Dish Audits

[mikenewy]

This is probably not new to many, but may help the newer customers. Got a call recently from an unknown number: Phone identified as "unknown". Dish rep wanted to do an audit of equipment: Receiver numbers, software version for all receivers. The whole thing seems quite rude, like they suspect that since you are not hooked up to a phone line, you must be "moving receivers from one location to another" which is not permitted. Apparently sending them $100 a month is not enough and you can expect these audits every six months or so. I would suggest you don't answer this "unknown" call if you want to avoid this invasion.:

 

[LER]

there are _many_ threads here on the 'audit nazis'.

 

[gdarwin]

Avoid the call they shut your receivers down.

 

[stck4evr]

They have to do that to make sure they get payment for every house. Otherwise they would have to drive and knock on every door - now that would be real nazi style. By the way, I support that, I hate people that share their service with friends, that's really lame, and usually means you are watching too much TV and wasting your life sitting in front of the tube. Downgrade your package to what you can afford, and get out and do something more fun than sitting and watching all premium channels

 

[stretch]

they need to develop a way for recievers to phone home over the internet. The number of people like me who don't have a land line at all is going to continue to increase. But if I could phone home over the internet I'd gladly connect up that way to save the $5 fee.

requiring a land line is going to become more and more obsolete with time.. but what incentive do they have to change when they can expect an increasing revenue stream from the growing number of cell-only households paying extra fee.

 

[Tower Guy]

they need to develop a way for recievers to phone home over the internet.

http://www.multitech.com/PRODUCTS/Families/MultiVOIP/

 

[stretch]

yeah ok you got me there... but I sort of envisioned something that didnt make me buy more stuff.

 

[Smith P.]

Do you aware of 100,000s or more ppl DOESN'T have Internet over DSL/Cable ?
Only basic phone service.

 

[Zero327]

Avoid the call they shut your receivers down.

Sums it up nicely.

 

[dfergie]

Here was the last Audit thread...

 

[eatonjb]

http://www.multitech.com/PRODUCTS/Families/MultiVOIP/

thats a good idea.. i think what he means is since most of these recivers have Ethernet why not "call home" over ethernet.

voip is useless since i dont need a phone at home, i have a cell phone with more then enough minutes.

 

[HDTVFanAtic]

Avoid the call they shut your receivers down.

Actually, that's not exactly right....they shut down everything except your MAIN IRD - that way they can continue to bill you for service and force you to keep your committment in place - as they didn't technically disconnect your service.

If they shut them all down, clearly you wouldn't be on the hook to them for anything.

 

[digiblur]

they need to develop a way for recievers to phone home over the internet. The number of people like me who don't have a land line at all is going to continue to increase. But if I could phone home over the internet I'd gladly connect up that way to save the $5 fee.

requiring a land line is going to become more and more obsolete with time.. but what incentive do they have to change when they can expect an increasing revenue stream from the growing number of cell-only households paying extra fee.

Sipura 1001 with a free VoIP provider. Done deal....

 

[Zero327]

Actually, that's not exactly right....they shut down everything except your MAIN IRD - that way they can continue to bill you for service and force you to keep your committment in place - as they didn't technically disconnect your service.

If they shut them all down, clearly you wouldn't be on the hook to them for anything.

You can freeze an account to prevent it from receiving programming, that's "technically" not disconnecting service as the account is just suspended. The system is just waiting on verification before services can be restored. Consider it a IRS audit of your receivers.

 

[dstrouth]

they need to develop a way for recievers to phone home over the internet. The number of people like me who don't have a land line at all is going to continue to increase. But if I could phone home over the internet I'd gladly connect up that way to save the $5 fee.

requiring a land line is going to become more and more obsolete with time.. but what incentive do they have to change when they can expect an increasing revenue stream from the growing number of cell-only households paying extra fee.

Of Course the way to circumvent that is wireless internet where a neighbor would just connect to your AP... This still wouldn't keep receivers in the correct home.

But I do agree.... This would be much better than phone line requirement because many are going VOIP or cell only.

 

[bgsmallwood]

There must be hundreds of thousands of E* subscribers that don't have a phone line connected to their receiver.
I wonder how much E* spends on personnel to make these audit calls?
I wonder how much of our bill(expected price increase included) goes toward paying people to make these audit calls?

Curious minds.....

 

[digiblur]

Of Course the way to circumvent that is wireless internet where a neighbor would just connect to your AP... This still wouldn't keep receivers in the correct home.

But I do agree.... This would be much better than phone line requirement because many are going VOIP or cell only.

What stops you from running your telephone line to your neighbors house to his receiver?

 

[Yes616]

I have been with E* for 8 years and I have never gotten an audit phone call even though only one of my four receivers is hooked through a phone line. Maybe because it is the only leased receiver? I don't know.

A friend of mine recently had such a call come into his house but he was not home. His wife answered. She tried has hard as she could to comply and she did except for one receiver that is hooked to a very elaborate HDTV front projector. She does not know how to work the thing. Only he does and that caused a service disruption. He came home that night and was furious so he called up Dish and said to them that would have gladly complied but the way they did this was not acceptable to say the least. (Yeah this short version of the story). Anyway, the service was totally restored after he gave the info they wanted.

They need to understand too that some of us, like me, have phone lines but they may not be anywhere near the receivers otherwise they may be hooked up. I do like the caller ID feature but I don't want wires running all over the place like from room to room.

 

[rsprec1]

Well I never got one on these calls yet, but If my caller ID says unknown or unavailable, I don't answer the phone period. I do have a phone line hooked up to my DVR receiver only. They need to have their name come up on the caller ID for me to answer the phone. I would be upset if they cut my service just because I didn't answer the phone when the caller ID said unknown.

 

[Robert NTSC Archivist]

I have never had one of those phone calls either and I have 4 recievers none of which have ever been connected to a phone line.

They may be possibly targeting people with high end equipment for some strange reason but I am only guessing.