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  • 2017-09-27 (xsd:date)
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  • Is DIRECTV Offering NFL Subscription Refunds Over Anthem Protests? (en)
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  • In the midst of a September 2017 controversy over a protest movement among professional football players to take a knee or stay in their locker rooms during pre-game renditions of the U.S. national anthem, social media rumors and news content suggested that satellite television company DIRECTV was offering refunds of NFL Sunday Ticket subscriptions to disgruntled customers: The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published a far-from-definitive report about the rumor, stating that at least some customers could cancel their subscriptions by citing dissatisfaction with the protests, although DIRECTV's policy did normally allow for such cancellations: Nonetheless, the WSJ's reporting indicated information about DIRECTV's purportedly making exceptions to their cancellation policy was inconsistent: Other news reports on the subject frequently cited the WSJ (and not DIRECTV) as a source, and none of them referenced any official announcement from the satellite TV provider: Some versions of the rumor stated that DIRECTV had announced an NFL subscription refund policy specifically linked to the protests. But comments posted to DIRECTV's Facebook wall by customers appeared to fall into two camps — some subscribers merely repeated the rumor, while others reported they had been unable to obtain refunds: Some customer tweets suggested that subscribers had been able to negotiate NFL package cancellations with DIRECTV individually, not as part of a policy enacted by the TV provider: Some subscribers reported terminating their DIRECTV service entirely after being unable to obtain NFL Sunday Ticket refunds, while others said that DIRECTV had changed their policy to make NFL cancellations even more difficult: We contacted DIRECTV via Facebook and Twitter in an attempt to obtain clarification of their purported NFL cancellation policy, but we were unable to reach anyone in their media relations department. We also could not locate any responses from DIRECTV to offended subscribers in which the company definitively stated they had put any such policy in place. (en)
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