Dish charges shipping for broken receivers? And, other musings on my super-dead 722K.

[ohioankev]

Unless you have terrible luck with receivers, paying the $15 is a better deal than the protection plan.

If you have your receiver for 6 years before it breaks:
With the protection plan ($6/month, before the recent increases): $432 (over the 6 years)
Without the protection plan: $15

Unless you are going through a receiver every 2 months, it's a better deal to just pay the one time fee. This obviously does not include any tech visits, but if you are technically inclined enough to be able to troubleshoot a dying HDD, you likely wouldn't need tech visits anyway.

On the note of backing up your recordings: can you use an imaging program to image/copy the EHD? I imagine a program that does a sector level image or copy could copy the EHD, even if files or file system are not readable by the computer.

Edit: Holy zombie thread...

The Protection Plan is a big waste and I've thought about taking it off of my account numerous times but I will say this being on the protection plan I have never been charged $15 for a tech visit, they have always been free. Besides upgrading my service though (from SD to HD then to WA to EA) I think the whole time I've had DISH out here since 2005 is maybe five times with most of them being after my switch from the WA to EA when my DMA added HD in the EA in 2012.

 

[DishSubLA]

If we don't like the terms of ANY MVPD, then we should take our business elsewhere. Or is this an industry practice? Either way, vote with your wallet and READ your agreement. Dish, and some other companies, will email all the terms to the consumer for that potential customer to review at leisure BEFORE entering into the agreement, to prevent suprises or terms the consumer may not like and, instead, choose another provider. But if we agree to what was on that contract, then we really should not complain as if we were blindsided. Most often, people just get angry when a company follows the terms of the contract that cost the consumer money they don't want to spend. Then DON'T DO BUSINESS WITH THOSE COMPANIES. Hulu and Netflix don't charge for anything beyond your subscription level. That would seem to guarantee avoiding fees for equipment and fees for shipping. Take your business and go OTT and stop giving your money to Dish, DirecTV, Cable, etc. Otherwise, it is what it is, especially if one signs a contract they have a responsibility to READ and UNDERSTAND before agreeing to the terms.