Hopper, What a surprise!

clapple

Pub Member / Supporter
Original poster
Nov 26, 2004
350
0
Palm derset, Ca.
1st day for Hopper. Expected long wait for CSR and delay for installation. After the "normal(?) push 1 for english" and this or that number for something else, it took about 60 seconds for a real person and the Hopper and 3 Joeys will be installed tomorrow! Unbelievable. :)
 
got my appt set up this morning... csr tried to give me 1h 3j for only 3 rooms... had to repeat a couple of times what i wanted before it got across, but everything worked out pretty easy
 
Dish must not be very busy if your able to get next day appointments.
Pretty much the norm around here - always has been for any sort of tech visit. Makes me wonder about their staffing levels more than anything else. I would think there are peak times when they are stretched, but everyone I've ever talked with always seems shocked how quickly Dish schedules.
 
Maybe the fact that they can schedule you so quickly indicates the demand for the new Hopper/joey system isn't as big as they thought. Who would of thought that in bad economic times like these when gas is going up to $5.00 a gallon , that people aren't wanting to pay more in monthly fees and lose useful features like ota , and pay and arm and a leg to upgrade to it? Oh yeah! I said all that stuff weeks ago when they first leaked the pricing details. Wrong price at the wrong economic time.
 
Maybe the fact that they can schedule you so quickly indicates the demand for the new Hopper/joey system isn't as big as they thought.

I doubt they expected much of a rush at all. They did very little pre-launch advertising. They drove whatever press they could get from CES and posted info on the website - without announcing any sort of release date. I don't think there was ever any official release date announcement.

If you weren't actively tracking Hopper you wouldn't know yesterday was the day.
 
Hopper Installs are a priority. I bet non Hopper installs are getting longer install times.

Plus DISH knew Hopper was coming out on the 15th and made the schedules open for Hopper installs because they want word of mouth.
 
It's always like this at Dish. They never seem to have wait times (at least in this area). I'm kinda surprised there not scheduling hopper and joey installs same day! Just ask any installer about getting a 4 room install at 4:00pm. I think there isn't the flood of requests they expected. JMO though.

Sent from my iPhone using SatelliteGuys
 
Maybe the fact that they can schedule you so quickly indicates the demand for the new Hopper/joey system isn't as big as they thought. Who would of thought that in bad economic times like these when gas is going up to $5.00 a gallon , that people aren't wanting to pay more in monthly fees and lose useful features like ota , and pay and arm and a leg to upgrade to it? Oh yeah! I said all that stuff weeks ago when they first leaked the pricing details. Wrong price at the wrong economic time.

Virtually no one knows about the Hopper, what it is, anything, outside forums. And even if they did hear about the Hopper, seriously, the percentage of people who have any idea what a whole home system is or are interested as and existing customer is very low, even with the previous Direct campaign. That will change of course, just as a DVR has become much more known and wanted. I actually think it will be the new customers who will know more about it because when they call to see about getting Dish, they will certainly be directed towards it.
And OTA? As I have posted before, not one person I know with satellite has an antenna for OTA. Must have for me, but I come to the forums and know about it and the benefits. Point is, good or bad economy it takes time for things like this to be known to the general public.
So it's a bad economy. Are you suggesting Dish should not have come out with this? If you are saying the fees will keep it from being sold, I don't agree because I don't agree it will cost much of anything more a month for many/most people. Take the new customer, I'm betting they are not interested in the 722 setup unless they really do need to pay a little as possible. They are going to want HD at two TV's. Two receivers to do that is exactly $1 less for two TV's in HD than the Hopper technology. Yes, that includes the $4 whole house fee.
I keep seeing $99 to get it, the acquisition cost does not seem to me to stand in the way. It is more of people just not knowing about it or understanding it. I have always thought the installs would be new customers, not as much existing ones. Most posts about fees are from existing customers, new customers are going to see it my way - the Hopper will be $1 more for two TV's in HD, and $2 less for three.

In the end I honestly don't know the demand for whole home, but I sure saw hundreds of posts wondering why Dish doesn't have it and threatening to go to Direct. I guess we shall see.
 
Last edited:
I think for the average person OTA is a non issue... if Dish or DirecTV doesn't have your locals I assume most people would stick with Cable. BUT what do i know

price seems fair and as an ex D* customer its a savings :)
 
I called Thurs. morning and the experience was about as good as I could have hoped for. The CSR said I was his first Hopper order. It sounded like he had a pretty good idea of the system but did defer to a supervisor a couple of times to make sure he was getting it right. The pricing he quoted lined up with what I've seen here and on the Dish site...I'll pay $1 more/mo. over my current 1 722/1 625 setup. He offered same-day installation but I couldn't make it work until Sunday. We'll see how it goes.

I'm going with a simple 1H/2J setup. OTA and most other bells & whistles are not a concern for me. My driving concern was getting HD to the #2 feed from the 722 and having it ready for TV #3.
 

Channel logos

Hopper TV Commecial

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Total: 0, Members: 0, Guests: 0)

Who Read This Thread (Total Members: 2)