Legal Question in Consumer Law in Arizona

I have DirecTV and I hate that they dropped the Viacom channels since it was the only thing that I watched. I was looking at the customer agreement and it says

"d) Our Programming Changes. Many factors affect the availability, cost and quality of programming and may influence the decision to raise prices and the amount of any increase. These include, among others, programming and other costs, consumer demand, market and shareholder expectations, and changing business conditions. Accordingly, we must reserve the unrestricted right to change, rearrange, add or delete our programming packages, the selections in those packages, our prices, and any other Service we offer, at any time. We will endeavor to notify you of any change that is within our reasonable control and its effective date. In most cases this notice will be about one month in advance. You always have the right to cancel your Service, in whole or in part, if you do not accept the change (see Section 5). If you cancel your Service, a deactivation fee (described in Sections 2 & 5(b)) or other charges may apply. Credits, if any, to your account will be posted as described in Section 5. If you do not cancel, your continued receipt of our Service will constitute acceptance".

Now, correct me if I'm wrong but it says that I have the right to cancel it if some of my programming is taken away and it says that usually they'll give a one month notice and that's nothing close to the 3 day notice they gave about the Viacom channels and (I have zero legal knowledge) but it seems that I can cancel my contract without penalty in this case. The equipment lease contract however, says otherwise, but the customer agreement doesn't. There's a lot of rumors on the internet of people getting bill discounts and free hbo, etc (I'm not really interested in that) but very few about people ending their contract without penalty. i just got directv a few months ago but since this dispute has already gone on for a week, i am very eager to get dish but there's no way I can afford that early termination fee, especially since the programming changes wasn't my fault and the agreement says that an early termination fee MAY (it doesn't say will) apply. Thanks


Asked on 7/18/12, 8:42 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys

Joyce Johnson-Stovall Johnson Stovall and Associates PLLC

Seems like you are going to have to rid this out until the agreement terminates.

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Answered on 7/19/12, 7:25 pm


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