Hate to bust your bubble, but you will be required to sign a two year lease agreement when the installer shows up, regardless of what the CSR said. If you refuse to sign it, the installer will go on to his next call.
Now D* always has the option of modifying the terms of your lease, and it may very well be that they are going to waive the lease agreement for you but the installer has no way of verifying this. D* requires installers to obtain signatures for all leased receivers they install.
Hey, no burst bubble here! I planned on being on being signed up to a two year contract. When the CSR came back after having me on hold and viewing my account, in her list of rattling off what she was going to give me, the "no new contract" was what she came up with. I asked her to repeat everything again slowly because she did rattle if off pretty fast, and I wrote down everything she said. Sure enough, "no new contract agreement" was what she had said. I asked her to verify what that means, and she said: "your current contract expires in November, and when that is up, you are no longer going to be under contract with us."
I would have been happy with just the HR20. When she came back with the free HD programming and no contract as well, I was more than pleased.
Being that this person was in customer retention, I am sure she noted on the account that there is to be no new contract after the technician installs my receiver. Seeing that D* provides the technician, or his company with the receiver to begin with, I am sure they have that authority. And I am sure whatever notes the customer retention puts on the account trumps whatever a regular CSR does.
And even if I am under contract for another two years... I don't care! I never planned on jumping ship to E* even if I did not get the HR20.