Anyone else denied hd for life?

[TazmanianD]

I started another thread because my HD channels disappeared this past weekend.

I just got off a chat with a CSR who also told me that the Platinum HD package is not compatible with annual subscriptions and I can't have them back without switching to monthly billing. They won't even let me pay the $10/mo for them. At this moment, I am not getting *any* of my non-local HD channels right now (not just the extra Platinum channels).

The thing that is so upsetting is that they just turned them off without notice and now refuse to give them back. That's no way to treat a long-time customer!

 

[TazmanianD]

And the thing that sucks about switching from annual to monthly would be that they'd put a credit on my account for next 10 months and when there's a credit on your account, they don't generate a statement for that month. This means that I will be unable to ever see any of the charges or credits that I would expect on my bills.

 

[Stargazer]

I just got off the phone with Dish and they told me that if you are under any commitments or lease any receivers then you cannot get annual programming. That is funny seeing how they had me under annual when they FORCDED me into a leased 522 after having owned my 721 and did not tell me that applied back then. They also did not tell me when getting the 24 month commitment of $10 off per month. The last excuse they gave me as to why I could not get annual (after annual was paid they switched me to monthly in the middle of the year) was due to having HD service. It is always an excuse with this company. Loyalty department will not even help you out and could care less to keep you as a customer. I do not pitty Dish Network if they start losing more customers to Directv over issues like this.

I guess Dish sees a limit to how many discounts they want to give you or if they are subsidizing a leased receiver they do not want to give you that special annual deal. To me it is more about the principal of the matter than about the money since they did not disclose these things to me before getting 24 month commitment or being forced into leasing a receiver.

They need to give better disclosures to their customers about the annual billing.

 

[TazmanianD]

I am under a 2 year commitment, leasing my receiver and have an annual package, although I've been an annual for so long I may just have been grandfathered in. I don't know if once you leave it you can go back.

The CSR I talked to said I could talk to an ERT. Does anyone know what that is or how I talk to one? I assume it's some sort of retention specialist.

 

[uhai1]

I have been with Dish for 10 yrs. and have always paid annual. I have as 622 which I rent and pay the HD 10.00 on monthly basis.I told the CSR that I was hoping to use the 10.00 I would save to add Plat. but he did not say I could not add it on.
Dish seems to be inconsistent on a lot of things here lately. I was asked if there were anything else I needed and I said yes, I would like to get the free 3 mos. of HBO. Again I was denied something they advertised as free to existing customers.He said the reason was because I had free HBO when it was offered sometime last year and it had not been 12 mos. since that time. If they do not want me to have free offers then do not offer it.

 

[TazmanianD]

For any of you guys who are on an annual package are you still getting any HD or were all your HD channels turned off like mine (I still get Cinemax and locals in HD)?

 

[uhai1]

I still have HD

 

[sigmtr]

For any of you guys who are on an annual package are you still getting any HD or were all your HD channels turned off like mine (I still get Cinemax and locals in HD)?

Yes, I still have all the HD that I had before the chat with the CS rep. That's Silver, locals, and the Starz and Cinemax movie pacs. They just won't add Platinum, denying their AutoPay system a chance to grab another 10 bucks from me each month.

Sounds like you really got the shaft on this one. Took away your Platinum and everything else. I think we're going to have to push back on this to allow Platinum to be added to any HD pac as the latest price sheet says it can be. We'd still be paying twice as much as someone who could get Free HD for Life.

sigmtr

 

[TazmanianD]

So I called and got transferred to a supervisor who couldn't help me and so I got transferred to the ERT and he said he couldn't help me right away either and would have to get help from some other people (how screwed do you have to be if the ERT can't fix the problem) and get back to me.

I gave him another option which was to just switch me to monthly but send me a check for the balance on my account. I really didn't want to do the switch because it would put a credit on my account that would keep me from getting my billing statements for the next 10 months (not even online). He said he could send me a check and then switched me to monthly and everything appears good now.

