DTV Requiring Separate Accounts for Home and RV

[ronlin11]

I was talking to a man in the doctors office waiting room today who had a 5th Wheel that he used to go up to the mountains in the summer (this is in Arizona). He had standard definition on a dome with DTV and wanted to upgrade before they cut it off. When he contacted them they told him that he would now need to open a second account for the RV since he had an account at his home. DTV said they would be requiring all RV owners that had accounts at home and a RV to have separate accounts now. Needless to say he canceled his DTV account. Has anyone heard of this before?

[jbhobbs54]

I have not heard of this. Change the location names on your units to be different rooms in the S&B, they don't need to know where they are actually located. I think I have mine listed at family room, bedroom, den, garage.

[engine103]

My receiver that is used exclusively for the MH is listed on my account as "portable". Has been that way for a long time. I don't request change of location as I'm not gone that long to bother with it.

[DebbieMH]

I don't think they will ever know that one of our receivers is in the motorhome. I never call and change locations, just use the OTA antenna for local channels where we are. Works pretty well most of the time.

[Gary.Jones]

DTV and Dish (I believe) use what they call "Spot Beams", and I'd be willing to bet that it is more related to somehow determining your location by GPS than truely having a series of "beams", but if you travel more than ~ 300-350 miles from your "real" location, you will leave the spot beams, and then not be able to view any "network channel (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, PBS etc). This is done because local channels make their money from sat companies buy charging them for the "eyes" of the viewers who might be watching a network (don't care if you ever watch CBS, but if you are in location X, then the local CBS channel wants to be paid for the possibility that you are watching CBS, even if you aren't). So the whole idea of where you are located is a big deal. If you want to watch CBS 500 miles from where your equipment is licensed to be, then you are going to be outside of the spotbeam and you will get no channels. So if you happen to want to watch a network program, the only way to get it is as Lynn does, get it on the over-the-air antenna, or if not available there, is to tell the sat company that you have changed locations.

Word on the street is that with Dish, you can use their app to change your location. With Direct, you either need to call them and change your location (this can start a major hassle for you and do this at your own risk, as often they totally screw up everything and you risk no sat TV for weeks at a time to get it resoled) or you pay an additional $15 a month for DNS (Distant Network Service) out of NYC or LA and you always get your network channels out of LA or NYC. You dont pick which you get.... if east of the MS River, you get NYC.... if west of the Mississippi River, you get LA.

As I have posted in a separate thread, and you can also read in 10 or 20 other complete threads on iRV2, DirecTV is becoming, or has already become, IMPOSSIBLE to work with and VERY RV unfriendly. I terminated service after 4.5 years.... not because I needed a separate account (I already had one) but simply because they were the most frustrating company to work with in trying to replace a failed DVR while on the road. It was amazing how much trouble this simple task became.

So the question has been asked as to how will Direct know you are in the RV????? The simple answer/guess is that they will know the third time in 2 weeks that you call them and ask them to change your "spot beam" (location). You either buy and sell houses very quickly, or you are traveling in a truck or motorhome or RV ...... and you probably admit it to them to justify when you change "locals".

I am now streaming TV on YouTubeTV and Roku and that is far from perfect, but AT LEAST, I no longer have to try to deal with the DirecTV customer service people or their supervisors which is akin to making the decision to stick out one of your hands and let someone else hit it with a hammer 10 times....

Gary

[MRUSA14]

Originally Posted by Gary.Jones

DTV and Dish (I believe) use what they call "Spot Beams", and I'd be willing to bet that it is more related to somehow determining your location by GPS than truely having a series of "beams", but if you travel more than ~ 300-350 miles from your "real" location, you will leave the spot beams, and then not be able to view any "network channel (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, PBS etc).

I believe the signal actually is beamed. By doing this, they can use the same frequencies again in other spot beamed areas of the country. For example, the same frequencies that deliver the signals in Raleigh, NC could be used again in Little Rock AR, and because they are spot beamed they would not interfere with each other.

[Bob_C]

When I upgraded my receivers last winter, they wanted to send them to my billing address......I was in Yuma, so I told them I had a winter and summer home, and needed them for the Arizona home......no mention of an RV......got them, and one was DOA, so they sent a tech out to confirm......he confirmed, and had a newer model receiver on his truck and installed it.....after he left, I chatted with Direct, and had them send me a receiver that I ordered for my setup......it came and I sent the techs one back.....again, no mention of an RV.......with a H-24 receiver, I can use my std def portable on the road, and when stationary, can use it with my tripod slimline dish for HD, which is a SWM setup.....got both ways covered....

[Gary.Jones]

Marc: You may well be right on the use of real Spot Beams beamed from space. I don't know how they accomplish that and it seems pretty hard to imagine that they can direct 300-700 mile beams to earth from the sat locations, but maybe they can (they can do remarkable things these days.... ) but regardless of how they do it.... there are spotbeams... If you don't stray far from home to do your "camping", you probably have never left your spotbeam....

Bob

My situation is amazingly similar with completely opposite results. While on the road, my 4.5 year old DirecTV HR44 DVR finally died and I needed a replacement.

