I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner, but just before AT&T earnings does seem like John Legere’s style.
T-Mobile on Wednesday finally jumped on the DirecTV Now trouble train, announcing it is scrapping its DirecTV Now promotion and now offering Hulu.
According to the carrier, AT&T customers who switched to the Un-carrier for its DirecTV Now promotion (which offered a free year of the new video service) will also receive a free year of Hulu to make up for the for former’s poor performance.
“It turns out DirecTV Now is barely watchable, but we’ve got our customers’ backs,” T-Mobile CEO Legere said. “So, every former AT&T customer who took us up on our offer now gets a free year of Hulu on us – and they get to enjoy it on a faster, more advanced network with unlimited data.”
The Un-carrier said former AT&T customers who signed up for the free year of DirecTV Now will receive a notification from T-Mobile in the coming weeks with a code redeemable for a free year of Hulu Limited Commercials service. Customers will still receive the free year of DirecTV Now, with the added bonus of the Hulu subscription, T-Mobile said.
The move comes little over a week after reports began to spread across multiple media outlets that hiccups in AT&T’s new streaming service are leaving a bad taste in users’ mouths.
According to users, outages, errors, and log-on issues persist more than six weeks after DirecTV Now’s launch. The troubles have caused some to liken the service to a “dumpster fire” and label it “nothing but problems. One user reported DirecTV Now was “the most frustrating, disappointing TV experience ever.”
However, AT&T has insisted fixes are necessary with any new technology and said it is “continuously updating the app to provide a better experience for customers.”
We’ll find out later today how DirecTV Now did in the fourth quarter, but we already have some small idea thanks to an 8-K filing from AT&T last week. In it, the carrier reported more than 200,000 video net adds, which it said were “entirely driven by DirecTV Now.”
