No Line of Sight

[studloans]

Hello everyone. New to the group - mainly because I am so frustrated with Dish.

I have been a customer for 3 years. In January, I upgraded to DishHD because my wonderful wife baught me a BIG OLE HD TV. Thanks Honey!!!! I have been extremely happy with Dish's quality and the service until NOW.

When I upgraded to the HD package, I renewed my contract for two additional years.

A few months ago, I accepted another job that is requiring that I relocated to North Carolina. We put our house on the market and it sold rather quickly. So, prior to moving to NC (new house is still in construction), we moved to a temporary place (Apartment) in the Houston area. The Dish Tech came out on Thursday and tried to install the system. He told me he could not because of Line of Sight was block due to trees and other Multi-Dwelling Units.

So, I called to cancell my service and talked to the "Customer Loyalty" department and they told me that I will be billed $15 dollars for each remaining month of the contract. There are 16 months left and I will be billed $240.

I talked to the first level rep, her manager and then his manager and they all told me the same thing. It is not THERE fault that I moved to where I am currently living and can not receive the sat signal. I should move to a different place.

Can they do this? If not, who do I talk to at DISH? Someone please help me.

Thanks,
Chris in Houston.

 

[bookworm370]

How long do you expect to be in temp housing? You could call and as them to put your account on hold until you move to your new diggs.

Also, you can go to dishpointer.com and see if you have a LoS to at least one sat. May not be all the channels but you may be able to get some. And then you they can adjust your package so you pay less until you move. My guess is that you don't have line of site to all 3 sats.

 

[old corps]

Can't you put your account on "hold" until your new place is finished?

Ed

 

[boba]

Yes they have a contract with you agreeing to buy a minimum programming package for 24 months. You are the one who moved to a NLOS location.

I am surprised that a suspension wasn't suggested until you get to N.C. I think they still charge $5/mo. to suspend the account and your obligation is also suspended so you would still have 16 months to go.

 

[KAB]

How long before you move to SC? Rather than cancel, maybe tough it out and get your HD locals OTA. With Club Dish, the reinstall at your new home will be no charge.

 

[Pen15head]

cant pause your dish while you are in the commitment. the commitment says you must maintain the minimum programming pacakage for 24 months. it does not allow you to use dish pause during this time. however, maybe you could take welcome pack?

perhaps just chalk up the fee to the cost of relocation. dish is right when they say it is not their choice on where you decide to relocate to after you agreed to a commitment. would you let the contracter of your new home simply weasel out of his contract to build your home because he found a more profitable job to do somewhere else after you invested up front all the cost? no, you would demand full repayment back or sue his ass if he did not fufill his end of the agreement. dish already shelled out the labor and cost for the dish and leased receiver. so they expect you to hold your end.

 

[harshness]

DISH Pause is $5/month if it is still available.

In the past, it wasn't uncommon to dismiss the commitment if no LOS could be had. The problem being that you had to return your equipment and start over as a returning customer when you were ready to return.

As an aside, there are areas on the DISH Network website that make note of a $12.50/month bailout charge.

 

[Stargazer]

Is there a way that you can get a signal on top of a hill near you? If so you could run electric wire to the top of a hill to give the receiver power, place the receiver(s) in that building and run coax down to your house and perhaps control channel changing through UHF commands or IR Emitter through the coax.

 

[Mr Tony]

cant pause your dish while you are in the commitment.

yes you can. You just extend the contract that many months its suspended

 

[whatchel1]

EA

Hello everyone. New to the group - mainly because I am so frustrated with Dish.

I have been a customer for 3 years. In January, I upgraded to DishHD because my wonderful wife baught me a BIG OLE HD TV. Thanks Honey!!!! I have been extremely happy with Dish's quality and the service until NOW.

When I upgraded to the HD package, I renewed my contract for two additional years.

A few months ago, I accepted another job that is requiring that I relocated to North Carolina. We put our house on the market and it sold rather quickly. So, prior to moving to NC (new house is still in construction), we moved to a temporary place (Apartment) in the Houston area. The Dish Tech came out on Thursday and tried to install the system. He told me he could not because of Line of Sight was block due to trees and other Multi-Dwelling Units.

So, I called to cancell my service and talked to the "Customer Loyalty" department and they told me that I will be billed $15 dollars for each remaining month of the contract. There are 16 months left and I will be billed $240.

I talked to the first level rep, her manager and then his manager and they all told me the same thing. It is not THERE fault that I moved to where I am currently living and can not receive the sat signal. I should move to a different place.

Can they do this? If not, who do I talk to at DISH? Someone please help me.

Thanks,
Chris in Houston.

Did the installer check both the EA as well as the WA? Have a feeling all he knew was what he usually does WA for Houston.

 

[tim tim tim]

That is surprising, every time I had a nlos due to an apartment or something they always canceled the contract for free. Call and yell, they will do it for you

 

[MikeD-C05]

Did the installer check both the EA as well as the WA? Have a feeling all he knew was what he usually does WA for Houston.

Houston hd locals and regular channels are all available on both Eastern Arc( 61.5) and Western arc(110). So I am betting that he didn't check for eastern arc line of sight either.

 

[dishcomm]

Hello everyone. New to the group - mainly because I am so frustrated with Dish.

I have been a customer for 3 years. In January, I upgraded to DishHD because my wonderful wife baught me a BIG OLE HD TV. Thanks Honey!!!! I have been extremely happy with Dish's quality and the service until NOW.

When I upgraded to the HD package, I renewed my contract for two additional years.

