Echostar Under Investigation

Nearly everyone in my remote neighborhood has Dish Network and in conversations with others I have NEVER heard a single complaint about Dish service.

This is just another greedy government move to soak corporations for more money to waste on stupid projects. After Big Tobacco, Microsoft and automotive...they're looking for another wallet to leech off of.

Everyone should be so lucky as to get the great customer service Dish provides. Price increases has been at the pace of inflation. They've been adding content right and left. I'm never more than 4 minutes on hold when I call for various reasons. I and no one I know has never had a billing error.

Dish is great.

And of course this would have nothing to do with the impending merger between Hughes DirecTV unit and Echostar. Nah.

i had dish network for a year and never had any problem with there service. i had lots of problems with billing. i would pay in advance for ppv sporting events because i don't use credit cards i had to pay before i could order them. this wasn't the problem, the problem was the kept crediting the orders to my monthly bill. causing nothing but fiasco's when it came time to watch the ppv's. but on a good note i was always 1 or 2 months ahead on my bill. but unlike alot of people on bbr who keep complaining about services they recieve, i fixed the problem, i canceled service and went wih directv.

I 2nd that! No problems at all! Best CS in the world as far as I'm concerned! No billing problems! DirectTV was a different story.

said by Count Hogula:

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Nearly everyone in my remote neighborhood has Dish Network and in conversations with others I have NEVER heard a single complaint about Dish service.

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I've never had a problem with Dish either, but I had nothing but problems with AT&T.

Whew...I thought I might see 24 million Dish sucks posts. Silly me...to think my 'hood may be receiving special treatment.

said by Count Hogula:

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Nearly everyone in my remote neighborhood has Dish Network and in conversations with others I have NEVER heard a single complaint about Dish service.

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true, DISHNETWORK is great. their only downside is BILLING. ever call 1-800-343-DISH and get an english speaking rep on the first try?. i recently dropped a premium channel and got billed $800 the next month. ive since disconnected DISH and still fighting that charge and thats been april 2002 and still going. man am i lucky i didnt setup 'credit card autopay'

This is just another greedy government move to soak corporations for more money to waste on stupid projects. After Big Tobacco, Microsoft and automotive...they're looking for another wallet to leech off of

We know you hate the government, give it a rest already Count.

No thanks.

We've had Dish since we got rid of Time Warner cable in 1999. TW kept raising prices and every time we had a big storm, we needed a truck roll to get service back. Recently due to the change in local carry regulations Dish upgraded our equipment to a Switch 64 and a second antenna at no cost to us. Try and do that with Time Warner. TW raised everyone's fee here so they could roll our Road Runner as they had to upgrade their infrastructure and it cost them plenty to lay about 1800 miles of fiber throughout the county. So whether you want high speed internet access or not, you underwrite the cost of providing it.

I forgot about that too. I also got the free upgrade to the 3 satellite system so in addition to all my other national feeds I get ALL my local channels. Way more than I would ever see with ATT analog cable...and Dish is STILL cheaper...even with my programming options.

Excellent service. I get better customer service than I do at the Post Office, Passport Office or from the INS.

Every question whetehr billing or technical is answered promptly and professionally. I have never been cheated out of money, time or goods.

Yet on most every occaison that I have to interact with our US government they fall short of any basic level of customer service.

In fact the SEC has been sitting on it duff allowing our corporate executives to rob, pilfer and plunder the exchanges market for the past years.

Hmmm
[text was edited by author 2002-08-16 15:19:05]

...but I'm concerned about what the merger will entail. Will the products stay separate -- DishTV and DirecTV? Or will they merge into a single satellite service? I've had mine since July of this year, and I was super pleased with the setup fee (reasonable), the contract installer (came out twice and tried to do the best job possible to aim the dish for local programming), and the first 3 months free.

I'm supposed to be getting a bill soon, and I'm hopeful that I won't see billing errors or extra charges. Regardless, it cannot be as bad as independent cable provider hell (Advanced Telemedia, Inc.) with crappy satellite-based cable signals and $40 for 50 channels a month. I'm paying only $7 more for twice as many channels plus PPV options.

burnsmr4

All DirectTv user will get Dishnetwork equipment. This will be a charge of the merger.

said by burnsmr4:

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...but I'm concerned about what the merger will entail. Will the products stay separate -- DishTV and DirecTV? Or will they merge into a single satellite service?

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If I interpret the Dish site correctly, it will be merged into one service. What they are apparently saying is with the additional bandwidth of DirectTV, they will be able to offer local channels to ALL markets instead of just the major cities now currently being offered. I personally am looking forward to that, because I live only about 10 miles from our local TV stations. Some I can pick up on rabbit ears fine, but others are very low powered and can only pick them up in town (Fort Smith, AR). And I cannot get the local nets because I am inside their broadcast range (there is a technical term for that, but can't remember the exact term).
I just checked on Dish Site, and I qualify for Distant locals, but the free upgrade doesn't apply to that, does it? Just local nets?

The merger doesn't have a chance in hell, Just forget it. Even if they did merge it would take so long (2+ years) to combine their respective systems that they could launch several satellites in the meantime with more capacity to carry local channels thereby making the “we need the capacity” argument pointless. The only people in favor of this live in the boondocks and can’t quiet get their local channels but can’t get a waiver to get the national network feeds. The others group in favor thinks that the merger means more television channels for them. They don’t realize you have to pay each broadcaster so adding channels will make rates go up. Also a new channel needs advertisers and there is only a finite amount of ad revenue out there. All you have to remember is this 1) Their transmission systems are incompatible – this means millions of dollars and several years of upgrades to get everyone receiving the same signal. 2) The merger doesn’t mean any new channels until the upgrade is complete – several years wasted in a pointless exercise of moving everyone to one transmission system. The merger doesn’t benefit anyone but Dish network in their quest to rule the world. When are people going to learn bigger never means better.

Dsh network fine here too, i have had it since feb and never any probs if i had to call them. i switched from AT&T digital cable because they kept raising prices here. i called once to upgrade from the AT100 package to AT150 and it was switched before i could even hang up the phone. i listen to a police scanner all the time with AT&T cable programmed into it and hear stuff like this.

AT&T Center to field tech: xxxx address needs to have catv turned off.
field tech: lose another to dish network or directv?
AT&T call center: yep.
field tech: damn that makes like 50 this week!

more info on dish or directv try here »www.dbsforums.com/cgi-bi ··· tebb.cgi (note site can be busy at times...)