At least my locals and HD-addons are now included free which is actually worth more than the benefit of the reduced cost of the annual package so I'm coming out ahead (except that I still have to pay the extra $10 for the platinum but everyone has to do that now).

 

[sigmtr]

Glad you got a solution, TazmanianD, but this whole thing still irks me. You were denied the Platinum HD pac like it was some kind of discount at $10/mo. And as an annual subscriber, you can't have any other discounts or offers.

Is there a regular price for the Platinum Pac? It seems to deny any subscriber a group of channels because of how they pay for their base package is just plain wrong. If you already pay for a metal HD pac, and want to add more HD by paying another 10 bucks, that is no discount in my book.

sigmtr

 

[lcander]

Not exactly denied.

I pay annually and also received the message in my account that I didn't have a base package that qualified so I called a CSR. She said I could get the HD for life by doing either the $99 fee or the auto-pay/paperless billing 24 month commitment. I specifically questioned whether this would change my annual payment status and she assured me that it would not.
What she did try to tell me was that there would be a $50 fee for the HD receiver and a $95 installation fee. I pointed put that online it mentioned both were free and that other offers were for free installations but she told me that wasn't the case. When I tried to again tell her that it was listed as free she proceeded to tell me how it was necessary to install a different dish to capture different satellites, etc., etc. I again tried to tell her that several years ago they upgraded our dish to a 500 to access additional channels with no charge, so I didn't see why there needed to be a charge for this one. She just kept telling me there was no way around it.
Was anyone else given a quote for installation charge and receiver?
Think I'll try another CSR and see what info I get then.

 

[Beeper]

I pay annually and also received the message in my account that I didn't have a base package that qualified so I called a CSR. She said I could get the HD for life by doing either the $99 fee or the auto-pay/paperless billing 24 month commitment. I specifically questioned whether this would change my annual payment status and she assured me that it would not.
What she did try to tell me was that there would be a $50 fee for the HD receiver and a $95 installation fee. I pointed put that online it mentioned both were free and that other offers were for free installations but she told me that wasn't the case. When I tried to again tell her that it was listed as free she proceeded to tell me how it was necessary to install a different dish to capture different satellites, etc., etc. I again tried to tell her that several years ago they upgraded our dish to a 500 to access additional channels with no charge, so I didn't see why there needed to be a charge for this one. She just kept telling me there was no way around it.
Was anyone else given a quote for installation charge and receiver?
Think I'll try another CSR and see what info I get then.

The free receiver/installation ads and lower subscription prices, generally state "for new customers" in the fine print.

I recently upgraded from a SD receiver and had the $50 cost for a leased ViP 211K HD receiver and $95 local installer charges.
When I phoned a little over a year ago, the same leased HD receiver upgrade promo was $100 total.

 

[Beeper]

Free HD for life costs more. Poor disclosures by Dish

I recently upgraded to an HD receiver and then applied for HD for life. I was on annual billing for over 10 years and owned the SD receiver.

I phoned Dish twice ahead of time with many questions and had read all of the requirements and disclosures on the Dish website.
Both of the reps that I talked to, knew that I was annual billing.
As we now know, annual billing prevents Dish customers from qualifying for free HD for life.

So after installing a leased HD receiver and changing to paperless billing and autopay, I tried applying for HD for life in my online account.
I received the dreaded message, "Your account does not have the base programming package for which an HD add-on package exists."

I then spent the rest of that day and the better part of the next morning going back and forth on the phone with Dish reps. telling me that they had taken care of the problem and I should go to the website and try applying again.

Finally one phone rep. told me to use the online support chat.
The online chat took about 3 minutes to come back and tell me that because I am on annual billing, I don't qualify for HD for life.

I then phoned Dish again to question the disappointing info that the online chat rep. told me.
The phone rep. couldn't believe that my annual billing would matter, and contacted executive resolutions and was told that annual billing does in fact disqualify customers from successfully applying for HD for life.

In the mean time, Dish also added local channels that I told them I didn't want and billed me for that and a second receiver (my disconnected receiver that the installer called in and disabled.).

