Complaint Review: Dish Network (aka Echostar) - Englewood Colorado

We signed up for Dish Network the middle of November 2007 for our new home. The tech came out and setup the service up for 4 different rooms, or so we thought. We had tvs hooked up to 3 of the 4 rooms at the time and those did work. A few weeks later we hooked a tv up to the 4th room and found it did not work.

We tried calling Dish and kept being told a tech would call to schedule a time to come out and fix it, but didn't get a call. Finally after calling several more times we finally got a call from a tech who came out and found that the guy who came originally didn't setup that connection correctly. This guy fixed the problem and we thought that was resolved until we got our next bill and saw we were charged a $29 fee for him coming out.

We called Dish about this fee and was told it was a service fee for him coming out because we 90 days was up that you have to dispute anything. We tried to explain to them that we had been trying to get someone out here for a while so finally after getting the run around they said they would reverse the $29 fee as a "courtesy". We kept telling them that it should never have been charged anyway because the initial installation wasn't finished.

Now, back to a couple of weeks after the service was setup to begin with. We decided to order a pay per view movie one night. We ordered it but during the movie the receiver box started making a loud clicking noise and did so throughout the entire movie. We called Dish immediately and was told we would not be charged for that movie which was fine and that they would send us out a new receiver. We were to swap out the receivers and put the messed up receiver in the box the new receiver came in, close it up and they would send someone out to get it. We were also supposed to call them when we got the new receiver and they would help us set it up.

We received the new receiver, but it was a few weeks before we were able to swap out the receivers. On the next bill, we had a charge for the "unreturned" receiver. We called Dish about this and was again given the runaround about it. We were first told we had to pay the shipping to have the receiver sent back. We told them we would not be doing this since it was their defective equipment. They finally said they would send us out a prepaid box to send it back in, but that we had to drop it off at the nearest UPS location. The only problem with that was that the nearest location to us was an hour away, my husband worked during the day and would not be able to carry it that far, I was 8 months pregnant and did not want to make that trip by myself as my husband also did not want to me to make that trip in my "condition".

We explained this to Dish several times and finally they said they would send someone out to our house to get it. We set the box on our front porch and it sat there for about 3 weeks before UPS finally came and picked it up.

During this time, the "new" receiver we received started just cutting off for no apparent reason and would seem to try to reboot itself. We called Dish again about this problem and was told they would be sending out another receiver. I expressed my concern about this to my husband as I did not want to go through the whole sending the 2nd bad receiver back again. A few days later the receiver that was messing up stopped messing up so when we received the 3rd "new" receiver, we did not mess with opening it up and trying to set it up.

During this whole time we had issues with the billing. We had been in dispute with some charges, but since we hadn't made one month's payment Dish suddenly cut off our service. They also had billed us for the 3rd "new" receiver they had sent out. We just got frustrated with the whole situation so we filed a report with the Better Business Bureau.

We explained that we wanted the service just cancelled for good and Dish could come get every piece of equiment we had in our house and waive any of the cancellation fees associated with it since we had so many problems with them.

While waiting on a response through the BBB, we noticed this morning that $173.33 had been taken out of our bank account. We had not authorized Dish to do this. I immediately called Dish and told them that they did not have authorization from us to do this and they needed to credit that back immediately. I was told by "Michael" that they would credit that back once the receiver was received. I tried to explain to him that that was supposed to be handled through the BBB, but to no avail.

I decided to try to talk to someone via their chat service on their website and was told that person could not talk with me about the problem and that I would have to speak with their "executive resolution team". My husband called and talked to "Wendy" who said the $173.33 was cancellation charges and that she couldn't do anything about it. She said that on the contract we signed it says they have the authorization to do this and my husband told her they needed to provide us a copy of where we signed this and gave them the authority to do that. She said it would take about 2 weeks to pull the contract. So if that is the case, how does she know that is what we signed?

During this time I called our bank and told them this was not an authorized charge and was told by them the only thing I could do would be to come into their bank and fill out a form for this fraudelent charge and try to get the money credited back that way.

So tomorrow my husband will be calling our bank again about trying to get that done. We aren't in the poor house, but we aren't exactly rolling in money either. We get by just like a lot of other hard working Americans are trying to do. However, because of this unauthorized and unplanned charge on our bank account, we are not going to be able to make our full rent payment on our house so we are going to have to try to work something out with them and hope that is a possibility so we won't be without a roof over our heads or our children's heads.

I am also worried that Dish is going to try to take more money out of our account. We could close that bank account and get another one opened, but that would be so much trouble and then we would have to wait for new debit cards to come out and everything that is associated with that, but if that is the only way to stop them, we'll have to do it I guess.

I think there needs to be a class action lawsuit against Dish. They shouldn't be able to take advantage of people like it seems they are doing.

Apryl

Guntersville, Alabama

U.S.A.

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