Dish Network Poor Customer Service Experience

[Geno]

My experiences with Dish and local cable have been highly variable. After the umpteenth rate increase and miserable service, I ditched cable and bought a Dish setup (5 years ago). Initially, I was ecstatic about the picture quality, and the fact I could take my receiver and a portable dish antenna with me in my RV...try that with cable!
When I got a HD set and wanted to switch to a HD Dish receiver, I got the news that the receiver would be $900 or some such insanity. Talking to the Customer Service rep, I made the remark that they were forcing me to switch to Direct TV, who offered their HD receiver for about $100. The Dish rep then immediately backed off and offered me the Dish 811 for $50, which I accepted.
I guess my bottom line experience is that "customer service" is highly variable with all companies. I have been both elated and enraged with Dish/Direct TV/local cable. Too bad there isn't a company out there who has realized this and put a truly good service model into practice.

 

[majorloser]

Dish Came Through

Well, Dish network came through!

Long story short:

My 6000U receiver took a dump last month (second receiver in a year). I called Dish to get a replacement. They charge about $40.00 to ship a replacement receiver of the same model. I complained that this will be the third 6000U receiver for me and was sick of the lousy performance and reliability from this receiver. I asked about the upgrade program and said they should give me a better deal since this is their fault.

I ended up getting a new VIP211 receiver under a lease instead of purchase. It worked out that I had to pay $50 to ship the new receiver and send the old one back for a $25 refund ($25 net cost). The new receiver is terrific! It has HDMI output (vs. RGB D-sub15) for either 720p or 1080i. The old one just couldn’t receive the “over the air” digital/HD transmissions from Orlando (poor reception I guess). The new one picks them all up beautifully.

The only bad thing when I got it was the new remote was only IR. My old remote was IR/UHF. I called Dish to complain about that this wouldn’t work since I had everything in a component closet. They admitted their mistake since the receiver is so new there is no info available. They sent me a new remote that is UHF and has an IR repeater that mounts on the receiver. All I had to pay was shipping and tax since they didn’t tell me at first.