OK time for me to chime in here. I work for Dish's #1 distributor and have many retailers under me. I've been seeing this problem going on now for years.
Is it just bad retailers doing this? NO !!!!
Most retailers learn this "flipping" trick from Dish employees. It is mainly customer driven, which if we were to stand by your statement, Dish should be shutting down customers as well who are cheating the system. What I mean by this is customers who know how to juke the system and go into a retailer and give the wifes info, or moms, etc.... just to get the new promo, hardware, or out of market programming that they do not qualify to get. If you think I'm wrong here just do a search on this site for "moving" or "free upgrade", etc........ you will see the story of "just play the CSR roulette to get what you want".
Now another big issue that should be looked at here is the telcos. AT&T.
Dish allows AT&T to steal customers away from retailers with NO PENALTY !!! Is this fair? I don't see Dish auditing AT&T for "flipping" but it goes on daily.
Now don't get me wrong there are a few rotten apples out there that deserve what they are getting, but to just do a clean sweep of just the independent retailers is not right. They need to be looking internally first. What this round of termination looks like is just greed. If Dish just fixed their own system this would never happen.
