Dish Pricing Update

[Scott Greczkowski]

As you might have seen on the homepage, today in my MultiChannel column I posted a rumor about Dishes new pricing which is effective on February 1st.

It appears that the numbers I posted in my column are indeed correct, I have been contacted by a number of Dish employees confirming what I wrote.

You can read what I wrote at
Rumor Alert: New Dish Pricing? - The Satellite Dish | Blog on Multichannel News

There has been some confusion though about the new monthly receiver pricing and if that pricing was per receiver or per account. A number of people claiming to be Dish folks wrote me to tell me that it is per receiver. But they also tried telling me that most folks bill won't go up much if anything at all.

One employee explained it best so I am going to cut and paste that persons explanation to me so that everyone has a better understanding of whats going on.

You are correct in some fashion about the receiver fees but they are eliminating or rolling other fees into one. But it will increase some bills and decrease some depending on what they have for programming and type of receiver family they fall into.

For example in your case with 6 duo dvrs you would be charged 17.00 per additional receiver so it would be 17.00 x 5. But you would eliminate five of your dvr fee so you would subtract 5.98 x 5. Plus you would eliminate your other five A/O fees so that would subtract another 25.00 or 30.00. So your bill will be one of the extreme ones that goes up around 30.00 because the average family does not have 6 duo dvr's. Plus if you have any tv2 connection fees those are going away. The receiver fee is only on additional receivers not the primary.

In my case I have 2 duo dvrs so I will be charged one 17.00 fee but I will have one dvr fee eliminated and my a/o fee eliminated and rolled up into the receiver fee so my bill will go up around 6.00.

I should note again that while employees are confirming the new pricing and pricing structure these numbers are not official until announced publiclly by Dish Network.

[kstuart]

Is there special pricing for 501s, 508s and 721-replacement-receivers ?

[JonE]

AppleTV and Netflix will look better and better if this goes through.

[navychop]

Actually, I think the DHPP bit is overdue. Too much abuse there.

[Scott Greczkowski]

BTW the ones who will see the biggest increase are those with AEP since the DVR fees are no longer waived and are built into the receiver price.

I can tell you I will be dropping all the premiums when this new pricing takes effect.

[tigerfan33]

.....and I thought I was happy earlier this year when I ordered a 612 and they sent the 722k instead.

[ehren]

With the economy in the crapper they have some balls to do this!!!

[K9SAT]

BTW the ones who will see the biggest increase are those with AEP since the DVR fees are no longer waived and are built into the receiver price.

I can tell you I will be dropping all the premiums when this new pricing takes effect.

What about those getting installed tommorow? Will they be locked in to the current pricing structure they were promised when they signed up? It would suck to have XYZ promised to you for your first bill, and have it really be ABC more!

[davec111]

Have been a loyal DISH customer for 10 years. I just connected the Roku player with a $9.00 monthly Netflix plan for my HD set. Since I now have 17,000 titles to choose from, it will be easy to say goodbye to DISH. They just shot themselves in the foot with the February receiver increase.

[Scott Greczkowski]

I asked about the 501/508's since those currently have no DVR fee with them and was told that there was no answer yet and that question was asked at the meeting and they didn't have an answer.

Just to note... I am only passing on the info that is being given to me. Dish Network the company will not answer questions on this until after they announce the new pricing themselves officially, which I expect at CES. (I also expect them to say that they had no rate increase this year for programming which while true they are padding it in the backend with these receiver fees.)