Early Termination Fees

[WhiteTiger1]

Tell Dish To Keep up there part of the agreement

I work for Dish, and unless they're outright lying to all their employees we're told frequently that it takes almost 2 years to break even on acquiring a new customer and begin making a profit. This is all combined costs, not just the truck roll, labor, supplies and equipment. It's marketing, administration costs and every other cost involved with that customer. Just like when a company hires on a new employee. It's a very expensive process. It's not just the employee's hourly wage, there's thousands of dollars behind the scenes involved.

Pretty Bad that the consumer has to keep up to there side of the contract and Dish can take away at will. I signed a contract to get Voom, guess what no more VOOM!! They can terminate channels that made me sign on the dotted line. But that's ok!! in there eyes. They lie to people to get them to sign up I know I use to sell it. If I knew they were getting rid of Voom they would not of gotton my business. They were selling people on the Voom channels all the way up until they were gone. People who were lied to should have a way out of there contracts. And Dish should eat that exspense because of the lie. I've seen people get hooked up to Dish that should of never been installed with Dish.(Very Poor reception) Trees,Buildings etc... Most people don't realise they have a poor install until there's Bad weather. And trying to get Dish to do something about it is like pulling teeth. You talk to someone different every time you call. When it comes only about the sell, and not being true to the customer who pays your wages. Then that's were I draw the line. :shocked BYE BYE DISH...

 

[Spatch]

Pretty Bad that the consumer has to keep up to there side of the contract and Dish can take away at will. I signed a contract to get Voom, guess what no more VOOM!! They can terminate channels that made me sign on the dotted line. But that's ok!! in there eyes. They lie to people to get them to sign up I know I use to sell it. If I knew they were getting rid of Voom they would not of gotton my business. They were selling people on the Voom channels all the way up until they were gone. People who were lied to should have a way out of there contracts. And Dish should eat that exspense because of the lie. I've seen people get hooked up to Dish that should of never been installed with Dish.(Very Poor reception) Trees,Buildings etc... Most people don't realise they have a poor install until there's Bad weather. And trying to get Dish to do something about it is like pulling teeth. You talk to someone different every time you call. When it comes only about the sell, and not being true to the customer who pays your wages. Then that's were I draw the line. :shocked BYE BYE DISH...

You need to read a contract before you sign it! You in your mind may have signed a contract for voom, but in reality you signed a contract for Dish. The contract states that dish may remove programing at anytime.

 

[Stargazer]

I know that in my line of business (wireless internet provider) that if we did not have a contract with penalty for early termination to protect us that we would have to charge a bit more upfront to cover our risk and probably more per month as well. What we would end up having to do in order to get the customer's price down is to give them credits in small increments off of their bill like Dish Network does in their Free For All promotion and most would either not be able to afford the upfront cost or want to pay it in addition to the higher monthly fees. The risk would be too high.

 

[WhiteTiger1]

My mistake

You need to read a contract before you sign it! You in your mind may have signed a contract for voom, but in reality you signed a contract for Dish. The contract states that dish may remove programing at anytime.

Doe's not make it right for sales people to sell you on something they are getting rid of!!
But anyway!!
I'm done with my complaint!!
I'm moving on to hopefully a better solution.
I for one hope VOOM wins...

 

[lownote2]

Never was a fan of VOOM, but that's me. I can see why you would be upset if the main reason you signed up for service was to get those channels.

I agree that the problem is the "free free free" mentality. I worked in cellular sales for years before installing and it was the same way. We would "give" a customer a free or heavily discounted phone. Just because the customer pays us for their service every month doesn't mean the phone was a piece of equipment the cellular company never had to pay for and therefore could just hand you. If you broke your phone 2 months later and didn't have insurance, guess what??? Your "free" phone now costs you $200. Hence the contract.
Same way with satellite. There's a lot of money to pay employees, pay for equipment, put satellites in the air, develop new technologies.etc.... So your "free" isn't free, your "free" is you agreeing to keep service for stated length of time.
As in installer though, I do see bad situations where dish does seem unfair.
1. Dishmovers. They move to a location with no line of sight, but still have 18 months on their contract. I believe they have lightened up on this some, but there were times where the attitude was "well, too bad, you signed a contract"
2. You don't get the service you feel you should. In this case I can also see 2 sides. First of all you should have studied what you were getting into before you signed up. Worse for dish would be that if they allowed that, then people would just "complain" and get out of their contract. If your service is poor due to lack of signal, then that's another story. It shouldn't have been installed to begin with then. If it's a dish tech that put it in, then it's costing dish, but as far as I'm concerned as a sub, if I put a dish in I have to guarantee that job of 1 year. That means if there is no line of sight 4 months down the road I'm getting charged a couple hundred dollars, (which by the way is a lot more than I made on the job to begin with)

If you have no line of sight during the time of your contract, then that dish should have never been installed to begin with and I do feel you should be let out of your contract... however the no line of sight available would have to be verified.

