Good afternoon. I need the best memeber of the dirt team to contact me. I'm a pay in advance customer which was never told to me at anytime during the start if my service. I've since been able to upgrade to HD dvr's and now want to take advantage of the hopper and get off this stupid pay as you go crap. Anyway I'll expain more. Please pm me. Thank you and have a nice day.
Not sure if you ever heard from DIRT, but I can tell you, if you are on a certain type of account (Flex, Flex24), there is no way to change over to the non-PIA (pay in advance) type of account known as DHA. For those that are curious, while all accounts are kind of, sort of pay in advance, the Flex accounts truly are. If a bill is due 12/15/2013, that is for service that runs 12/16/13 to 1/15/14, and if that payment is not credited by midnight of 12/15/13, the service will be turned off (sometimes there is a 1-2 day grace period on that).
The difference with a DHA account, which is not really pay in advance, is that, for example, a bill is generated on 11/13/13 for the bill period that runs 11/28/13 to 12/27/13. That bill will be due 12/3/2013, and the service will NOT be cut off if not paid then. You will have about 50 days to pay that bill, and if it's not paid by the time the next bill runs (12/13/13), then there will be a $7.00 late fee added to the next bill. The Flex24 (PIA) accounts never have a late fee, they are due on the due date or the service gets shut off.
Long and short answer, once a Flex/Flex24 account is created, there is no way at all, by anybody in the company, to convert it to a DHA account. No matter how good you are as a customer. Also, someone else noted, some of the Flex accounts, that are in really good standing (big programming package, no shutoffs) can wind up qualifying for upgrades at a reduced cost (or free).
Oh, one other thing, a technicality. Dish has accounts that are known as activation accounts, those are for customers who already own all the equipment, they can do the pay in advance and not have any contract. Not applicable for you, but wanted to add this for those that are curious about all the types of accounts.