We were paying over $250 per month for a TV service that we didn't really take advantage of. We had dropped the movie and sports channels and that took it down to $150 a month or thereabouts. Then we downgraded our package a level or 2 and cut the bill down to $130 a month. We were only watching between 5 and 10 channels, and there wasn't anything on worth watching most of the time. We also have really fast Internet services and can get the exact same thing for $45 per month with a good package from Sling TV and an over-the-air antenna. More can be found on the 2nd entry on the Thoughts Dump Page.
This was... let's say it's a process that's borderline maddening. When you call to cancel, tell them you're moving to an area DirecTV doesn't service, such as Europe when they ask you why. Don't mention Latin America as they have working services down there. They can't talk you out of that and it will effectively bypass the FOURTY FIVE MINUTES of what's basically 100% marketing promos to try to get you to stay with them. And they're insistent on it, too. It's borderline maddening. If you do say anything other than "I'm moving to <non-DirecTV service area>, you can basically put the phone down for the next 45 minutes and tune it out.
After the 45 minutes of marketing promos, we finally got the ball rolling on dumping DirecTV. It was a fairly painless process (barring the ETFs and the fact thay they didn't prorate the ETF and the rest of the month's service for a (former) 15 year customer), and they were quick to let us know when our service would be disconnected and what we had to do, which for us was nothing since we are one of the few people with non-leased HD equipment. (Our DVR is an HR44/200.) If you *really* want, you can harvest the HDD out of the DVR and use it as a spare hard drive, though I don't recommend it if it's a Seagate or Western Digital Green drive, or a Toshiba drive. Hitachi, HGST, and any other WD drive is safe to use.
DirecTV, before being bought out by AT&T, would prorate the remaining service for the month. Now they don't. Additionally, if you have an equipment upgrade of any kind, you get locked into a 2-year contract without being told about it, and you have to pay an ETF to get out of it. Depending on what you got and how long it's been, that ETF can be quite high. So keep that in mind if you're planning on cancelling your service.
All we did after getting off of the phone with DirecTV was wait. Our service was officially disconnected on Sunday, July 12, 2020 between 01:00 and 09:00 that morning. When service is disconnected, your equipment on the account will kick Error 726 back at you, indicating that your service needs to be refreshed. Earlier today, I went and reset all of the equipment back to defaults and removed it from service. The cabling and satellite dish still remains, though they are soon to be gone. We had DirecTV since roughly 2005, when we kicked Dish Network to the curb for their shoddy customer service. Not any longer.
I think that's about all for our DirecTV dump experience. Hope you enjoyed.