Complaint Review: Dish Network

Aaime, sorry to hear about the problems you've been having with good old "DISH". I worked for DISH for sometime, but I can offer some type of explanation for what happened to you. I want you to keep in mind that I am not and will not ever defend them. The company itself was very good to me and I wasn't a problem. The problem came from some of the low-lives they would hire. They either had no clue on how to speak correctly (Most times they had very thick accents and you would never think most of the call centers are in the U.S.),couldn't explain the bill properly when there was a problem, or they would just simply drop the line. Plenty of times I saw this happen and no one ever caught on. For this reason, supervisors were overworked and never could really get around to take the calls in time.

I was blessed with a great supervisor who was very helpful to me and the customers and did manage to get around. Now what most likely happened in this case was that you were behind about a month or so. Thats fine and really should do no harm, BUT they constantly fail to tell you that billing for DISH services runs ONE MONTH ahead. For explample: A bill dated August 23,2006 might be for services from September 7,2006 to October 7,2006 so the system does this adjustment automatically. If you pay one month behind for some time, the system takes whatever balance (I've seen as little as $.50 cause a problem)and counts how many days it has been recycling.

Usually after day 48 you'll see the message on the screen warning about a possible interuption in service, day 52 you'll be soft disconnected (services disabled so that you may think there was a problem and phone them right away) and finally a hard disconnect (services terminated and they charge $25 restart fee + 2 months in adv before restarting services.) I know exaclty what happened in the case where they did a $500 withdrawl from your credit/debit card. I don't know how long you had dish, but at some point when you were interested in getiing dish- they must have asked you for a Social Security # and a valid credit or debit card. All CSR's at the company need to advise customers of the following legal disclosures before proceeding: there will be a $1 hold on that card to verify that it is active and your S.S. # will be used for credit purposes only. Ok-Fine, thats not really a problem. At the very end they mention a very long list of disclosures. If you ask me, they are made this long to confuse/bore the customer to death!

Somewhere along in that list is a disclosure that rougly states: Should your account be cancelled, the equipment provided to you shall be returned to dish network (In the given amount of time) or a minimum of $200 per rec and $100 for lens on dish will be assesed to the card on file. Keep in mind that they tend to read this at a fast pace so that customers do not catch on. God help you if you decide to try and back down at this point because they would hound you into continuing.

Personally, I hated when the system did this because it made it look so wrong. There was never a way for us to manually charge a customers card without them giving us all the information again because of high system security. The only information we ever saw was address,phone number,packages being used and movies ordered. Either way, I totally agree with you that this is wrong and customers should at least be made aware before it happens.

I'm guessing by the time they made you pay the $25 restart fee, your services were already interruppted. Plenty of times I would help customers out of a hole by saving them the $25 after consulting with my supervisor. In my eyes I was happy because a customer was attended to properly. I always took the time to talk it out with them and let them know I understood his/her position since I was also human. At least a few times during my shift, an irrate customer turned happy would want to only deal with me from now on (which was nearly impossible) because of this. It wasn't that I was the "best" employee but I really had a way of understanding people.

When you say that you have been hung up on, lied to and put on hold for over 20 minutes, I believe you. I've seen plenty of random employees just drop the line on a customer or continue to give them false information just to keep the customer happy during the conversation. That same customer then calls again and gets a different story and the cycle continues until they eventually cancel the account. The reason why a customer is almost always on long wait times is because of how poorly the call center is run. They assign times when supervisors are supposed to have meetings with management or catch up on some work.

Honestly, not all supervisors really do this during this time. Instead they float around and gossip, go for a smoke or just simply dissappear. That leaves 400 CSR's with 3-5 supervisors to work with for a few hours after 4pm when the call volume picks up. Trust me, it gets ugly when a supervisor has been on the phone with a customer for almost an hour as has 30 more waiting! As for the contract, you must have spent hours on there looking for it without a trace. Thats because its not on there! You most likely did not even get a hard copy of it because they use your signature on the work order from the installers to "validate" the contract.

The only way you can get a hard copy is by being passed on to the Executive Resolution Team (ERT)located in Englewood, Coloroado. This department is responsible for sensitive documents and has the final say over any dispute. I would only wish that customers had the right to ask for the conversation they had with the CSR. All of the calls are recorded for quality assurance (QA) purpose so why can't a customer simply get the copy? They always come up with some excuse such as: "The call was not recorded" OR "That conversation can only be produced via a subpena from the court system." I was able to hear my calls and that of others many times via the help of managers with the "in" on things. Don't ever fall for that one! Aaime, the sole reason why I left this company was because of how complicated and tricky they made it for customers which in turn made it that way for me.

I would get in contact with the FTC and your local BBB so that you may file a report. Eventually, you will catch the attention of the company. Don't give up, be aggressive (but proper) and always escalate the problem to someone who will listen and help. I once spoke out on several work/customer related problems to a manager and paid for it dearly. Most of the employees I worked with have quit or have been fired in relation to this. Goes to show you what a GREAT company it really is. I hope I've some type of insight on the way the company works. If you have any questions or just random stuff you want to throw out there, feel free to do so.

Maybe cancel the account, since they already charged you for cancellation?

How did they get your bank account info? A CC you can reverse if they have a rep for misbehaving.

Do you REALLY need satellite TV and its oldy-moldy movies? Maybe put the satellite TV money toward a DVD player (if you don't have one- they start at $29} then rent/buy movie DVD's. NetFlix is $6 a month for two DVD's at any time. Most of the TV fare is pretty lame.