It's that time of year again, upcoming price changes.
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I did see the welcome pack increase by several dollars for customers going to it.
I guess they figure if a customer wants the cheapest package, they might as well make a decent profit.
But man it’s really gone up. I remember when it was $10, 8 years ago. Add to that a $5 non DVR fee and your at $32 for literally no channels.
Does welcome pack include locals ?
I guess they figure if a customer wants the cheapest package, they might as well make a decent profit.
But man it’s really gone up. I remember when it was $10, 8 years ago. Add to that a $5 non DVR fee and your at $32 for literally no channels.
Does welcome pack include locals ?
Welcome Pack was $14.99 8 years ago, and yes, it includes locals. What were the competitors?
Ah, the good ol' days...I never thought TV would get more expensive than the electric bill...
I believe at one time the Everything Pack covered most everything. But today is does. Quite a few channels are in Flex Pack like BBC World that is not in the everything pack.
Welcome Pack without locals was $9.99 per month eight years ago. The competitor was Locals Only, also $9.99 per month. I remember that price increase quite clearly in 2011, when Dish forced people with those packages to switch to Welcome Pack (with no option to drop the locals) at $14.99 per month.
Yes, I have to wonder what Dish's strategy is, by having Welcome Pack, Smart Pack, and Flex Pack all priced so similarly. Could this lead to the eventual elimination of Flex Pack, and Dish wants those subscribers to continue to pay around the same amount when they are forced to switch packages? Or is it the other way around, and Dish is working towards finally eliminating both Welcome Pack and Smart Pack, forcing all of those subscribers to switch to Flex Pack?
On the "Compare Packages" section on Dish's website, Dish America (not Silver or Gold) is the only one of those packages that is still listed, and the Dish America page says that it is No Longer For Sale.
DISH America | English Programming | MyDISH | DISH Customer Support
I can tell you the welcome and locals only pack came during the digital OTA transition.
Many customers where loosing Tv stations due to going digital, and Dish knew these customers would never pay a $100/mo subscription.
Locals only where offered at $10 and the welcome pack to help transition some of the OTA people over who where loosing access to some of their OTA channels.
Dish figured at $10 it was another customer on the books.
The welcome pack on the other hand was used heavily in 2011 to cook the books for Wall Street to help off set a massive subscriber loss.
Customers who where in a 2 year agreement had to pay $20/mo for each month remaining to cancel.
As an alternate option, customers where able to downgrade to the welcome pack at $10/mo to ride out their contract.
Many customers accounts where downgraded to 1 receiver and simply put on autopay for $10/mo until their contract expired.
I would get several “welcome pack” chargebacks as a retailer every week. It wasn’t until I started pulling up the account notes and calling customers until I realized what was going on.
The welcome pack was not considered “qualifying programming” so therefore as a retailer we got a chargeback when a customer switched to this package.
The only good thing that came out of customers being allowed to do this is that the account did not count towards a disconnect.
Our churn percentage was usually 2.25% per month went down to 1.13% which was amazing.
Usually on average Dish was 1.5% churn.
But even at 1.5% if you figure that over a year Dish is loosing 18% of their customer base due to disconnects
Many customers where loosing Tv stations due to going digital, and Dish knew these customers would never pay a $100/mo subscription.
Locals only where offered at $10 and the welcome pack to help transition some of the OTA people over who where loosing access to some of their OTA channels.
Dish figured at $10 it was another customer on the books.
The welcome pack on the other hand was used heavily in 2011 to cook the books for Wall Street to help off set a massive subscriber loss.
Customers who where in a 2 year agreement had to pay $20/mo for each month remaining to cancel.
As an alternate option, customers where able to downgrade to the welcome pack at $10/mo to ride out their contract.
Many customers accounts where downgraded to 1 receiver and simply put on autopay for $10/mo until their contract expired.
I would get several “welcome pack” chargebacks as a retailer every week. It wasn’t until I started pulling up the account notes and calling customers until I realized what was going on.
The welcome pack was not considered “qualifying programming” so therefore as a retailer we got a chargeback when a customer switched to this package.
The only good thing that came out of customers being allowed to do this is that the account did not count towards a disconnect.
Our churn percentage was usually 2.25% per month went down to 1.13% which was amazing.
Usually on average Dish was 1.5% churn.
But even at 1.5% if you figure that over a year Dish is loosing 18% of their customer base due to disconnects
But now we are in the middle of yet another digital OTA transition, so this would be a good time to bring back Locals Only, right?
But now we are in the middle of yet another digital OTA transition, so this would be a good time to bring back Locals Only, right?
What transition ?
It’s not the same as it was 7 years ago. Too many people are relying on streaming only.
According to what I was read, 3.0 is supposed to have better coverage. It will be interesting to see if that hold true. I lost all of my out of area locals from Portland/Seattle OTA when they went digital back in 2009. The only thing left were the local translators. That still is true today.
How do they raise the price of the Everything Pack when it no longer includes HBO and Cinemax? The price should be going down, not up.
I expect it will be about the same at the end of the day since the repack is forcing stations into spectrum that is harder to receive over distance while 3.0 is supposed to fix the multi-path issues, or so I have been told.
I would think it is the latter - wanting to force everyone to switch to the Flex Pack. It would be a lot easier sell to the customers "look at all the channels you are getting" as opposed to taking them off the flexibility that those who have the Flex Pack really enjoy. But then on the flip side, is Dish making more money off the other packages since the price point is so close but the Welcome/Smart Pack has so much fewer channels than the base Flex Pack? I also wonder if that is the reason they keep Dish America Silver and Dish America Gold. I actually was looking to switch from Top 250 to Dish America Gold, but the CSR told me that it was going to be going away if I wanted it to be added, I needed to be bumped up higher since he couldn't do it. And in retrospect, it was a better option to not do it because DA Gold wasn't getting the new channels added to the pack as Dish added them to the other packs. So those two packs have had the same price increases but no new subs or channels - Dish is probably making a pretty big profit off of those.
I am guessing that the Everything Pack will still have the credit applied for no HBO/Cinemax. Dish probably wants to cover their bases that if HBO/Cinemax comes back that the credits just stop and the price is what they want it to be.
