Complaint about losing channels

Dear AT&T,

I do not appreciate how difficult you’ve made it for a long-time customer whose payments have always been on time to contact you. I’m sure it was carefully thought out to keep customers from being able to register complaints, and I have one.

You have discontinued the local Fox channel, which has many programs and sports events that I can get nowhere else. This is especially true during football season and is one of the main reasons I chose Directv because sports is 90% of what I watch on TV. My only other choice out in the rural area where I live is Dish, and I gather you’re cutting CBS off it. Also, the CBSports channel, which carries Big 12 football games, has also been discontinued by you. However, I notice that there has been no discount on my bill for your decision to cut these channels from your sports package.

Complaining to a giant organization is generally ineffective because I am only one of thousands, and you’ve already figured out how you’re going to deal with complainers. I seriously doubt this will be read by anyone with any power to change the situation at all, but I will register my complaint anyway.

When time comes for me to make a decision about what to do when my contract expires and you raise my monthly bill, I will be looking at the sports apps available and seeing if I can piece something together that allows me to get all the sports events I used to always get before you decided to kill my local channel. Maybe I’ll buy an antenna so I can get the local channels that way.

Anyway, I wanted to register my dissatisfaction with the way you cut out my ability to watch the Dallas Cowboys and all the other sports events that I could get if I had the Fox channel and CBSports..

Sincerely,
Edwin (Edited as per community guidelines)
#(Edited as per community guidelines)

You aren’t registering anything this is a customer populated forum not At&t so you are correct they won’t see the complaint. Also do some research the network pulled the feed during contract negotiations

How does one complain to AT&T so that they will see it? I looked for something on the website, and this was all I could find. I appreciate your help.

They are well aware and complaining to them won’t force tegna to restore the feed  

Yes, I suspected as much. I assume this is a squabble about money with us customers being the injured parties caught in the middle. I have no idea who is being unreasonable, AT&T or tegna, whoever that is. It's a big game with lots of dollars at stake, and stockholders want results. All I know is that I'm paying for something I'm not getting, and the same is true of everyone in my area, I guess. AT&T is a huge organization, and I'm one little insignificant and dispensable customer, a (Edited per community guidelines) in a hurricane, so to speak. Nevertheless, when customers are used as pawns in a larger game and not getting what they signed up for, they need to complain and see if it helps. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.  I want to remind AT&T that customers don't like this and won't put up with it for long. If they are ignored, at least they tried before switching to plan B. But when any avenue for complaint is blocked or sidetracked to some harmless forum, that tells you something about what the organization thinks about customer service.  

I completely agree. We pay for the regional sports package so we are paying for this programming twice and can't watch it on either station, total (Edited per community guidelines).

I would also like to add that if AT&T has a dispute with tegna, that should be their problem and not mine. When I agreed to the package, I agreed to get those channels for an agreed upon monthly fee and AT&T agreed to deliver them. There was no mention of me losing any channels if a disagreement arose with tegna. AT&T either fulfills the agreement it made with me, or it doesn't. That's the way I see it, and that's the way it should be.

TOS read it🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦

DirecTV is offering a $20 credit for the inconvenience, even though it's Tegna that pull your station. Learn the truth about these crazy "retransmission negotiations" in this short video .... https://youtu.be/rppTzSP5NI4 

Nobody is "registering" anything here. This is a public forum of other customers. Official support is by picking up the phone and calling them. However in this situation calling them will not change the situation.

Agreement came up between AT&T (DirecTV and U-Verse TV) and the local affiliate owner Tegna. As is their right, Tegna pulled the feed to try and leverage a better deal. They cannot be forced to return the feed.

Because TV providers do not own the channels, they each have in their Terms of Service that channels may change at any time. There is never a guarantee to provide any channel all the time, or at all.

Changing providers will not protect you. They all go through this at one time or another. Not too long ago Nexstar pulled this stunt with DirecTV and now they are doing the same to Dish. Unfortunately local affiliate owners are pulling their feeds more often in recent years during negotiation time.

Consider that the local affiliate owner getting a better deal means higher cost for the TV provider. If TV provider's costs go up then so do our bills that much more. Regardless of who you like more, a deal in the channel's favor is not in the customer's favor.

My suggestion is to use a regular antenna for the free broadcast or even see if Locast is an option where you live. Otherwise you have many other channels to enjoy. I would hope nobody is so dependent on a single channel that their world falls apart without it.

National Geographic was one of the few goto to channels I had and now it's gone. Maybe I need to be gone for I am getting pretty disgusted with DTV. First you took my military channel and now this. Yes I am close to taking a hike though I was one of your first on board customers. I expect some kind of tradeoff. Thanks for listening.