Dish tried to get me for $400. Please read.

[coinmaster32]

This is the reason I NEVER use autopay with any subscription-based company.

Today I noticed the amount due on my dish account was $518.23.

Shocked, I contacted support via live chat, and they said "we charged your account $400 for a hopper you did not return".

I replied with "I did return said hopper". I showed them the tracking number I had. This was CLEARLY marked on the "My Shipments" tab.

TEMS SHIPPED TO DISH

	Delivered
Order #	Item	Qty	Day	Date	Tracking #
716968XX	Hopper	1	Fri	02/08/13	961213793405112XXXXXXX

(Note:I used x's to hide things, the full numbers are there in reality).

Now, Dish NEVER notified me via mail, email, or phone that "I did not return my hopper". They made no communication at all to tell me this.

Now, had I used autopay on my dish account, guess what? My Credit Card would've been charged $518! Then I would've had to gone through the whole rigmarole of getting a refund back or filing a chargeback.

This thread should serve as education to ANYONE who uses Auto Pay for anything that has recurring billing.

Do not ever use it! Take it off if you have it. Pay manually, that way you know you're not letting a company charge you an obscene amount!

Now I am not blaming Dish, because all of this stuff is automated, and computers DO make mistakes. They were very quick to resolve this.

 

[dare2be]

Now, had I used autopay on my dish account, guess what? My Credit Card would've been charged $518! Then I would've had to gone through the whole rigmarole of getting a refund back or filing a chargeback.

As this is written as a public service announcement, I must inject the missing facts into it.

When did you notice the amount due on your bill? When you received it? If so, then you had plenty of time to contact support and with them being "very quick to resolve this", it would not have affected an autopay transaction one bit. If someone doesn't pay attention to their bills until it is almost time to pay them, then I agree, autopay is not for them. Stop using autopay as a scapegoat.

 

[coinmaster32]

The amount due was added within the past 3-4 days. The receiver was delivered on 2/18. They said something in the system glitched to show I never returned it.

 

[JasonSu]

If we are doing this as a public service announcement I should pipe up as well. If you are on auto pay, those charges are sent to the bank 7 days prior to projected due date (20 days after the bill cycles) Any changes made in that 7 day period will not be reflected on the auto pay.

 

[stardust3]

Is there more to the story?

 

[Mr Tony]

considering the OP....there probably is

 

[RobMeyer1]

The only lesson here is that you should always look at your bills when they become available to you.

About 3 months ago my electric meter was read incorrectly on the bill they emailed to me. They billed me for an additional 1,000 Kw hours which added well over $100 extra to the bill. I immediately read my meter then sent an email to PNM telling them about the meter reading error including my reading. Later than week they acknowledged the error and I received a corrected billing a few days later. My autopayed amount was only for the corrected bill, not the original bill.

Autopay means I save time and money, so I will not go back to manually making payments. With autopay theres no hassle dealing with payments and never a late charge or interest charge from forgetting to pay bills. I rarely write a check or mail a payment anymore and have more time to watch TV or do something else I enjoy.

 

[Claude Greiner]

Do not ever use it! Take it off if you have it. Pay manually, that way you know you're not letting a company charge you an obscene amount!

Now I am not blaming Dish, because all of this stuff is automated, and computers DO make mistakes. They were very quick to resolve this.

[/COLOR]

Doesn't matter if your on auto-pay or not, as your credit card is STILL ON FILE which they can and will charge you for a cancellation fee and un-returned equipment.

You always have the protection of your credit card company which protects you from un-authorized charges which you can always dispute with your credit card company.

The question we should all be asking is why are they charging you $400 for a so called un-returned piece of crap Hopper, when you can buy one for around $200.

They pulled the same crap with me on a 622, trying to charge one of my customers $400. The customer had no clue where the receiver was to return, and Dish refused to allow us to "Subsitute" another 622 for the one that they claimed they never received

 

[the mack]

The question we should all be asking is why are they charging you $400 for a so called un-returned piece of crap Hopper, when you can buy one for around $200.

because they can.

 

[Derwin0]

I agree with the OP.

I have all mine set to push instead of pull (ie, I must initiate the transfer instead of letting them be automatic), because mistakes can/will happen.

 

[mitchflorida]

I always autopay and will continue to do so. First for the convenience and second for the $10 monthly savings.

Worst case scenario you have to make a dispute with your Credit Card company which isn't difficult. You do need proof that you sent the receiver, which you should always keep. I think you learned the wrong lesson from the incident.

 

[oldengineer]

I use autopay for the savings also. Last March I had a $65.00 charge which I was told for a non-returned smart card after converting to H/J. The CSR thought about it for a second and decided that since Dish techs swapped the boxes it was their responsibility to return the old stuff and promptly cancelled the charge. I had a few similar experiences with D* and resolved them also. Stuff happens, but I have noticed that 100% of the billing errors I see favor the provider. Coincidence???

 

[empiretc]

The question we should all be asking is why are they charging you $400 for a so called un-returned piece of crap Hopper, when you can buy one for around $200.

yep. been looking at them. $200 all day long. not sure the bill needs to go up again though. will keep the 722 until it dies, lol.

 

[Scherrman]

I would have to say that using credit card auto pay has made bill paying much easier. Even if there are conflicts it's very easy to resolve the it if paid with your credit card, that's what their job is.

Like Claude said, even if you were not on autopay Dish still would have billed your credit card they have on file. Try not to be so paranoid and just keep good tabs on your accounts.

 

[Neutron]

To the OP: Did your tracking number show delivered? If so all it would have taken was a call to DISH or a PM to one of the DIRT guys here to straighten it out.