A few months ago, I accepted another job that is requiring that I relocated to North Carolina. We put our house on the market and it sold rather quickly. So, prior to moving to NC (new house is still in construction), we moved to a temporary place (Apartment) in the Houston area. The Dish Tech came out on Thursday and tried to install the system. He told me he could not because of Line of Sight was block due to trees and other Multi-Dwelling Units.

So, I called to cancell my service and talked to the "Customer Loyalty" department and they told me that I will be billed $15 dollars for each remaining month of the contract. There are 16 months left and I will be billed $240.

I talked to the first level rep, her manager and then his manager and they all told me the same thing. It is not THERE fault that I moved to where I am currently living and can not receive the sat signal. I should move to a different place.

Can they do this? If not, who do I talk to at DISH? Someone please help me.

Thanks,
Chris in Houston.

Cancelling was inadvisable.
This is an unfortunate occurance with apartment dwellers. \
At this point as a tech I would have tried ot get reception from one of the core sats which would have given you partial service for the time being.
I would suggest that you call back to Dish and schedule a new appointment.
BTW what part of NC are you in now?
Just make up a fib that you chose a new apartment alongside others that is adjacent to other untis that have Dish.
When the tech gets there expalin the situation and tell hik you'd rather have partial service than no service at all. If he balks, tell him you are willing to sign off on th partial service. This should be enouhg to persuade him to go ahead and install the equipment.
Report back your outcome.

 

[dishcomm]

Can't you put your account on "hold" until your new place is finished?

Ed

Unfortunately , no.. I have tried this. I have had our office staff go all the way to executive resolutions and they refusewd. Stupid. With Dish struggling to retain customers one would think they'd go to any length to keep a customer.

 

[dishcomm]

cant pause your dish while you are in the commitment. the commitment says you must maintain the minimum programming pacakage for 24 months. it does not allow you to use dish pause during this time. however, maybe you could take welcome pack?

perhaps just chalk up the fee to the cost of relocation. dish is right when they say it is not their choice on where you decide to relocate to after you agreed to a commitment. would you let the contracter of your new home simply weasel out of his contract to build your home because he found a more profitable job to do somewhere else after you invested up front all the cost? no, you would demand full repayment back or sue his ass if he did not fufill his end of the agreement. dish already shelled out the labor and cost for the dish and leased receiver. so they expect you to hold your end.

There is no such thing as can't. This could be resolved with a little logic.
This has nothing to do with weaseling out of anything.
NObody wins here. Dish loses a customer and the lost customer has nothing good to say about the company. Given Dish's recent subscriber net loss in the last 5 quarters of over 200,000 customers it would be prudent for Dish to work out a solutoin where everyone would be happy.

 

[dishcomm]

Did the installer check both the EA as well as the WA? Have a feeling all he knew was what he usually does WA for Houston.

Ahh good idea. Here's the problem. Dish will make existing cusomers pay for a change from WA to EA. Why? I do not know. Dish WILL NOT add a EA dish to an existing account. I have tried this. In fact top levels at doemstic call centers have told us there is no code to add an EA dish to an existing customer. PLUS this customers equipment MAy not be EA compatible. This would have to be investigated further.
Here's the rub. Dish will gladly change a EA to a WA no problem. Weird

 

[Stargazer]

I have gotten them to change a WA to an EA after telling them the locals would not come in on the WA location anymore. They came out and done it for free. At first they tried to charge a fee but I got them to waive it. They swapped out the equipment and everything. Our market went to EA anyways but they were only putting it in for new customers at the time.

 

[dishcomm]

I have gotten them to change a WA to an EA after telling them the locals would not come in on the WA location anymore. They came out and done it for free. At first they tried to charge a fee but I got them to waive it. They swapped out the equipment and everything. Our market went to EA anyways but they were only putting it in for new customers at the time.

Yes. custmers can do that. We as techs cannot. If we are on site and this ocmes up if we make the call the CSR will tell us he/she does not have a code to add an EA to the work order. So we have three choices. Charge the customer($99), eat the cost of the dish oursleves because Dish will make us fight for payment or cancel the work order.

Now this may read dumb.. but if the customer themself calls in and as long as there is NOT an open work order then yes, Dish will most likely waive the cost of the dish.
I told ya it was dumb.

 

[DishSubLA]

yes you can. You just extend the contract that many months its suspended

Thank you for making that correction. There is a lot of wrong information coming from the particular "well." I haven't had the time to make many similar corrections to many examples of wrong information from that particular source because I don't have all the time in the world. Thanks again, and keep up the good work.

 

[Claude Greiner]

I have gotten them to change a WA to an EA after telling them the locals would not come in on the WA location anymore. They came out and done it for free. At first they tried to charge a fee but I got them to waive it. They swapped out the equipment and everything. Our market went to EA anyways but they were only putting it in for new customers at the time.

We have done that also, but I refuse to do it anymore!

Everytime we did it for a customer, and like a broken record we disclosed to the customer several times that they would not get any local channels and the customer agreed to it.

Out of the 3 I had changed, 2 of the customers ended up making a big stink about not being able to get locals and ended up using that as an excuse to cancel.

As far as this customers situation, you can thank the attorney generals and all the customers who went crying to them for help to get out of their contracts. Before Dish was letting customers out of their contracts left and right. Now that the attorney generals made Dish pay all that money and established a list of guidelines, Dish is going by their rules and letting fewer people out of their contracts.

My advice here is to downgrade to the welcome pack until you get your house finished, and then setup another dishmover.