4K SERVICE

There is no monthly fee for 4K service. However, depends on your current equipment if any upgrade comes with any new receiver services. What are the models of each box you have now?

All upgrades come with a 24 month service agreement. That "catch" has been how upgrades have worked for about 20 years. They will not give you something free or discounted without something in return.

The Equipment Protection Plan (what (I assume you mean by maintenance tech cost) is optional. Personally I don't recommend it as not a good value in the long run.

DirecTV has not deleted any channels recently. What is going on is that Tegna's carriage agreement with them came up. As a result Tegna chose (as is their right) to remove all their local affiliate feeds from DirecTV until a new agreement is reached. This is normal carriage negotiations and Tegna is holding out to get higher rates. This is just like the last time their agreement came up. So hopefully like last time it will not last very long.

There is a $7.00 additional TV fee.

The $7 is only if they are adding a TV. If they are replacing/upgrading an existing box, then number of TVs do not change so there is not an additional $7.

response to Juniper from original post.
I upgraded to a

Genie Gen 3, Model HR54-700 many years ago with three mini

Model C41W-500 Receivers. The protection plan is free for 30/days then I would have to pay a fee or I can be dropped.

@jnoriega00 

The protection plan has a 30 day no charge/no claim period. Similar to insurance it is not intended to be added and cover an existing issue. But 'sometimes' an agent will cover a delivery fee or such initially as a courtesy, though my understanding they are not supposed to do that as ethically counts as "buying" a upsell.

If you have more than 24 months of active service with account in good standing since your last upgrade (including adding any additional TVs), then you should be ready for a free upgrade. That sounds like the agent planned to "come back" and position the offer you should have as what they personally worked out for you. I really hate when they pull that tactic. Sure sometimes coming back with a good offer is legit, but in your case you should have that free upgrade ready regardless.

A 4K upgrade would require replacing one of your C41W with a C61K which is wired only, or possibly the new C71WK (Gemini) which can be wired or wireless. There is no change to monthly cost as you already have all receiver services.

I literally just got off the phone with them and I am a customer of over 20 years of DIRECTV at first they charged me $99 to order the box at which I was fine with and some reason they said they could not complete the order had to transfer me to customer technical support. They then told me I had to sign a 24 month agreement to get the box. I told them I did not want to sign an agreement. I would just wanted to pay the $99 and get the box and then said if I do not sign the agreement the box would be 199 now and I hung up. 

@Jcasuccio 

Upgrades of equipment come with a 24 month service agreement. You cannot purchase to own boxes as that went away years ago. So yes the 24 month agreement is unavoidable.

If it has been over 24 months of active service since your last upgrade/additional TV, with account in good standing, a free upgrade is normally expected. However, it depends on your current setup if it is just a simple upgrade or if you have to replace more than just a single box.

What are the models of each box you have now?

Are you adding a TV or keeping the same number on the account?

@Jcasuccio 

Also, $99 is the one-time lease cost of the Mini Genie Client when not covered by a free upgrade. Agent saying $199 without agreement was making that up as there has never been such an option for Mini Genies. DirecTV went to lease-only, getting rid of the purchase to own options without agreement, upon launch of the original Genie.

Upgrade free or at one-time lease cost comes with the 24 month service agreement either way. No way around that.

Doesn't matter if it is owned or not, new equipment to the account triggers a new 2 year contract.

Owned equipment did not trigger a new service agreement. You paid full retail cost (i.e. $499 for a regular HDDVR) and got a 1 year warranty instead of free (or discounted) with ongoing warranty.

However, owned options stopped being offered about a decade ago (Genie setups had no owned options and shortly after they launched the owned options of other boxes were discontinued). And a few years ago they stopped reactivating owned boxes. So the owned options no longer exist.