DISH Network review: poor service!

Dish Network=Nightmare! I highly recommend staying away from this company. The fact that the person that called us to promote Dish and get us to sign up couldn't speak English should have been our warning sign but we were foolish and signed an 18 month contract.

Our first problem was tracking down the free DVD player that was promised. When we went to print the on line coupon which truly was one of the reasons that we agreed to go with Dish it was expired. We then had to spend two days haggling with the company that offered this deal to get the DVD player. The company that called us to sign up was called DDS out of California. I told them they really had no right to offer this promotion to customers if they couldn't honor it. After two days going back and forth they decided to honor our coupon, what they called making an acception to the expiration date. The whole deal was we needed to receive our first bill and submit it with this coupon before December 22nd. We only signed up for Dish on December 20th and our first bill didn't come until January 15th, so there was no possible way to get it to them by Dec. 22nd and they actually wanted to argue this and not give us the free DVD player.

Problem #2 We never had a signal. The minute the wind would blow or it rained the satellite would go out of service. Go forbid if their was a severe weather warning we would have no way of knowing because once the satellite went out it wouldn't come on for anywhere from 2 to 4 hours later.

Onaparticularly bad storm in April it apparently blew our Dish so far out of alignment that we had no PPV for 3 weeks. We had only had our Dish for 4 1/2 months and felt we shouldn't have to pay anything for a service call. After all Cable has free service calls for the length of time the the customer has cable, unless it's sheer stupidity that is bringing a service tech back out time after time. Dish wanted to charge $30 to fix what they called a broken switch. I told them I would no way pay for a service call for a faulty piece of equipment only 4 months old. I finally got them to come down only to $15 but they would not come otherwise. When the service tech go to my house he said it wasn't a switch regardless of the fact that we were on the phone with three other reps. who ran system tests for us, all obviously from outsourced call centers and they each said it was a switch. This technician checked on our TV in their system information menu to see what our Dish was aligned at and could tell right off of the TV that the alignment was only 70% instead of 100%. It amazed me that we talked to three other phone technicians, one of them for 2 1/2 hours and that none of the three other so called expert technical phone assistants did this particular test. It took this guy 5 minutes to say our dish was out of alignment. Even though any of the reps. could have had us check the same thing and my husband could have repositioned the dish which was on the edge of our roof,not one of them suggested this. Amazingly, it could only be found with a $30 service call. I find it interesting how they conveniently forgot this step even though they had us relay information to them about what came up on different menus as they tried countless times to figure out the problem.

Problem # 3 -Two days later we ordered a PPV and it kept breaking up the picture, interrupting the movie but we let it go. Then it happened on two other PPV's, on the third one we got fed up. We figured if we needed another service call it would at least be free since it was an issue related to the last service call and within 90 days of the last call, so we called service again. As we were reviewing the PPV'S ordered they informed us several movies had been charged to our account that we know we definetly did not order. The rep. said it came from our remote so we had to pay for them. These included according to them one Porn movie a month for each of the 8 months we had the Dish Network. The hilarious thing was that these were supposedly ordered in the middle of the day when no one was home. One night we were sitting their watching local TV and all of a sudden an ESPN basketball special event PPV came on in the middle of our show for $24,we definetly didn't order it, we don't like basketball. The same exact thing happened to my brother-in-law at the same time because they called us the next day and asked us if it happened on our TV, they did refund that saying it was a glitch in the satellite positioning and happened to many customers. I asked the m how we could be charged for movies we did not order. In my house lives myself, my husband and 5 year old son. Some of these pornos showed up during the day when my husband was at work,my son at preschool and I was out running errands. I also told them my 5 year old couldn't have accidentally ordered them because we have parental locks on all our PPV's, which they confirmed. I then asked them how do we know that they didn't just add them on our bill and say we ordered them, so they could collect whatever they felt like charging. After all they seemed to be able to access our TV from their location, run tests and adjust whatever the chose to. All I was told is that they wouldn't do that, some reassurance!.We insisted on a refund. They said they can't go back previous months to refund us. Mu husband and I thought it was interesting i that we never saw any of these supposed PPV charges on any of our previous bills, we only received online statements and we couldn't access any more than the current and previous months information. They couldn't even tell us how much we had been charged only that they would not refund us the two Porno's showing or the current movie Norbit we ordered but couldn't watch because we kept losing signal. Therefore, we couldn't even argue about past charges only the current bill. We do spend at least $30 or more a month ordering PPV family movies and movies for our son to watch and have been excellent customers always paying our full bill on time, despite all of the problems, so we felt asking for these refunds back was no big deal. We had ordered two movies prior to this and didn't get to watch all of them due to lost signal and we let those slide, but we insisted on the refund for the pornos and Norbit. They told us if we asked for any refund then they would have to block us from ordering any future PPV's. Now I ask you, who is losing out! We can go to the video store. They would rather lose their $30+ dollars a month than refund $3.99. They told us this was their policy so that customer who would abuse the PPV service and constantly call and say the didn't order it and want a refund would be deterred. We said that was a shame because we certainly weren't trying to take advantage of them. We told them go ahead and block it, its' their loss and got our $3.99 back.

