Reliability Guarantee Is an Insult

[Anonymous99]

23+ year customer here.

Had an outage yesterday with a significant storm. So, I thought I'd make use of their reliability guarantee today. I spent 10 minutes on the phone to be credited $3.

If they have an outage, why can't they just auto-credit us without having to make us call in for it? They're penny-pinching and want all the accolades of offering outage credits while minimizing actually having to pay them.

Also, let's not forget that you have to ask for the credit within 72 hours of the event!

 

[Bobby]

23+ year customer here.

Had an outage yesterday with a significant storm. So, I thought I'd make use of their reliability guarantee today. I spent 10 minutes on the phone to be credited $3.

If they have an outage, why can't they just auto-credit us without having to make us call in for it? They're penny-pinching and want all the accolades of offering outage credits while minimizing actually having to pay them.

Also, let's not forget that you have to ask for the credit within 72 hours of the event!

They don't know who had their TV on when an outage occured. They don't want to credit someone who may not even be home.

 

[BarnRat]

If they have an outage, why can't they just auto-credit us without having to make us call in for it?

How is Dish going to know who's service was out?

Where I live we're in the monsoon season and the thunderstorm cells are usually very intense but small, meaning my Dish may go out for a few minutes and someone a quarter-mile from me won't be affected at all.

 

[Anonymous99]

They don't know who had their TV on when an outage occured. They don't want to credit someone who may not even be home.

Sorry, I find that argument wholly ridiculous. They want to "meter" your service for credits but leave it "unmetered" for charges. I'd prefer the meter option since I should theoretically get a 33% discount right off the bat for sleeping 8 hours a day.

Plus, by your logic, they should, for free, let me pause my service and credit the days I don't use it or turn on my television or go out of town.

 

[Anonymous99]

How is Dish going to know who's service was out?

Where I live we're in the monsoon season and the thunderstorm cells are usually very intense but small, meaning my Dish may go out for a few minutes and someone a quarter-mile from me won't be affected at all.

They must know somehow because they have to confirm the outage before giving you the credit!

 

[BarnRat]

They must know somehow because they have to confirm the outage before giving you the credit!

I don't know. If there is some sort of periodic transmission from a home unit to the satellite, then maybe they could tell.

Since the payout is so small (a few dollars?) maybe they just take your word for how long the outage was.

 

[Bobby]

They must know somehow because they have to confirm the outage before giving you the credit!

I am thinking that the credit comes when there is a DISH uplink outage, not a local storm outage. That is plainly their fault. Once again, if you are not watching TV to notice the outage do you really think you are owed a credit.

 

[NYDutch]

I don't know. If there is some sort of periodic transmission from a home unit to the satellite, then maybe they could tell.

There is no such transmission. The receivers and LNB's are not capable of transmitting data.

 

[Anonymous99]

I am thinking that the credit comes when there is a DISH uplink outage, not a local storm outage. That is plainly their fault. Once again, if you are not watching TV to notice the outage do you really think you are owed a credit.

I don't mean to get pedantic here, but the flip side of your rhetorical question is if it's really 100% uptime if it's only up when you need it. Am I paying for 24/7 availability (I'm sure all advertising leans towards saying this) or am I paying for availability when I want to use it (I've never seen advertising like this except for cell phone minutes or something billed on a per usage basis like PPV for example).

 

[Anonymous99]

There is no such transmission. The receivers and LNB's are not capable of transmitting data.

Are they looking at weather maps to see if you had an actual storm and then taking your word for it if you say you had an outage because the payout is so low? That would also explain the "within 72 hours" stipulation as I'm sure Dish is too cheap to pay for premium historical weather data.

 

[BarnRat]

I pay a whopping $186/month -- I know, that's outrageous. But that is only about $6.20 per day ($0.26 per hour). It would have to be out for a couple of days before I would ask to be reimbursed. Calling Dish is always a bit on the painful side -- calling them for something like this is not worth my time.

 

[Radioguy41]

When I had cable it would sometimes go dead for hours, even days, not just a few minutes. Expecting uninterruptible service from satellite with a pizza pan is unreasonable to begin with and if you think broadband is more reliable think again. I have hard wired broadband and have lost it twice this year due to electrical strikes. I had my first cable TV installed in 1967 and have never had a single year since with either antenna, cable, satellite, or broadband that was 100% interruption free. It happens, nothings perfect.

 

[rvvaquero]

Let's see, $3 for 10 minutes, that works out to $18 an hour. Not bad for sitting at home in your underwear talking on the phone to a courteous polite person half way around the world..................oh, never mind.

 

[NYDutch]

Are they looking at weather maps to see if you had an actual storm and then taking your word for it if you say you had an outage because the payout is so low? That would also explain the "within 72 hours" stipulation as I'm sure Dish is too cheap to pay for premium historical weather data.

If your receiver is Internet connected, and not all are, they likely have access to logs that would show signal loss. Requiring subscribers to report the outages instead of automating the payments makes sense though, since any disconnected receiver could show an extended loss when reconnected that would not qualify for a discount. As a full time RV'er, our Hopper is often disconnected for hours at a time, or even a few days that has nothing to do with any storm outages.

 

[Anonymous99]

I pay a whopping $186/month -- I know, that's outrageous. But that is only about $6.20 per day ($0.26 per hour). It would have to be out for a couple of days before I would ask to be reimbursed. Calling Dish is always a bit on the painful side -- calling them for something like this is not worth my time.

yeah, I definitely don't intend to call again. But the fact that neither you or I will call is the exact reason this whole offer is an insult. If their high value, almost $200/month clients don't find calling in to be valuable, who exactly would?

 

[Anonymous99]

When I had cable it would sometimes go dead for hours, even days, not just a few minutes. Expecting uninterruptible service from satellite with a pizza pan is unreasonable to begin with and if you think broadband is more reliable think again. I have hard wired broadband and have lost it twice this year due to electrical strikes. I had my first cable TV installed in 1967 and have never had a single year since with either antenna, cable, satellite, or broadband that was 100% interruption free. It happens, nothings perfect.

yeah, this is totally fair. In fact, I think Dish recognizes that uninterrupted service 24/7 is generally not possible. But, I feel like they could just acknowledge a 99.9% uptime and leave it at that without trying to add some gimmick where if you find the 0.01% downtime, and you spend some very painful minutes on the phone with them, they'll give you a couple of dollars. Maybe I'm being difficult, but that feels insulting.

 

[NYDutch]

Doing the math, 99% up time means your signal can be off for 87.6 minutes hours per year.

 

[BarnRat]

The bottom line here is that Dish service is really damn reliable (my experience). I'm a 22+ year loyal customer and, to be honest, I didn't know that I could call and get reimbursed for outages. But where I live outages are so seldom and never last more than a few minutes, with an occasional really heavy rain causing a 10-15 minute outage.

 

[N6BY]

Doing the math, 99% up time means your signal can be off for 87.6 minutes per year.

It's 87.6 hours or 5256 minutes, so I'm guessing that you meant hours instead of minutes.

minutes

At this rate, they could have up to 14.4 minutes of outage every day and still fall within 99%.

However, in the 26+ months I have subscribed to Dish lately, I can't remember seeing any outages at all.Then again, I live in California and we have not had much rain. Also I don't watch Dish TV very much.

 

[HipKat]

I pay a whopping $186/month -- I know, that's outrageous. But that is only about $6.20 per day ($0.26 per hour). It would have to be out for a couple of days before I would ask to be reimbursed. Calling Dish is always a bit on the painful side -- calling them for something like this is not worth my time.

You need to make a call to the Loyalty Dept and get that bill dropped. That's crazy to pay that much for TV