Is This a Bad Omen for DirecTV Deals Going Forward?
Unless you’re shopping for new DirecTV service, you likely haven’t seen the changes to the DirecTV website and, especially, the package pricing.
First-year charges for new DirecTV customers now begin at $59.99 per month for the Select Package and top out at $134.99 per month for the Premier Package.
It was only a week ago that the new customer pricing looked like this…
So, an increase of $25 per month across all first-year packages.
As most DirecTV customers know, first-year pricing is discounted to “get your in the door.” In your second year of the two-year contract, your monthly price will increase significantly, with even the lowest priced package hitting $100+ per month.
Now that DirecTV (really AT&T since they acquired DirecTV in 2015) has increased it’s introductory pricing, second year and beyond pricing for DirecTV will likely be even higher.
Negotiate Your DirecTV Pricing
Which makes it even more important – if saving money is of interest to you – to negotiate, correctly, the price you pay for your DirecTV service.
However, I am wondering if this base price change by DirecTV will have an impact on DirecTV’s (AT&T’s) willingness to provide retention deals going forward.
Only time will tell, I guess.
In the meantime, you may still be able to negotiate a significant savings (anywhere from $50 – $75 off per month) on your DirecTV bill with the tips I provide in the posts below.
Read “How to Lower Your DirecTV Bill” if you want a quick-hitting piece on the best strategy for lowering your bill.
If you want a little more detail and specifics on how my own call to DirecTV went last year, read “Here’s How My 2018 Lower-My-Bill Call to DirecTV Went.”
And for the most detail, read “Lower Your DirecTV Bill with These Tips.”
Wrap Up
This past May, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said during a JP Morgan investor conference, “But the other element to give you sustainable profitability is cleaning up the customer base. Because we have a number of customers on our rolls that are very low-ARPU customers (average revenue per user) and we don’t see any line of sight to getting them to a profitable level. And so as these customers’ contracts or whatnot are coming up, there are many who are opting to just leave, and it’s caused churn to spike considerably.”
Which, to put it in a shorter, more blunt way, means, getting low-ARPU customers off the DirecTV service is the key to profitability for AT&T’s video business.
And those of us who negotiate with DirecTV are most assuredly considered low-ARPU customers.
The only question is, do they really want to get no revenue rather than $45 – $60 per month many of us deal-getters generate?
Guess we’ll find out when it’s time for our retention calls.
