45 minutes with DISH Loyalty

[boba]

I received an email from DISH notifying me they were charging me $199 for nonreturn of a VIP612 receiver. It stemmed from a swap of 211 receivers in August where I had reactivated a 612 while waiting for the replacement 211. I have owned the 612 for years and had deactivated it in March and replaced it with a 211 and a hard drive. Somehow DISH picked up the 612 as the receiver that was being replaced and wanted my owned equipment or $200. And DISH wonders why people want to leave. Customer service means nothing to DISH how much can we steal from the consumer seems to be their attitude.

 

[Peter Parker]

This behavior is not unique to DISH. I once had Media general Cable charge me for renting a modem. When i told them I owned it they insisted that I had to prove I was not renting it. When I asked if they could prove it was their unit they just laughed at me.

 

[pattykay]

I received an email from DISH notifying me they were charging me $199 for nonreturn of a VIP612 receiver. It stemmed from a swap of 211 receivers in August where I had reactivated a 612 while waiting for the replacement 211. I have owned the 612 for years and had deactivated it in March and replaced it with a 211 and a hard drive. Somehow DISH picked up the 612 as the receiver that was being replaced and wanted my owned equipment or $200. And DISH wonders why people want to leave. Customer service means nothing to DISH how much can we steal from the consumer seems to be their attitude.

The same thing happened to me earlier this year. I got Dish to agree to replace a defective purchased ViP612 with a purchased ViP722k, and I had activated another purchased ViP612 while I was waiting for the installation of the ViP722k. The installer checked and told me that there was no need to return either ViP612 (I deactivated both of them when the ViP722k was installed.) so he did not take either one with him. Then, months later, Dish sent me an email just like the one they sent you.

After getting that straightened out, and getting Dish to send me a shipping label so I could return the defective ViP612 and get the $199 charge credited back to my account, I later purchased a Wally from Dish as an additional receiver. They set up the order as a replacement receiver for my existing purchased ViP211k, and the Wally came with a shipping label and instructions telling me to return the ViP211k or I would be charged a non-return equipment fee. This ticked me off, and DIRT could not help with this issue, so the DIRT member gave me the phone number for the Office of the President department. When I called that number, the representative told me that he would monitor my account to make sure that I would not be charged that fee. I have not been charged a fee in this case. However, it still sucks that Dish threatened to charge the fee, that I have to watch my account like a hawk to make sure that Dish does not screw anything up, and that I had to go through so much hassle because of Dish's mistakes.

 

[boba]

The same thing happened to me earlier this year. I got Dish to agree to replace a defective purchased ViP612 with a purchased ViP722k, and I had activated another purchased ViP612 while I was waiting for the installation of the ViP722k. The installer checked and told me that there was no need to return either ViP612 (I deactivated both of them when the ViP722k was installed.) so he did not take either one with him. Then, months later, Dish sent me an email just like the one they sent you.

After getting that straightened out, and getting Dish to send me a shipping label so I could return the defective ViP612 and get the $199 charge credited back to my account, I later purchased a Wally from Dish as an additional receiver. They set up the order as a replacement receiver for my existing purchased ViP211k, and the Wally came with a shipping label and instructions telling me to return the ViP211k or I would be charged a non-return equipment fee. This ticked me off, and DIRT could not help with this issue, so the DIRT member gave me the phone number for the Office of the President department. When I called that number, the representative told me that he would monitor my account to make sure that I would not be charged that fee. I have not been charged a fee in this case. However, it still sucks that Dish threatened to charge the fee, that I have to watch my account like a hawk to make sure that Dish does not screw anything up, and that I had to go through so much hassle because of Dish's mistakes.

The office of the President "straightened" out my problem but I am still not happy. I've got an email from 8/26/17 telling me I didn't have to return the 612 I owned.

 

[Claude Greiner]

Here is the reason why this happens...

We ran into this issue all the time when I ran the dishstore.

The issue is when you add an additional piece of equipment or swap equipment the CSR at Dish needs to mark the equipment as either leased or owned.

If a dealer calls in the activation this usually does not happen. It’s more likely if you call 800-333-Dish.

Since 99.9% of all the equipment is leased these days, it’s very simple for Your owned equipment to get marked as leased.

You don’t see the issue till the leased equipment gets deactivated, which creates an RMA in the system for Dish to look for the receiver to be scanned back into their inventory in the upcoming 30 days.

When they don’t get it back, it then generates an unreturned equipment charge.

After swapping thousands of receivers over the course of 18 years, I actually know a way to fix it, even if the receiver was supposed to be leased to begin with. No need to post it here so Dish can close their loop hole.