The $300 lease program was for suckers

And I apparently was one of them.

See, they can't just turn off your channels because they launched a new satellite. What they do is get the first batch of suckers to lease (not buy) the new non-tivo hd dvr's for $300 knowing that for those who don't immediately bite, they'll just throw it in for free.

Sure enough, I got the automated message on my answering machine telling me I needed to contact them for a free equipment upgrade because pretty soon I would not be able to get any hd channels.

I called up and sure enough, they're sending me out the same damn non-tivo hd dvr they expected me to pay $300 to lease back in September!

Great marketing Directv. Always assume your customers are stupid and treat them acccordingly. After all, most of the stupid ones will never find out and the smart ones would have left anyways.

So pretty soon at least I'll get the expanded set of hd channels but still will have to burn my old shows to dvd and give up the tivo feature where it records programs it thinks you'll like.

What brings my directv value to me is that I end up watching programming I never knew existed because of that feature. Somebody at HBR should write a case study on this.