Irritated with Dish Network (1 Viewer)

[JeremyR]

I have been a Dish Network customer for several years. I am on my 4th ViP722 HD DVR. The first one that they set me up with when we signed up lasted nearly the whole time I've been a customer. Then the hard drive crashed and burned on us a few months ago and we lost everything we had saved. I call them, they send me out a new one ( a refurb), I get the new one and get it all set up. And it was faulty. It immediately started glitching on us, and the pausing DVR function stopped working that same day we hooked it up. It was to the point that I could barely watch TV on it so I call them the next day and they send me out another one (and offer me a free movie for my inconvenience (big whoop) because by the time I get my third one (another refurb) I've been without a DVR for 9 days, and the last few days of that time nearly unable to even watch TV because the DVR kept freezing live TV on me. So now the one that I have currently began freezing on me a couple of weeks ago (only had it a few months) while watching DVR, and this morning after the standard nightly reboot that it does after updating, my DVR is inaccessible (GRRRRR). I'm pissed now. Not sure how to handle it with Dish Network, I've been happy with them otherwise. I particularly like that their DVR runs two TV's and you can use the DVR on two different TVs (I don't think anybody else does that). MY only other option is to switch to DirecTV as I refuse to use Comcast. I don't think DirecTV DVR's will operate the DVR function on two different televisions.

How would you handle the next interaction with Dish Network? I'm at the point where either they are going to upgrade me for free to a new ViP922 Slingbox DVR (at which point I'd be happy to sign a new 2 year agreement)or I'm threatening to leave. I've been a good paying customer paying on time every month for several years. I dont' want another damn refurb, and I think they owe me for all of this inconvenience because setting them up isn't exactly a simple process.

 

[JeremyR]

I find the Satellite companies business models baffling. They penalize long time customers by reaming them for the cost of upgrading, and practically give away equipment and service to new customers. I know it is to suck customers in, but I have to wonder if the satellite companies businesses are mature enough now that they shouldn't adopt a similar approach to cable companies and Uverse. Where all existing customers are automatically upgraded to the best equipment with a simple request. If the service costs more, so be it. But it seems like an outdated business model.

 

[Brian McHale]

If you threaten to leave, they're likely to offer you lots of stuff to get you to agree to a new 2-year contract (I couldn't believe all the stuff DirecTV offered me; almost enough to get me to stay). If you're really willing to leave, that's probably the best approach.

By the way, I would recommend checking out the Dish forums at dbstalk.com. I never signed up there, but I've learned an awful lot about Dish from lurking there. You might get some good advice from them. Here's a link:

http://www.dbstalk.com/index.php

 

[John Garcia]

I'd say ask them to waive the charge and have them set you up to be able to copy to an external drive then start saving everything to that so that you don't have to worry about the internal drive as much. That won't solve your issues of freezing and poor hardware, but at least it will help be preventative against losing your saved media. I have some minor issues with my 722 also.

 

[dpippel]

You could also insist that they send you a brand new 722, citing your string of extremely poor luck with the refurbs.

 

[JeremyR]

Thanks dpippel, I took your suggestion and insisted on that. So, what do they do? Send me another refurb. So I called them back and ripped into them again and insisted they waive the USB add-on hard drive fee, which they did. So I guess I'll let it be. They also offered me three free HD pay per views, and they added the platinum HD package onto my plan at no charge to me for the remaining time I'm with Dish Network which I think they already do to new customers, but oh well). They also put a credit on my account for the amount of time I was without DVR service.

 

[dpippel]

Looks like they took care of you. Hopefully you'll have better luck with this one Jeremy. However, if the internal HD dies you're going need yet another replacement. FYI, I've been using the VIP722K for almost 2 years and a couple of weeks ago the HD started to fail. I also received a refurb unit as a replacement. I sincerely hope that Dish has ironed out the QC issues they obviously had with the units you received from them.

 

[Brian McHale]

I guess I wouldn't be too worried about getting a refurb. The one component that I would be concerned about is the HD, which would almost certainly be replaced when a unit is refurbished. However, backing up anything you've recorded that you want to save to the external HD is a good idea.

 

[dpippel]

Originally Posted by Brian McHale

I guess I wouldn't be too worried about getting a refurb.

Unless, like Jeremy, you'd gone through two of them and both experienced HD failure soon after first use.

 

[JeremyR]

It's crazy. I've heard this is a fairly high quality DVR, but I'm beginning to wonder. I did ask about the ViP 922 Slingbox, but for some reason they got rid of the functionality that allowed you to run two different TV's off the DVR.