Thanks for the help. I'm guessing that on a new subscription the "free" equipment is really leased until the one year agreement is up and then you own it.
I was looking into buying a receiver in order to avoid a year contract. Maybe I'm overly concerned, but I wonder how folks can come up with "brand new" receivers with no balance on them?
A neighbor of mine said he upgraded a few months ago and a couple of days after the installers left, two receivers showed up from Dish Network. Obviously something got mixed up and now he has four receivers. He says that his bill only shows two receivers (because he never activated the other two??). From what CDRU says, I'm assuming that these receivers are probably assigned to him as leases but will not be billed until he starts using them. And if that's true, he doesn't own them until he's paid a years service on them. Either way, it sounds like he shouldn't be selling them.
I guess the best thing to do is check with Dish on the numbers before I buy one.