I dont think Dish wants me as a customer

[Mr Tony]

So I decided to come back to Dish. I had them for 3+ years and cancelled at the end of last year. At the time I had just locals and didn't neeed them

But now I want to come back with Dish Family (watch the nieces alot and they need their cartoons)

So I call Dish today and say "new customer" to get info and get a lady who had no issues setting up an account (I even told her I was an ex customer). But I wasn't home to give her the receiver info so I'd call back

So I call back tonight and say "new customer" and wait a little bit....and get India (ugh)
Explain the situation and they say since I was a customer before I need Cust Svc.

So I get transferred to Customer service. Then the fun begins. I explain the situation and he wants to pull the old account up.
-give him the phone number on the account...can't find it (same number as when I cancelled)...so he asks for address
-give him the address...no record (again..same info as when I cancelled)..so he asks for name
-give him my name, both the given and the nickname (again, same info ...cant find it
-wanted the numbers off the old reciever...don't have it anymore...gave it to a relative

I explained I already had some new equipment and everything is all set to go. So he puts me on hold, comes back and says we can get you set up as a new customer.

Give him the phone number....and wait
and wait
and wait

10 minutes..he keeps saying "this will only be a minute"

comes back and tells me what package I want. Tell him "Dish Family". He then tells me their computers are updating right now and cant process my order and call back in 2-4 hours!!!

UGH!!!

so now I have to call back. So I try the backdoor way and tech support. But since my account isnt in the system I can't go past the entry of phone number.

Maybe I won't become a returning Dish customer. I enjoy the 811 for the OTA digital

Now I know what the new Dish customers feel like sometimes.

 

[ralfyguy]

So what are you getting on your FTA equipment then? I don't know why you need Dish. Sorry, but I don't know what's available on FTA.

 

[Mr Tony]

So what are you getting on your FTA equipment then? I don't know why you need Dish. Sorry, but I don't know what's available on FTA.

free to air isn't Dish. Contrary to what people who are using FTA boxes to steal Dish (or should I say, use to) FTA isn't Dish. We don't condone stesaling here

Free to air has alot of the weird stuff out there that Dish & Direct don't have

news feeds (live, uncut, uncensored)
sports feeds
oddball channels
some out of market network channels (UPN, WB)
RTN (Retro TV Network...think TV Land 5 years ago)
International channels
Religious Channels

and just lots of little neat stuff. Its a hobby like shortwave, Ham Raqdios and stuff like that

 

[Mr Tony]

what's sad is I know people have posted how Cust Svc treats them, and they're already customers.

Pretty sad when they treat a new subscriber like this

 

[Bill R]

Pretty sad when they treat a new subscriber like this

I agree and I think the main problem is some of the people that DISH hires in their call centers (especially the overseas call centers). They are very poorly trained and for some reason, if the have a problem, they will not (maybe they get a bad review for doing it) transfer you to a person that can solve the problem. I don't know how much DISH thinks that it is saving with their overseas call center but my guess is that they cause DISH to lose a lot of customers.

 

[Mr Tony]

what sucks is during the day when I called, I got a nice lady who spoke English as her native language

Tonight I got "Rod-ger" when I said "new customer" and got "Ja-ames" when I got customer service

never knew James was 2 sylables

Dish basically has no record of me as their customer (probably because they owed me 10 bucks when I cancelled). How can they not have my records when I cancelled less than a year ago

 

[boy921]

Dish must be having a promotion to outsource themselves out of business. They once held the award for excellent customer service. Must have gone to their heads, like it has with other once large businesses. I can't think of a good experience with any out sourced Dish CSR for subscription/purchases.

 

[Mr Tony]

UNREAL!!

Call back in and talk to a guy named Omar. Real nice guy

Didnt say anything about the "previous customer" fiasco and was up and running in 15 minutes. Told him about the computer glitch and there was no record of me setting up the account before.

only drawback was he was talking about new promos and stuff after I said I already had the equipment and it was set up
I reiterated it and he said "oh ok. That will make it easier".

No problems activating the reciever that I got from another member here. And right now the channels are downloading into the box

Hopefully they got the billing address right

Amazing what a little CSR roulette will do

so now I'm back in the Dish boat

 

[SatelliteGAL]

Welcome aboard. Please don't stand up

 

[jcrandall]

I take it you made sure there was no commitment as you own your equip? Did they offer you anything free that was compelling, like premium networks or anything for a while? Probally nothing too major for a $20/mo package, but I think family qualifies as 'minimium programming' for any promos.

 

[Mr Tony]

nope no commitment. I verified this
no activation fee

no premium movie offers (I told him I didnt want any extras). Just the family pack

now the rugrats can watch cartoons when they're here...and keep uncle Iceberg from going crazy

 

[W_Tracy_Parnell]

Welcome!

I think Dish stinks, but what can you do? I am up and running too finally-they sent me a new smart card. It only took the guy about a half hour to authorize it-he had to get a supervisor!

 

[stone phillips420]

customer service is defintaly a thing of the past!

 

[teachsac]

Welcome back into the Dish Family.

S~

 

[Conjuror]

Welcome back and keep your Coolsat, it may be good to you again .

 

[SmityWhity]

At least Iceberg knew what to expect before calling.

Between FTA/Non-DBS and/or DBS... FTA is not the way to go for regular programming for kids; with the Family Pack, just hand them the remote and let them have fun.

Do to traveling, I cancelled my account late 1998/early 1999. Early this year I re-activated the account, but with new equipment. Since I no longer had the phone number I previously used (in 1996), if any, it took them about 2 minutes to pull up the account. Maybe because the equipment was not re-activated in someone else's name?

Later in the year when I activated my second account for another address in a second state, I had some similar experiences. Including on the second try I was told the dishes I had would not work, and was transferred to technical support to see if they would. After on hold for awhile, the line disconnected (probably to save phone charges on the 800 number).

I called back and somehow got the desk handling new promotions, and got a new person that said to bear (or maybe it was bare ) with her that she was new and this was her first week. However, this really went very smooth. If she did not know if she could do something, instead of telling me no, she asked a supervisor and was told she could. I told her what packages I wanted and she completed all of the info for the new account, including the receiver information. Before the end, I said all I now need you to do is activate my receiver for those packages and I'll be up and running. She asked a supervisor and then said it was activated; so I checked my TV and had all of my programming.

After I had my receiver working, she asked me the same question she asked me a couple of other times, "What day do I want to have my equipment installed?" Then she realized again, I did not want a tech.

I really believe the CSR's have a cheat sheet they follow.

But maybe a few of us can get together and convince Charlie to out source his CSR to us!

 

[iafirebuff]

Customer Service - What is that?

 

[iafirebuff]

I was just looking at the Dish Family pack - Why no Disney?

 

[lakebum431]

I was just looking at the Dish Family pack - Why no Disney?

$$$

 

[iafirebuff]

I figured. Why offer a Family Pack that is lacking the one of the most popular family channels?