AT&T’s new DirecTV Now streaming service isn’t off to the hottest of starts. Although a rush of cordcutters appear to have signed up thanks to the $35-per-month introductory pricing, the service has had some teething issues that have rendered it unusable at times.
Despite angry customers taking to forums and Twitter, the company is sticking to its guns and not offering refunds for the prepaid service.
TechCrunch first noticed the wave of angry customers on Twitter and AT&T’s own user forums. Negative comments have continued since TechCrunch’s first post, mostly complaining about outages, or being constantly re-prompted to enter the password in the middle of streaming a show.
The problems with DirecTV Now are well documented by this point. In AT&T’s defense, doing live streaming of hundreds of cable channels is not an easy thing to pull off, especially since the company tried to put out apps for a multitude of set-top boxes and devices at the same time. But where AT&T seems to have particularly angered customers is in not offering refunds for the buggy service.
Customer logic goes that they’ve been paying for a service that they didn’t get to use because of outages, so AT&T should be providing refunds for the full month’s service. In some rare cases, that does seem to be work, but as a policy, AT&T won’t be giving out refunds. In a statement to BGR, AT&T said that “DIRECTV NOW is a prepaid monthly service that allows customers to cancel at any time. Since charges are prepaid each month, customers can enjoy the service through the end of the current billing cycle. Refunds are not issued for partial months.”
