Like all leased equipment, I thought that receivers had to be returned at the end of service. But then I saw this on another website:
Also in response to the comments below about leased recievers and returning them when you cancel, here is a lil fyi. You lease these recievers for the term of the contract and after that expires the recievers are then yours and you do not need to return them. You can keep them until you decide to reactivate your account and as long as you dont add a new reciever you dont have to sign a new contract you will be paying monthly and can cancell anytime. If directv is asking for a reciever back on an expired contract do do it. They will just refurbish it and use it to tie another person to a contract, thats one of the ways they make their money. Last week I was at a customers who signed a new contract and had to get new receivers, they cut her off 8 days short of current contract and asked her to return the receivers, I had to school on this practice. A reciever is what ties you to a 2 year contract, not the service, so keep that in mind.
Since DirecTV contracts are nortoriously difficult to find, before I spend a lot of energy on this, is it possible this is true? That the units are in fact lease-to-own?
And of course, found the contract online. :smack:
Like with cell phones, the valuable part of the business is the long term service contract, not the equipment.
What did the online contract say? We cancelled one of our 3 receivers, and yes, DirecTv did require that send it back to them.