How to safely order PPV?

[dukiebluedoc]

I have not ordered a PPV since I upgraded to the HWS system earlier this year.
Today I decided to order and watch a 2 1/2 hour Dish Cinema movie (The Hundred Foot Journey on channel 516). I did so via the Guide, after which the All Day showing on the Dish Cinema guide showed the logo "rented".
At exactly 6:30, the show time we wanted to watch I tuned to channel 516 and got an 005 message that the channel was not authorized. I went back to the Guide and clicked on 516 and got a screen allowing me to purchase the movie again.
I called Dish and the rep said they were having technical problems all day with PPV authorization.
She directed me to the Rental section of the DVR, which had nothing in it, then to the Menu sub screen which indeed showed I had ordered and paid for the movie.
She said there was nothing she could do but put a comment in my file that I should get a refund for today's movie.
Obviously I am not a happy Dish customer right now.
If I want to order this movie again in future, would it be safer to call Dish and do it on the phone?
Is there any chance I will really see a refund for today?
Any tips on how PPV is supposed to work?
Anything a DIRT rep can do to make this a better experience?
Caroline

 

[Deadlocked]

Order online


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[ChadT41]

Its common practice for reps to notate the account like that. If you are charged for it, and cannot watch it, when you get your bill make sure to call in and go over what happened. If they give you gruff, one neat secret is you can tell them to double check the note, if they say no note, ask them to check the account access history and see if your account was accessed about the time you called in. That should give sense to the fact that you called and made sure to be proactive. FYI, thats not a secret, but a security for Dish and the consumers.

 

[lucky86]

Did you try ordering again? It won't double charge.

 

[navychop]

Sounds like a future Netflix customer.

 

[Hall]

Dish doesn't seem to be super strict about PPVs and refunding them. We ordered one one time that wouldn't download or was going at a pace that would take a week to download (this was after letting the download speed settle down, trust me). So we found the same show that was playing at a set time later on, so we waited (and DVR'd it) to watch later. I called Dish, explained what was going on, and they could confirm my story -- the fact that I rented the same movie twice certainly gave my story some validity and they could see that I rented it twice.

 

[Hall]

If I want to order this movie again in future, would it be safer to call Dish and do it on the phone?

If you speak to a rep to order, they charge a fee on top of the rental charge.

 

[ChadT41]

If you speak to a rep to order, they charge a fee on top of the rental charge.

I don't think they charge that anymore.

As far as ease of getting it taken care of, if it's a one time thing, rule of thumb is 'the customers always right'. Trust me, you can tell when it is customers fault vs dish fault. If you have 8 ppv's a month and you're calling in each month to get credited or anything, then they are not gonna work with you anymore. But if you order 1 a year, I would probably credit it back and offer a PPV certificate(that was my own subjective call to make).

 

[Yespage]

If something goes wrong, there is DIRT. They are the users with the Red Names.

The one and only problem I've had with Dish is their billing department, though that was a while ago now. DIRT makes everything easier!