You can add up to 2 purchased 211's on a hopper account. Leased will not be an option.
As for the tag, I understand what you guys are saying. The $40 fee a few years ago had two tags on the account, one that was "enable ehd" and one that was specific to turning into a dvr. If you paid the $40 and maintained the tag(both would load on the account 3 or 4 years ago), the enable tag remained on the dish system for account specific. Now if there was not a 211 on the account then, I could see it just auto removing when the fee for Dvr was eliminated, but if was active back then to current, it may still be on the internal system within Dish. Like I said before, there are many variables here, and all I was noting is that the possibility of it still having a single "enable ehd" tag item in dishs Internal system(I don't even think retailers have access to that one, or techs as neither would need it), it would be worth him contacting a DIrT member to verify. At that point he can decide to pay again, if he has to. But I get exactly what you guys are saying, and those are all variables that come into play.
