Any DVR fees if you need a replacement unit?

[heirway]

I am currently on my 2nd 501 replacement thus making this my 3rd unit. So far the 501 has not been very reliable for me.

My question is, if my 3rd 501 unit fails, let's say sometime in the next 6 months, will I receive another 501 which currently has no imposed fee or will I receive a 510 with an imposed fee.

 

[JosephF]

As long as they have a 501 available, that is what you would get. Now if they were out of 501's and 508's, I would suggest demanding that the 510 come without a fee.

Not that they wouldn't try, but there is no way E* could make you pay on on this.

 

[Stargazer]

I would not sure about that. I have heard someone mention that they have another option, to pay you what the depreciated value of the receiver is. This would cause you to have to pay a difference for a new 510 receiver plus the fee. It would leave you worse off than getting a 510 replacement.

 

[Randy_B]

I just had a 501 replaced, refurb 501 came UPS tonight.

Stargazer is right, they have the option under the extended warranty to pay you for your old receiver rather than replacing it!

 

[Bill R]

DISH needs to put out some policy information about replacement receivers. Some day they will HAVE to replace 501s (or 508s) with 510s. Customers NEED to know what fees they may have to pay if they have to get a replacement receiver.

We may be getting into an "iffy" legal area here too. If a customer starts getting charged for something they got for free because their equipment failed there could be a problem with some states' AG office.

 

[DVDDAD]

I think that if all you could get is a 510 as a replacement, E* would likely waive the fee. It would just make good business sense to do so. However, do not expect them to come out with an official press release or document stating so, as then they would be bound to it for everyone. Especially with these 501/508's, as people will keep these longer than they keep their PC's and at one point there may be thousands of hard drive failures happening at once. This is just one man's opinion, of course.

 

[Stargazer]

Before they even offer waiving the fee if they had to do this, I am sure they will try to charge the fee.

If there were several hard drive failures all at once then they would still recycle the receivers putting new hard drives in them. They would probably even use a lot of the parts out of the 510 receivers for the replacement 501 and 508 receivers since the 510 receiver is essentially the same receiver with a bigger hard drive.

 

[Bob Haller]

Its the same box. They could likely lock the hard drive so you ONLY have use of the 501 or 508 space, and call it that. Then perhaps force download PPVs to the unused spae for VOD

 

[Peter Parker]

More likely they would give you a smaller HD.

 

[Stargazer]

I read a while back where smaller hard drives would actually cost more than the larger ones because they keep on making the hard drives larger and larger and quit making the smaller hard drives, if I read correctly.

Perhaps they will only give you access to the amount of hours you had on your previous hard drive and if you want access to the rest of the space you can pay the DVR fee. They will have several options here.

 

[Guest]

From what I read on another forum you will get the new 510 receiver if all the refurbished 508s are gone. This guy got a 510 replacement for his 508 and he demanded another 508 instead and now he is waiting for a refurbished 508 from Dish.

This way they get another fee paying customer or another AEP customer to avoid the fees. I think this wil be the plan for Dish; get all replacement dvrs to be the 510 and no more grandfathered dvrs.

I even wonder if the rumor if no more 721 s in production is true? This way they can just push everyone over to a 522 when they need a replacement for the 721 . The only problem I see with this is the harddrive in the 522(80 hrs) isn't as large as the 721(90 hrs) or the 510.(100 hrs) Unless they have changed the harddrive from what I read on the spec sheets.