Lets look at the customer service issue ...
When I called customer service I was pissed.. livid is easily a word to describe it .. I asked *ONE* simple question.. JUST ONE.. and to that I wasn't given an answer until I was dragged through the whole rigamarole of "why do you want to know that answer" ... with the roku, them trying to drag out of me and then trying to play back to my "money" side with ploys of "its only two shows, we can get you this box, you hook it to your tv .. "
etc. etc. etc.
I didn't ask "what are you going to do for me" I asked.. How much would you charge me *IF* I cancel service.. That's all I'd wanted.. and then taken on a journey for 15 minutes with the rest of their "we can" and "we will" and "but its" BS from customer service.. and they couldn't get it straight that ALL they were doing was pissing off a current customer more!
it *IS* about the customer service ... when politeness of "how much will it cost me in termination fees, if I decide to leave dish?" turns into a 20 minute phone call for a simple "60 dollars" answer. That is not good customer service, all it was, was customer retention and market posturing as if dish really was the only place people could get their TV.
Also those of you who think my anger is overboard either haven't had to deal with dish's past failures and don't see their crap as having built to the point of breaking the levee ... Case in point.. Dish Remote Access / Dish Online .. for those of us that bought and used our Sling Adapter's, while DRA was filled with crappy bugs ... Dish Online was far worse.. and still is if your sole intent for using dish online is the sling adapter.. Dish Online is slow, cumbersome and again a marketing push to shove content from all other sources, *not* your personal dvr stuff as Sling Adapter is for personal use, and as DRA allowed.
Add to the Dish Online debacle, that their "Feedback" and "Bug Tracking" site was at over 16000 tickets with nothing but a catastrophic failure to respond on dish's part for ANY valid complaints ..
You add these faults together.. lies, lack of support, failure to produce (Sling Extender anyone?), or even now.. putting out 2 hoppers in a home results in 1 hopper not seeing the other?!?
Enough is enough for me ..
Now as to complaining here? Many people have been in similar circumstances .. and by talking about them here.. it gives the ability for someone to come along at some time and realize .. dish isn't roses ... and not suggesting that one or the other is any better.. but it gives people a chance to know before hand .. they could end up in similar frustrations down the road.
Lets add to some of the things covered in two years
-722 can't access OTA from TV2
-all x Tivo suite with dvr "trick" feature crippling
-firmware updates from hell
-722k (plus others) drive failures, heat issues, OTA module issues
-922 -- good god where do you start ... TV2 output not enabled for over a year, slow clunky interface designed more for visual beauty than functionality
-DRA & access issues .. only to be mirrored by DO and access issues even worse ..
there's a lot there and more detail than I can remember .. not the least of which through all of this was Dish's failure with technical support, yes Dish IRT was a great step up, but they really are more of advanced CSR than Technical Support (and here come the haters again ... riddle me this, when Dish IRT is simply swapping hardware, or resolving billing issues, why would you call that Technical Support?)
Anyway.. we're all free to disagree .. and you folks that see this as CSR bashing... again.. see what its like for you when ONE question won't get answered until you're yelling at them to give you the *fancy* answer.. then tell me how its so overboard or how unfair I am to a CSR that's just following their company protocol.. oh yeah.. the SS they were just following orders too ... maybe the CSR's at Dish aren't *that* bad.. but at least you get the idea where "retention" fails when just trying to appease rather than dealing straight and true.