Just my 2 cents. There are two sides to this argument and both have valid points. Considering the cost of equipment, installation and everything else behind the scenes, unless your excuse is very valid, an ETF of $250 is a bargain. Some people pay that for 3 months of programming.

 

[BobMurdoch]

There are a few things that make people change their mind when it comes to satellite.......

The marketing guys breathlessly hype how great things are, and how cheap it is.

Unfortunately, they fail to disclose the gotchas that can quickly tick off a new customer.....

Rain Fade in Florida and other places susceptible to heavy downpours, poor line of sight to the dish, leaves on the trees that can block a signal, nickel and dime fees that are never disclosed clearly enough, overcompression, flaky receiver software (wasn't an issue as much until the latest 622/722 release), unresponsive or clueless customer service, and blown installation appointments. Channels they assume are there but aren't ("What do you mean I can't watch the Yankees?") Oh, and 100 channels of HD that really isn't 100 channels. The only ones happy with their 100 channels are the hackers.

None of these are the fault of the consumer, but he/she is expected to keep the service for 2 years or whatever the commitment is.

If you want to cut down on the frequency of these cancellations (yes, I realize many customers are flaky and just change for no good reason, but that isn't all of them) then no more sleight of hand while playing fast and loose with the facts.

It may be time for a full disclosure form like the banks have to give with their credit card offers......

FULLY list all fees, and list all currently carried channels by all MSPs and check off the channels and packages they do have access to, and those they don't. Fully list all fees, especially those that just about everyone has to pay (receiver fees, DVR fees, etc.). List all the gotchas that can inhibit the signal to set up reasonable expectations, so the customer goes into things eyes open.

Oh, and allow an escape clause if E* chooses to turn off channels. If they get into a pi$$ing contest with Viacom, customers should have a right to bail on E* as well. E* may have the right to change channel offerings at their whim, but then customers should have the right to tell them to take their dish and shove it someplace uncomfortable.

Will, this happen? I doubt it. But you can't whine about the Feds stepping in since they created the mess by playing it cute, and then hiding behind a commitment when the customer got disgruntled.

 

[BobMurdoch]

You need to read a contract before you sign it! You in your mind may have signed a contract for voom, but in reality you signed a contract for Dish. The contract states that dish may remove programing at anytime.

They should post this contract on their website. Shoving it in front of the face of a consumer to sign, when he/she has probably already been kept waiting hours longer than he expected is disingenuous.

How many of you installers would enjoy a customer who said "just give me 20 minutes so I can go and review this contract"...?

You'd freak and complain that you were behind schedule and had to go.....

 

[WhiteTiger1]

I agree 100%

 

[lern4483]

They should post this contract on their website. Shoving it in front of the face of a consumer to sign, when he/she has probably already been kept waiting hours longer than he expected is disingenuous.

How many of you installers would enjoy a customer who said "just give me 20 minutes so I can go and review this contract"...?

You'd freak and complain that you were behind schedule and had to go.....

Well put.

White Tiger, Im in a similar boat. I signed with dish solely for Voom.
Just before they dropped those channels I upgraded to the 722s, two of them.
I did this solely because I noticed that voom was increasing their programming. I got excited.

Before that I had my 622 and I was long out of contract.

So, I signed a new 2 year contact to upgrade to the 722s. Literaly the same day my favorite channels went dark.

I was lucky, I spoke to the right person and they took me out of my 2 year contract.

I still have dish solely for their dvr and thats it.
I have direc and basicaly they are the same.

ill stay put but for how long im not sure.
But it is known Im very unhappy with what dish has done.

 

[MikeD-C05]

I am not happy with DIRECTV and their cancellation fees. They already charge you 99.00- 199.00 for an hd /hd dvr to just LEASE the damn thing. I cancelled early because the csr promised me that the cancellation fee would be around 240.00 . Well guess what? I got charged 420.00. When I called retention department he said there was a mistake and it should only be 380.00 not 420.00 . He didn't seem to care that his csr CArlos had told me the wrong amount and I had his operator id number and everything. This was on 6/15/08 I am still waiting on my 42.50 credit. Now I have been told three different days the credit will come in. Usually the next week after the day I was told last. Today I called retention again and now the new date is 7/28/08. THere should be a law against charging such high prices to lease and cancell. I thought it would be prorated and you could pay by the month but nope, it was all up front. I will never ever do business with DIRECTV again. They rip you off from start to finish, if you can ever get your final credit.