What is owed after cancellation

If the service was suspended because it was past due then you have to pay the full amount.  DTV has no way to know if you are using the service or not unless you call to suspended it from 1 to 6 months per year.

@jeh0123 

What do you mean you "allowed" your DirecTV service be suspended? If you manually suspended it then that is for up to 6 months and automatically resumes.

When the account resumes, it charges you for that service month. You cannot go directly from suspending to canceling. Can only cancel from active service.

During suspension there was a small monthly vacation hold cost of $5. That wouldn't result in a "significant" past due.

So did you just stop paying your bill because of your TV not working? If so there was the problem. You still owe the bill. If you didn't want service then it was your responsibility to cancel at that time and not let it automatically go through past due process. Simply put, ignoring a bill doesn't make it go away.

Maybe suspended isn’t the right term. I didn’t pay my bill so therefore had no service. I can understand owing whatever was due up to that point, but not beyond. They absolutely do know exactly when I stopped using the service because they turned it off. I was way past my contract end, so why would they continue to add to the bill?

DTV is a subscription that you pay for until you cancel it, being suspended for past due doesn't change that. 

@jeh0123 

Not paying the bill isn't how you cancel. It just racks up a past due that you owe. Doesn't matter if you aren't using it or having a technical issue.

They don't know when you stop using the service as satellite is a one-way transmission. All they can see is if account is on or not, not your watching it. If you refuse to pay your bill then eventually you are involuntarily shut off but that doesn't remove the bill.

Your service agreement (contract) doesn't stop your bill. You aren't turned off at the end of it. All that service agreement means is if you cancel before it is over that you pay an Early Cancellation Fee (ECF) based on how many months you had left on it. It does not automatically turn off your service, stop billing, or remove past due because you completed the time. You are just month to month at that point meaning you use and pay for the service until you actually call them and cancel to setup the final bill.

Also ECF is based on how many active months you have remaining. If you got interrupted for the past due before your agreement was over then it puts the agreement time on hold. So the next few months do not count in your favor because it wasn't active. In that situation an ECF would be valid.

Simply put, refusing to pay a bill is not how you cancel or avoid an ECF or other charges. You should have called to cancel at that time so could be prepared for your final bill. At this point you owe the past due you hadn't paid, any late fees, and possibly an ECF if there was time remaining before the service interrupted.

I wouldn't be surprised if the bill includes any non-return fees (NRF). If an account goes from interruption to full on cancellation for non-payment, then NRF bills immediately just like ECF. I assume this is to encourage someone to pay their balance in full (minus ECF and NRF) to restore their service, which means bill is less as those other charges were removed, and continue on as a customer.

So if you plan to keep DirecTV canceled then all you can do is pay the bill you allowed to build up.