TV and Dish Network -- The Downward Spiral

[indigo_rose99]

It was not my choice to have a TV in the house. I freely acknowledge my addiction to the moving pictures. T claims he got tired of changing out the VCR tape to record my shows, and so signed up with Dish Network. The service includes local and cable channels and a DVR that allows us to record, pause shows, etc. T was enthusiastic about the 315 hours of recording, so he would never have to change out tapes again.

In the years we have had Dish Network (6 years?), it has been... so-so.  Before this year, two of the DVRs have broken. Just died. At least once they forced us to "upgrade." Several time we have been harassed by phone calls that insisted they wanted to upgrade our DVR... but pointed questions by  me indicated that what they really wanted was to increase our monthly bill.

With the new job since Feb, I have not been watching as much of my recorded shows as I used to. By early June, I was forced to clean out some lower priority shows to make room.... On June 6, the DVR chose to delete 285 hours of programming instead of the 5 hours I had chosen.

You can imagine how pissed I was. Three seasons of Medium just GONE. Chuck episodes... I still have dreams about everything I lost.

But otherwise the DVR worked fine. With our past experience (Replace It!) with Dish Network customer service, I didn't bother calling them in June.

Until last Sunday. I was watching episodes of White Collar and queued up last season's season finale... And the DVR totally corrupted the file and refused to play it. Then again with the season opening episode.

Sunday evening: T & I called Dish Network. ?Joe? decided to reboot and test the system. When we called him, we could watch TV, pause shows, record shows, look at a list of recorded shows, and perhaps play the shows (I was paranoid and stopped trying to play after corrupting the two files). After Joe finished with his tests, we could watch live TV. The DVR was a brick. No pausing, no recording, no even LOOKING at a list of recorded shows.

Joe claimed that the new DVR would arrive in "3-5 business days."

After days of no John Stewart, the new DVR arrived on Thursday night. We tried to get it to work.... 3 hours later, it was a brick. No more live TV. Chase the Dish Network rep promised to overnight us a new DVR.

Friday passed. No TV, no recordings, nothing.  Saturday is "overnight day." Where is the new working DVR? So Saturday night still we have a huge paperweight shaped like a TV and no DVR. We called Dish Network again. Cindy put T on hold for a manager.... who hung up on him. Lila got him an actual manager... And manager Alice admitted that it is not "overnight" but "next business day" shipping. They promised to have it delivered by 10am on Monday. When we are working and cannot set it up. And thus I will miss the shows I told Joe I must have the DVR in time to record on July 11. T pointed out that these two shipping methods are completely different and that Chase lied to us. Manager Alice promised T they would give us our money back for the 5 days of utterly stopped service.  That is gong to be, what 5-10$? I'm not impressed. I'd like the money back for the time spent trying to fix broken DVRs, time spent waiting on hold with Dish Network.  And something for our aggravation.

T was wonderful. He starts out calls by insisting on their name and badge numbers. He never yells, never raises his voice. He is obviously pissed.  Before he hung up with the manager Alice yesterday, he asked her why he bothered still being a Dish Network customer. Why not switch to someone else? Other companies would have gotten us working service by now. T is currently drafting his letter to the CEO of Dish Network

What service do you have? That you like, in particular. We are strongly thinking of changing. Recommendations welcome.

Comments

[sclatter.livejournal.com]

Honestly I don't know what to tell you. I'm pretty convinced Comcast is evil. I loved my DirecTV in California, but have not been so happy with it since we switched to it here in Baltimore. However it may be that all our problems can be laid at the feet of a particularly inept installation person.

I have to say our DirecTV went totally out in such a way that required someone to come to our house to fix it, and it took a couple of weeks to get an appointment for a repair person. They didn't charge us in the meantime, but it seemed pretty ridiculous.

[texpenguin.livejournal.com]

We've got ATT Uverse and it's been ok. Some digital artifacting, occassional hiccups where shows scheduled to record did not (Doctor Who Christmas special, grrr), maybe 3 or 4 times in 3 years the service and/or box has gone down but it either fixed itself with power cycling or a reboot by ATT. Only once that I can remember was it down for more than an hour. It has problems like every service, but it's better than the Time Warner cable service we used to have, which went down all the freakin' time, and it's better than anything we've heard from friends about the Time Warner digital service, though they have a couple of features I wish I had. I guess it's as good as I'd ever expect, working in the telecom industry as I do!

What shows do you want recorded tomorrow night? It's likely we already have them scheduled to record, like Warehouse 13. Email me if you'd like me to record something for you, I can schedule it from work, and you and T are welcome to come over some evening for dinner and shows!

[cat-napp.livejournal.com]

I realize this is over a week since you asked, but we use Verizon's digital cable service. We don't get their DVR option, but it is available. While it's aggravating to have to switch companies, sometimes you have to if you want to make a point. We're with Verizon now because Charter Digital had become so expensive for what little we were getting from them. We asked them if they would be willing to match Verizon's price and they said no, so we switched. Not one month later, we started getting mailers from them offering a comparable rate (once they no longer had us). But at that point we'd locked ourselves into Verizon for 2 years, so breaking the contract would have cost us even more money. I hope you're able to get compensation from Dish Network in some (meaningful) way.