DirecTV Now, AT&T’s virtual pay-TV offering, launched about 2 months ago to fanfare worthy of the Hindenburg’s maiden voyage.

On paper, it ticked all the boxes that AT&T hoped would make it a success: A few dozen channels, comparable to basic cable packages, available via the web on multiple devices, for the reasonable price of $35 a month.

In reality, it’s been a disaster worthy of Hindenbrug comparisons, leaving paying customers dealing with:

Videos and channels that fail to load

Frequent freeze-ups

Cryptic error messages

Getting logged out while trying to watch something

Interruptions to programming

Poor streaming quality

Lots of buffering

Perhaps a better name would have been DirecTV Later.

Some customers have summed it up more concisely:

“It doesn’t work.”

AT&T isn’t the first company to experience a rocky product launch, but their response to the fiasco seems to have come right out of Comcast’s guide to poor customer service.

Here’s the step-by-step:

Bury any support options. Offer no compensation. Pretend everything’s fine. Respond like a broken record.

With DirecTV Now, AT&T’s strategy has been to take the money and run.

You’ll struggle to find their only support option, a live chat feature that’s well hidden on their website.

They aren’t offering refunds, service extensions, or anything of value, even though their service hasn’t worked as advertised.

Their attempts to paint a rosy picture and downplay problems only make them appear tone-deaf to frustrated users.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s exactly what people hate about cable TV:

Poor customer service that often does little to address grievances because they know they don’t have to.

With cable service, there’s seldom another comparable provider you can switch to.

However, with an online service, consumers might not feel stuck as they do to their landline TV providers. Online alternatives are readily available, including a comparable service in satellite rival Dish Network’s Sling TV.

Already off to a poor start, AT&T needs to clean up its act and work the kinks out of DirectTV Now pronto for the service to emerge as anything more than a flop.

But with a new report out warning that pay-TV customers are sensitive to poor customer service, it may already be too late.