Its Ok - Your call IS important to them !

jokeworm

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Jul 29, 2006
1,118
0
Tulsa. Ok.
Does life really have to be THIS difficult ?
Is my call REALLY that important to them ?

Sarcastic - sure - but hopefully someone will take pity on me.

:D

===========================================

From: my.email.address
To: ceo@dishnetwork.com
Date: Sep 29, 2006 11:56 PM
Subject: Remove a Free Movie Trial.

Sirs, I signed up for Dish-network back on 17th July. At that time I was given a free 3 month subscription to HBO. Very nice it was too - thank-you.

A couple of weeks ago I called and sat on hold for around 25 mins to try and find out what date i needed to call in and cancel my HBO subscription by - so that you would not charge me any fee's for having this service.

The lady I spoke with said that I should call "at the end of the month" in order to avoid any fee's. (This means that I would have only actually had the free service for 2 1/2 months - but that's OK - i let that one slide)

Last night I tried calling back to remove HBO from my account as the lady had asked me to do .. and yet again i sat on hold for more than 25 mins listening to what can only be described as the most annoying "on hold" music I have ever heard in all of my life ... which was interrupted every 30 seconds or so by some breezy lady - who - without laughing once - told me that my call was important to her. (if it was really important - you would be answering my calls - not sitting me on hold while more of my precious life ticks by)

In the end I gave up holding. Is there anyone that I can speak with or write to that can remove the HBO "free" service from my account without me having to jump through hoops and sit on hold for the best part of an hour before someone decides to answer a call?

Other than a few early signal blips caused by the installer - I have so far really enjoyed the service. Unfortunately - the few occasions that I have had to deal with your customer "service" have reminded me of my younger days sat in the dentist chair just waiting for the drill to connect with the nerve that needed attention. Its quite frankly - that painful.

How hard can it be to allow users to downgrade online ?
We can upgrade easy enough - but downgrade and you have to sit on hold until someone who thinks that my call is important to them decides to answer and flip a switch.

Please - help me end this nightmare.

I promise i will never again upgrade any of my service plans ... just in case I ever have to go through this "downgrade hell" I'm sure there is a very good reason for it - but honestly - I'm really not interested - I just want to get rid of HBO and go back to watching some HD content.

Thanks in advance for your help

My contact details.

:)

====================================================
 
I think that is one of Dish's little tricks,offering 3 months or so of FREE Premium Channel(s). Knowing that some people might forget to cancel at the end of that term. Or get frustrated going thru Customer Service,like you did, and just say"Ahh hell with it,I'll keep it" ! :(

I agree, there should be a EASIER way to Downgrade !!

Will be looking forward to see what sort of Reply you get from them ?
 
There are 3 reasons you can't downgrade online.
1. Their web page people are idiots.
2. They think they can scare you into not downgrading, by giving you the old "it will cost 5.00 (10.00 for adult) speech.
3. They are afraid of overloading the call centers when people see their bills,and claim they didn't see anything about downgrade fees on the website.
 
I have yet to find a company (cell, satellite, etc) that you can downgrade either online or over an automated phone system. They make it real easy to upgrade, but make the downgrading unpleasant :)
 
iafirebuff said:
I have yet to find a company (cell, satellite, etc) that you can downgrade either online or over an automated phone system. They make it real easy to upgrade, but make the downgrading unpleasant :)

You are able to downgrade you service online with Directv.
 
No Reply so far .. I'm guessing the sarcasm made them simply delete it.

I was waiting for the $5 fee issue to come up. My assumption was that there would not be a $5 downgrade fee on a free trial - else it is not free. Anyone had any experience with downgrading a free trial ? Do they still try and hit you with the $5 fee ?
 
jokeworm said:
No Reply so far .. I'm guessing the sarcasm made them simply delete it.

I was waiting for the $5 fee issue to come up. My assumption was that there would not be a $5 downgrade fee on a free trial - else it is not free. Anyone had any experience with downgrading a free trial ? Do they still try and hit you with the $5 fee ?

You didn't send that until late last night right? Assuming that is correct, you won't receive a call/email until Monday. That group rarely works on the weekends. I recall that even Scott didn't receive a call back from them until normal business hours.
 
Well - i guess they read the forums ... just got a call - they are going to setup the account to auto-remove the HBO subscription on the day that the three month free period will run-out ... so i get to keep it for an extra couple of weeks - and I don't have to call in and listen to that music again !!

Good job E*

:)

Will keep an eye on my account from around the 17th and make sure it disappears and isn't replaced by a nice shiny new $5 fee ;)

/me happy.
 
JAG72 said:
You are able to downgrade you service online with Directv.
It's not as much fun anymore since they came up with the 10.00 downgrade fee if you don't keep a service for 30 days. I still love it better than making a phone call. I am a D* and E* sub., so I know the fun of dealing with waiting on hold for hours with both companies.
 
iafirebuff said:
I have yet to find a company (cell, satellite, etc) that you can downgrade either online or over an automated phone system. They make it real easy to upgrade, but make the downgrading unpleasant :)

Sprint allows you to remove options from your plan via the website. I've never tried to change my plan as I have one of those retention plans on top of my 25% of my bill deals.
 
To the best of my knowledge there is no downgrade fee to remove the free 3 months prgramming from your account if you remove it at 3 months. However if you miss the 3 months shut off you and wait till the 4th month you will be charged the fee.. I have never had a customer call me and scream about it so I know this must be correct. Cause trust me, Customers will scream about an extra fee. And I don't blame them
 
digiblur said:
Sprint allows you to remove options from your plan via the website. I've never tried to change my plan as I have one of those retention plans on top of my 25% of my bill deals.

yep. When I got my new plan they added all that "free one month" crap on there. Next day went in and removed all of it :)
 
skyviewmark said:
To the best of my knowledge there is no downgrade fee to remove the free 3 months prgramming from your account if you remove it at 3 months. However if you miss the 3 months shut off you and wait till the 4th month you will be charged the fee.. I have never had a customer call me and scream about it so I know this must be correct. Cause trust me, Customers will scream about an extra fee. And I don't blame them

I know when I removed Starz after the 3 month free thing there was no fee
 
Reminds me of when I went to go cancel with Vonage because I deiceded just to use my cell phone. Can't cancel online. Call up to cancel and hear "Due to high call volume, the average wait time is 25 minutes or more..Please hold", I wait on the phone 30-35 minutes and then I get disconnected. I was on my cell phone so I don't know if my call was just dropped or they hung up on me. So I email customer service and they reply back that they can't cancel me I must call. So I call back wait another 25 minutes and then I say screw it and hang up. I had recently switched banks so the debit card they had on file was no good anymore, so I just waited for them to call me. Got a call about 3 weeks later from their collections dept was canceled for non-payment. I paid them my balance but I wasn't going to waste hours on the phone (if I ever got to talk to someone I probably would have had to go thru them trying to keep me. "Sir, may I ask why you want to cancel", "How bout if I were to reduce your rate", etc, etc)

Ok, so I can never sign up for vonage again, but I don't think I want to.
 
I just cancelled my 3 month trial. The lady tried to tell me a downgrade fee would apply... that is until I pointed out it was a trial.

Can you really get 3 months free? Since you're billed a month in advance, how can you actually watch the premium channel for 3 months and not get a bill on the 4th cycle. I cancelled well ahead of time to avoid any billing issues.
 

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