Problem #4- It was at this point that we decided enough was enough and we we're going to cancel our contract even though we had 10 months left on it. We were informed that we would need to pay the remaining balance of $146.97. When I called customer service and canceled the rep. told me they would charge the cancellation fee to my credit card that I ordered Dish with 8 months ago. I specifically told the outsourced rep. that I did not want the charge applied to that card because it was my debit card that I originally used to and I would not have funds available until my husband was paid2 weeks later. I repeated this three times and this man assured me they would not do this and would send me the bill to pay the balance by check or online when i was able to. This was two weeks ago. As of today I still did not receive the shipping boxes for returning the equipment that I was told would be sent UPS. Now I know UPS usually ships in a few days so I called to find out where they were. I also asked the woman to verify what we still owed them. She proceeded to tell me $15. I asked how this could be? What happened to the $146.97 we owed?She told me that it was in fact charged to my debit card but then declined. I figured the bank rejected it so I asked if it was declined how could we not owe it still, I couldn't see Dish wiping out our bill as a favor. I went around and around with her for 15 minutes. She would tell me the account had a credit and I would say ho, if it was rejected then I should still owe the $146.97, where did the reaming balance of $15 come from and finally got so frustrated that I hung up. At this point I pulled up my bill online and saw that they did in fact credit my Dish Network bill $146.97, so it was obvious they did in fact take it from the debit card that I explicitally told them not to. My husband then called back and talked to another rep. who confirmed they did in fact charge my debit card. Which in turn will now overdraw my account bouncing several checks since my husband doesn't get paid until next Friday. I called back and spoke to three diffrent reps. today asking how they had the right to go in and touch anyone's account, especially if the were told directly not to. I was told by each that it's in our contract that they have this right if the contract is canceled to collect any equipment fees, cancellation fees etc. All they could say was they were sorry for the inconvenience and that the rep. that canceled our contract did not note our account that we didn't want the charge to be applied to our debit card so they had no way of knowing we wanted the bill sent to or house, surprise, surprise! I told the rep. as far as I was concerned it was stealing. I didn't sign anything currently giving them permission to touch my account without my knowledge. I further explained that this just put the icing on the cake, this just added to the mile long list of reasons of why we canceled our contract with Dish 10 months early and will never recommend them to anyone. Our biggest mistake was that we had them two years ago had problems with losing signal constantly, we rode out the contract went to cable and then back to Dish to try and save some money and have more variety in our channel line up, huge, huge mistake!

I told this rep. how can they have the right to use a credit card that was given to them 8 months ago, when people's circumstances change, cards get closed, accounts change and especially with a debit card when the money may not be available. What really irked me is that if this CSR that I had canceled our contract with had told me they needed to charge the original card as policy and could not bill me at home, I would have made sure the money was there somehow or waited until my husband was paid to cancel the service, but he explicitly assured me over and over the bill would come to my house. When I asked the CSR Jane today how I could find out who this gentleman was that canceled my contract she told me she couldn't identify him by name only an operator # due to the fact that they have over 500 call centers around the world. I then asked her for the name of the company president to write to him. She said it was Charlie Koegen. When I asked for his address or how to get a letter to him she said she couldn't tell me that. If I wanted to complain I needed to email Dish. I laughed at her and told her why in a million years would I think that would be effective. No one would read it and if they did I would get some form letter response and the same piss poor customer service I had received from day one.

Therefore, I can only hope that the more customers that have problems with Dish will add their two cents here and maybe Charlie Koegen will read this. Thank our government and George Bush for the outsourcing of America. it seems if you can get an American on the phonethey are somewhat sympathetic, sometimes able to help or at least more willing. It sucks to have all these problems but it's even worse when you can't get someone that speaks English to help you and they can only recite from a script when you have a complaint. Can I finally add thanks for letting me vent. After reading all the other complaints on this site I'm closing my debit card so they can't take anymore money without my knowledge and if I can on Monday I may still block my account since the $146.97 may not have processed at my bank yet. I'm also going to ride Dish Networks but until I get my return shipping boxes. Good luck to all and cable is the way to go avoid the nightmare!