My Nightmare with Dish Network
I signed a contract with Dish Network on November 24, 2008. I was promised by Infinity that I would receive a $300 gas card as an incentive. I had had Dish before, but left them due to their rude behavior, but since a few years had passed, I figured maybe they had straightened up their act. First, 3 months after I signed up, my bill goes up. I call to say, “Oh, no. I have a contract and I know you can’t go up because I signed a contract.” Little did I know that this time around with them, they put a little loophole in their contract that I obviously didn’t read stating that they can go up even though they lured you to sign with them for a specific price. I was pissed, but what could I do? Second When I tried to redeem my $300 gas voucher, Infinity asked me for everything but my DNA. They had me send in so much stuff that I thought it would never be over. Then in May of 2009 after a bunch of red tape, when I thought I could finally send in my receipts to start receiving my gas reimbursements, these idiots had the audacity to tell me that I had to pay $35 to really start the process. I also had to give them my credit card number and the PIN # on the back of the card just in case I didn’t stay with DISH for 2 years, they would be redeeming this money. I told them if I didn’t stay with Dish, it would be up to Dish to retrieve their money, not you. Like I’m gonna give my Credit Card # to a foreign speaking rep who I can barely understand and who is located God knows where. I hung up the phone and called Dish to complain. Dish must have been aware of this because they gave me a free month for the fraudulent practices of Infinity. I asked them why and they said they had been getting complaints about Infinity and I asked why did they still use them to lure customers if they knew they weren’t keeping their promises of the gifts. Come to find out, people have had trouble collecting Ipods, MPG players because they were supposedly out of stock. I told Dish they should stop luring people into signing up with them through Infinity and when I looked at the complaints, it looked as if it had been going on for years. I reported Dish and Infinity to the BBB and Consumer Affairs and my State AG. Third, A few months later, I noticed that my bill had gone up again, (this is now 8 months within my signing with Dish) and I was told that the receivers had gone up from $5 to $7. Now I was told by a Dish rep that Direct TV charges $10 for 2 receivers but Dish charges only $5 for a dual receiver which would save me money. So since their single receiver had gone up to $7 and I had a dual receiver, these idiots had the audacity to charge me $14 for one dual receiver. I asked that man if he was crazy. How can you lure someone with a deal for $5 and then triple it even though it’s still one receiver. My only option was to get a single receiver and send them back their dual one because I wasn’t paying all of that money. My bill was already over $20 of what I was originally quoted. Of course they wanted to charge me for sending them their receiver and I had to talk to about 4 or 5 people and make a few threats before I found someone with half a heart to waive the price. Within the next 6 months, I constantly had problems with my bill and being overcharged and I despised having to call those rude people. I got hung up on so many times that when I felt they were getting rude or angry, I just hung up and beat them to the punch. As my time with Dish ended, I noticed they started sending me nice little offers which I felt I was gonna take advantage of because I felt they owed me due to all the stress and BS I had been put through. Whatta ya know, in order for me to take advantage of the offer, I had to sign on for another two years. I was like, “HELL NO!” You all aren’t screwing me any longer than two years. Fourth, A DVR that Dish provided stopped recording so I hesitantly called to get help. After unsuccessfully trying to fix it, they told me I would need a new one. I was like, okay. After telling me the DVR would arrive in a box and then I would have to pay for not only them to send me the new DVR, but for me to send them the broken one. I told them, are you crazy? This is your equipment failure. It’s not my fault it broke. Why should I pay S&H? Then after arguing with managers, supervisors and loyalty ‘experts, ’ and I told them to send me the boxes to ship all of their S%#!t to them, they decided it was in their best interest to waive both fees. Hehehehehe. I stand my ground when I’m right. So that was settled. Whew! I’d hope I wouldn’t have to deal with them ever again. But I did because as usual, the bill was always wrong which is why I stopped them from auto paying my account and they could have back their Cinemax for a penny for one year. It wasn’t worth it because I was paying for it by them overcharging me every month. I tell ya, I was afraid to open up my statement every month when I received them. Fifth, November 6, 2010, I was getting really excited about my cancellation date because I had had it up to here with these people so I called to confirm my expiration date. After I was told, the fellow told me that after I called to definitely cancel on that date, I would get boxes to send the equipment back which I was responsible to pay for. I said, what? Why do I have to pay to send you your stuff back? When I had you last time, it was free. Read your contract, he said. That’s another thing they’d changed without telling the customer. I argued with him and said, I’ll pay to ship back your crap if you pay me my $300 I was supposed to get for signing on with you for 2 years. Then he began to get really rude and I sensed a hang up from him like they usually do so I beat him to the punch. And whatta ya know, 20 minutes later, my service was disconnected. I was livid. I called back and told them that if they did not restore my service immediately that I would see them in court for a lot more than a month’s worth of service. Then this idiot had the nerve to say that maybe this other rep did it accidentally. I said, yeah, right. It was done maliciously because that’s how you all operate. My service was restored within 15 minutes and then a half hour later, I decided to check my email and whatta ya know, I get an email from Dish telling me “Payment received.” LOL, Dish had the audacity to charge me a restoration charge($27.82) to restore services that I never authorized to disconnect. And they charged my credit card without my authorization. I immediately called my CC co and told them to not pay it and they said I had to wait until it showed up and then dispute it. I called Dish and they actually tried to justify the charge even when I told them I didn’t authorize them to cancel my services because I was paid up to the 24th. Once again, I had to go through a host of idiots before they would remove the charge. I also informed them that I was reporting them to the FTC, the BBB, and the State AG’s office, and whoever else the hell would listen to me. They are a criminal and fraudulent company who have no idea of how to treat customers. I can’t believe that CEO has the audacity to have a commercial about them being #1 in customer satisfaction. Ha! I could not wait to be rid of these people. As soon as those boxes arrived, I ran to UPS. And guess what, Dish told me that the prepaid labels they were sending me were at a considerably lower cost than if I were to pay for it myself. $15 per label which would be charged if I used them. Well, Dish being Dish, I decided to ask the UPS people to let me know how much it would be. Well, whadda ya know, the regular receiver was $7.44 and the DVR rec was 11.00. Dish tried to screw me one last time. UNBELIEVABLE! I’m making sure to keep my receipt and their labels in case they try to charge me saying I used their labels. I don’t trust these criminals. They are counting on people being stupid enough to just have them charge you $30 when it would cost you $18.44, almost 40% less. What a dishonest company. How do they stay in business? After reading most of the complaints about them and people getting scammed for hundreds of dollars, I guess I should feel a little lucky. I did sign on with them expecting to pay around $49, $50 a month, but by the time I canceled, I was paying $69.00 Beware future Dish users.