1.) DirecTV sent a DOA refurbished replacement (same as you)
2.) They sent a different replacement which 2 out of 3 Tech supervisors said would not work on my SWM system, and in fact, the different DVR (HR54) system did not boot up and program (different)
3.) With tech service supervisor on phone, we finally got the HR-44 (DOA one) working (it would not turn on) working and watched TV 1 night (different)
4.) HR-44 would not turn on again the next morning. Told tech service it would not turn on. They refused to send me another functional DVR unit (different)
5.) Was in Sault St. Marie at the time with a local DirectTV installer office there and asked if I could have one of their techs come to my coach. Was told that was impossible as those techs only understood home installations (different)
6.) Decided to divert from intended path to go to Middlebury (factory location) to have them work on it
7.) Had to pay $160 to have a DirecTV tech from Elkhart to come to Shipshewana to see if I was telling the truth (neither of the units I had would turn on (DOA) (Different
8.) Asked if I could us the techs replacement (which worked just fine) and was told, "No these are different divisions of the company.... if you want the one that I have, it will cost you $350 for it.... no exchanges (Different from what you were told and what you were allowed to do)
---------------
these 2 are not the same....
1.) I bought a new HR-54 from Amazon (~$80) and shipped it to myself. Installed it and it worked fine for 3-4 hours. Notified Direct I owned my own unit, this is what it is, registered it officially and TV came on
2.) while watching TV, message came on screen asking if I wanted to upgrade DVR software for a completely different unit than I had and they knew I bought and registered and I made the mistake of assuming that they did mean software appropriate for my purchased unit.... (but they didn't), and downloaded software that made my purchased DVR unable to get the correct DVR software over-written on top of it (thus "killing" my purchased machine.
3.) At that point, I cancelled my $150/month "service" and will never own DirecTV anything the rest of my life..... think converting to DISH or going 100% streaming

The point of this whole post is that a.) Apparently what you are told by that their policy depends on who you talk to, B.) there apparently is no real policy, c.) DirecTV's customer service is amazingly incompetent, d.) DirecTV is definitely not "RV friendly".

Things are not good at DirecTV

Gary

[smlranger]

Direct TV told me two weeks ago that I would need a second account for my 'vacation home' which is a 5th wheel on a permanent site in Myrtle Beach. I was calling to get a tech to come and fine tune my recently relocated SWM dish. I just told them I would get DISH for my vacation home. I'm not planning to really do that unless Direct messes with me. We do get our Virginia locals here.

[deaton]

I had Direct TV service for almost 20 years. When we started RV’ing in 2008, I bought my first Winegard Traveler (might have been 09) and when we went on the road, we took one or two boxes out of the sticks and bricks and all was good. I knew DTV policy was to get two accounts, even back then, but I knew dozens of folks with DTV in their coach and everybody was doing the same thing.

In 2014, I retired and moved to the Texas Hill Country and started to build our retirement home. We were living in the coach on our property and not traveling. We canceled DTV since we needed TV and high speed internet in the coach and we had cable right on the property.

In the spring of 2016, the house was done and we called DTV to come out and install service to the house and restore service to the RV. The Tech advised that he could not hook up the RV unless we set up a separate second account and paid twice for the service. I asked him if DTV thought I could be in two places at once, and I got the answer I expected, “I don’t make the rules” and “our new owners are seriously enforcing this policy.

So we canceled DTV and went to DISH and all is good. As others have pointed out, DISH has far more realistic policies. One account can cover both home and RV, and so long as you pay for each receiver, you can go have about as many as you want. I have six, including two Hopper 3’s.

As this enforcement of dual accounts policy at DTV filters down through the RV community, I have lots of friends who have been joining me at DISH. Ultimately, with the growth of streaming options and improved bandwidth at cheaper rates, I think this whole satellite thing may go the way of eight track tapes.

[garysfb]

I've had DTV since 2001 in my S&B. Added a receiver in my first MH in 2007, no problem. Added two DTV units at our lake house a couple years later, no problem. DTV had them labeled as 'outside units'. Bought our current MH in 2018 had 2 units put in, no problem from DTV. Even when I call for help I let them know I'm in the RV. No problem. I've been hearing rumors for years about having to have separate accounts, but it hasn't happened to me. At one time I had 7 at home and 2 each in the lake house and MH. One rumor I heard from a DTV (AT&T) tech was that if you upgraded your equipment at home they would force you to separate accounts. Upgraded and no problems.

Bottom line is that I have all my units on one account and outside my 5 unit Genie system each extra unit is $7 a month. Please don't pass this info on to DTV!

[deaton]

Gary, I think what you describe is part of the problem......uneven enforcement of their policies. DTV is a big outfit and every time you call you get a different person and the vast majority of them know very little, if anything, about service in an RV. And everybody seems to have their private “workaround” process to get what we all seek - a fair sensible policy.

In effect I did what you are doing for several years and finally I got face to face with a person who was determined not to play the game and I just got tired of it myself.

[garysfb]

Dan I agree with your assessment of DTV and its only gotten worse since AT&T took over. They just haven't pissed me off quite enough yet to switch.

[Dieselgem]

I have a Dish receiver that can be activated by the month if we want to use it. However, we have been streaming and even switched the S&B over. Works for us.