Thread: DishStore.NET Slashes Prices

Directv can stick their lease scheme where the sun doesn't shine!!!

Problems with their lease scheme:

1. If I go lease a vehicle, at the end of the term (usually three years), I can either return the vehicle or buy it. Directv has no such option. A leased receiver is a leased receiver. You could have service for 20 years and you'd never own that equipment. Seems to me the Bells got in trouble for that a few years back with their "rented" phones.

2. You know that DVR you looked at at Best Buy with the $99 price tag? That's the start of lease price, not the purchase price (and the minimum wage monkey's won't tell you this). You shell out $99, take it home, and your $99 is GONE. (ran into this with a HD receiver bought by a friend. He dropped $99 on it, we setup the Slimline for it, and when we called to activate it, we were told it's a lease, and his contract would restart on this date for two years. SO I asked if after two years, was this receiver finally his to keep, and they said NO.)

3. Directv apparently cannot differentiate between owned and leased receivers. Let's say you are starting a new account with them. You take tee DVR and three standard receivers they "give" you for free. Your neighbor gives you the R15 DVR that he bought back in the day(and I mean BOUGHT). You activate the R15 he gave you. Directv considers that a leased receiver now. Never mind that it was purchased and paid for in full, it has just become a leased receiver, just because Directv say so.

4. If you lease a car, the dealership does the regular maintanance on the car (since it really belongs to them, you're just "renting" it). With Directv, if your receiver blows up and you call them, they expect you to pay for a new one. Directv has such a high opinion of their equipment, it's assumed that YOU must have damaged the receiver, it could not have failed on it's own.

My latest favorite is their "preferred" customer scheme. If you pay $6 a month, you get 24 hour turn around on service calls, otherwise, you wait until they're good and ready to come out. You still ahve to pay for teh service call, $6 a month just means you'll get serviced first, even before teh people who've been waiting for a week. Wonder why their CS awards ahven't gone away after this scam started?