his seven year old daughter managed to rack up the equivalent of about $350 US dollars to his credit card, which Apple simply allowed to go through. If you think Microsoft will be treating customers any better, I would suggest that you’re in for a painful life lesson.

One more disturbing trend….

Each version of Windows comes in yet more “editions”. “Edition” is just a nice way of saying they cripple it a bit more and a bit more to segment the market and create price points. This is something else you never see in Free and Open Source Software, because it would be pointless. Nevertheless, Microsoft has decided that Windows 8 will not play a DVD or Blu Ray without the “Media Pack”, which will be an additional fee.

How much? They declined to say. For reference, adding DVD playback to Windows Media Player in Windows XP cost $25, and adding Blu Ray support to Windows has typically meant a MONTHLY RECURRING SUBSCRIPTION fee because it requires downloading the new content restriction keys every month, so if you stop paying, your discs stop playing. Isn’t that cute?

Benjamin Mako Hill wrote about this deliberate software crippling in an essay about Windows NT 4. He called the disabled features anti-features. The point he made, quite concisely, was that if you pay Microsoft for anything other than the most expensive version, you’re literally paying them to remove features from your software. He also made a list with more examples of products with antifeatures.

There’s much more detail I could go into, but this is yet another wake up call that you deserve Freedom, and Free Software gives you the Freedom you deserve. The Free Software Foundation defines “Free” (as in freedom!) Software as giving the user these four freedoms.

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
• The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

In short, you are free to study, modify, redistribute, and use the software, for any purpose, and you are never “under surveillance” by it or unable to help your friend by sharing the software with him or her.

Microsoft and Apple both have something in common; they try to make the user overlook all of the things they have to sacrifice just to use their software, by making it pretty on the surface. That pretty surface is only skin deep, and underneath it, the internals of the system are as bug-ridden and as DRM-encumbered as ever. Just because you paid for a license doesn’t mean they can’t come back later and terminate it, for any or for no reason, without a refund.

What’s most disturbing, above and beyond anything else I’ve talked about, is when the software is so tied to the hardware that the hardware is useless without their software (such as Windows on ARM or the iPad). What do you do if they throw you out? I guess you have a really expensive door stop. (Did someone say, Plasma Active? Yes, you should use Plasma Active.)

Windows 8 gives you a choice. You can keep surrendering more of your freedom to Microsoft and other malicious software companies every year, or you can get off their slippery slope right now.