So I told the phone rep. that I would like to change to monthly billing, which wasn't a problem to do.
When the phone rep. was finished, he read me my account credit amount.
I had just paid my annual subscription about a month earlier, so the credit was almost the entire annual subscription amount.

I then told the rep., "Now you are going to have to refund that amount to my credit card." The rep. seemed surprised that I wanted a refund.
I told the rep. that if Dish wanted to keep my money, they could credit me the amount of a one month subscription, that I would have saved by paying annually.

So that's what he did.

I then went to the website and applied for the HD for life and it worked.

One more poor disclosure by Dish. Just before you agree to the HD for life, the fine print states that it does not include HD Theater or Palladia, which would normally be in the add-on package. I read all of the disclosures, but none pointed that out until I was ready to click the agree button.

 

[atvman]

I used to pay for the year in advance, but the billing computer would take the 2 premium discount away and I would have to call every month to get Starz and HBO for $22.

 

[Briant73]

I also am an annual payment, called and was told I have to switch to monthly billing but all I should lose is the one month discount you get for being an annual subscriber.

Now I don't know if this is true or not, is there more to this story? Also do I risk screwing up any other fees/promotions if I switch my payment option?

 

[TazmanianD]

Now I don't know if this is true or not, is there more to this story? Also do I risk screwing up any other fees/promotions if I switch my payment option?

I think the only thing you risk is them putting a credit on your account. This will result in you being unable to get billing statements until the credit runs out which will mean you'll have no way to track what they are charging you for or giving you any promotions you've earned. I got them to agree to send me a check but I was talking to the ERT at the time.

 

[Stargazer]

They told me that if you lease equipment that you would lose ability to get annual programming. They will also not let you get HD Free for Life if you do annual.

 

[Londo]

I have been going around with dish for 3 weeks. Have have been a annual subscriber for 9 years and last year I updated to a HD DVR reciever with a 2 year committment. I lease this reciever from dish. I did not add HD because at that time I did not have a HD TV. I have talked to at least 3 "supervisors" who told me it was an error in the website, that I was eligible, and that they needed time to fix it. Today I was kicked up to corperate who stated that I would never be eligible for the free hd an annual subscription. I told her that to me it was false advertising, because there is no mention in the offer that an monthly subscription is required. With as many annual subscibers as this is ticking off, I wonder where we can go to report this. Any ideas? Dish is already under scrutiny over the copyright problem with the DVR. I, like you guys, feel dish network does not really care about customer loyalty. If they did they would not go out of their way to shaft the annual subscribers.

 

[Tony S]

After reading this thread I am confused. I have been with dish for about 13 years and have ALWAYS paid annually. I just went to Dish's web site and looked at my account info. When I click on the 'HD for Life' link it says 'HD For Life is already activated on your account'. So I pay annually and I have HD for life!!! (I still pay monthly for HD Platinum ($10) and locals ($5.99), but because I pay annually, the monthly bill shows: HD 250 free ($0.00)).

Maybe I have HD for life because I had it changed a couple of months ago. Like many others I was paying $10 for HD and $10 for Platinum. However after reading about the new promotion on this board, I called in and Dish changed me to the HD free and $10 Platinum package. I am very happy that I switched when I did because now it looks like Dish has changed their policy regarding annual subscriptions.

Once again, SatelliteGuys rules! It appears that I am grandfathered in to HD for life because of the information that Scott posted here a couple of months ago.

 

[Londo]

I went to the online support site to see what I would pay monthly. I also checked into Direct TV and it sounds like neither one has good customer support. I asked how much credit I would have left on my account so I would know how much would be applied to the monthly charge and how much I could apply to the $99 hd for life fee. I am not extending my contract anymore than it already has been. I was told I would find out how much credit I had after I switched and I recieved the next months statement. As far as I know the only HD channels I have are the locals. I never signed up for additional HD programming, but as the website says I have the required top 200 package. It's just under an annual subscription