Dear Direct TV

I'm sure you've all seen the DIRECTV commercials, with the celebrities reading "real" letters by "real customers". Being a new DIRECTV subscriber, I feel inspired to write a letter of my own.

Dear DIRECTV,

I never knew I wanted satellite TV. I had friends and loved ones tell me horror stories of satellite TV gone bad. No reception in bad weather. Unsteady reception. Exhorbitant fees for repairs and maintenance. No local channels. So I really had never given satellite TV a second thought.

Until I had to deal with Warner Cable. They are your competition, your nemesis, and quite possibly, the imps of Satan.

First things first. My name is Trisa and I am a recovering cableholic. I love being able to watch MTV repeats at 3 a.m. I love to watch surgical procedures and live births. I even love playing super sleuth and watching the crime shows and figuring out whodunnit. And I believed that Warner Cable was my only option.

Warner was completely happy to take my money each month, but when the service went down, and I needed a technician, well that's when it got ugly.

The tech came early on the scheduled morning, walked into my backyard and disappeared. Fifteen minutes later, he's knocking at the door again, "Ma'am, we have a little problem."

Ok. We'd already had a "little problem" when he tried to make me pay again for the service call for which I'd prepaid when I placed the order.

"You see, your neighbors have a dog."

Ok. But it's in their yard.

"Yes ma'am. But my box is in their yard. And they have a dog and their gate is locked and noone is home."

Uh huh. So how is this my problem?

"Well, you see, arrangements have to be made for me to have access to the yard. When you do that, then call me back and I'll come back out."

Excuse me? The backyards in my neighborhood have easements for all the utilities and we are supposed to keep our yards accessible to repairmen at all times. Now because the neighbors have locked up their vicious beast to protect the children in the neighborhood from a certain scourge of rabies, I can't have cable?

"Well ma'am, they're not supposed to keep me from having access to their yard..."

So you are telling me that I have to go ask neighbors that I don't even know if you can have permission to go in their yard so that I can have cable?

"Yes ma'am," he answered and had the nerve to smile as if the problem had been solved.

When he left I called Warner Cable and spoke to many people in many departments and they all agreed that it was indeed my job to secure their techinicians access to their equipment.

What I don't understand, and the thing that's really upsetting me is, that I didn't put your equipment in someone else's yard. Your equipment for my service should be in my yard so that you can access it with my permission. You need to call the neighbors and say, 'Hi this is Asswipe with Warner Cable. My technician needs to get into your yard to do some service work.' It is your equipment and your responisibility.

"Well, ma'am, they might not be a Warner Cable customer."

They're not a customer and your equipment is in their yard?!

So, thank you DIRECTV for sending out a service man who was 5 hours late, and for whom I had to miss an entire's day of work. But I have television. And life is good.