Monday February 28, 2011, San Clemente State Beach

No rain today just blue skies with a cool breeze. The mud is drying up around the coach. I spent some time talking to a neighbor. It turns out he is a retired policeman from Riverside, CA. Bill and John Came back from their bike ride about noon. Bill had to go to Lowe’s and Gerri wanted to go to Staples or Office Max to look for items she wanted for party favors for Glenna’s 90th birthday party this Saturday. Elaine went with Gerri and I. Our first stop was Staples. I saw that there were two nearby caches so I dropped them off. The first cache was at the corner of the parking lot, when I got there I met two other cachers that had been unable to find the cache. After some conversation and a short search we found it. We then went to the next one and made short work of it. I picked up Geri and Elaine and after stops at Costco and Office Max we headed back to the RV park.

There was a nearby cache that Bill and Elaine had already found, so I went after it on my own. There was no parking near it so I had to walk several hundred yards. I had no problem finding the cache and soon was on my way home.

In the evening I turned on the TV hoping to watch an old western. The Encore Western Channel wouldn’t come on, a message on the screen said I wasn’t subscribed.. I thought that was odd since we had been watching it yesterday. We hadn’t watched TV in the Motor Home since September and earlier I notice that we were only getting the major network feeds from the west coast, we had been getting both east and west. I called DirecTV. They have this really annoying voice system that never seems to understand what I say. I finally got an agent on the phone. He told me that I didn’t subscribe to the Encore channels. I explained I had watched a movie on Encore Westerns until 12:45 this morning. His response was that was because I had taken a free offer in December for a package that included the Encore channels and that the package expired on March 2nd. I pointed out to him that today was February 28th and March 2nd was still three days away. I also pointed out to him that this system was in a RV and we hadn’t used it during December and would have had no reason to subscribe to additional service. Finally he transferred me to another agent who said the reason I had Encore yesterday and not today was because of a three day promotion that ended yesterday. Remember the old saying that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing? She told me the only way to the Encore channels is to subscribe to Starz movie channels. I explained I didn’t want the Starz channels, she insisted there was no other way to get Encore, She gave me some pricing information but for the question about distant network service (DNS) she had to transfer me to another department. I explained to that agent that we had been getting both east and west feeds for several years. Eventually he got around to telling me that the programming had changed (read that as a price increase) and that in November DirecTV had sent out mail about choosing one or both coasts under the new pricing and that I hadn’t responded. By my not responding I was assigned the west coast because of my billing address. I remember the card and know I call DirecTV at the time and inquired about the change. The agent had record of my call but said I hadn’t specified which coast I wanted. I told him I wanted both because we travel in the east. He said that couldn’t be done because of a law change now prevents customers from having feeds from both east and west coasts. I ask him about changing the DNS when we were in the east, he said I couldn’t do that because by address was in the west. I gave up after awhile, deciding to call back and deal with a different agent. I don’t know why they can’t sell you channels you want without packaging them with channels you aren’t interested in.

After a late supper, I checked my e-mail, finances and went to bed. Dealing with DirecTV is as exhausting as dealing with Verizon.