This is a heads-up for subscribers who have been "Grandfathered" into the pricing established prior to locals being carried over the sats. At one time if you wanted the locals off the sats you paid $5 per month extra. Then Dish decided to have all packages include the locals and all were priced $5 higher. Those of us wanting to continue to receive our locals OTA were grandfathered into the older pricing. The understanding was if we made a change to the basic programming package we would loose that status...a downgrade for example.
Since I live in suburban Phoenix by positioning my small electronic antenna on my patio roof just right I get all the Phoenix stations and most of the Tucson stations for a total of 84 channels. I had no reason to get the locals from Dish. In fact, when a sports event is blacked out in Phoenix, I can watch it from Tucson.
Wednesday I received a replacement receiver from Dish because one had died completely. When the replacement was activated presto all of the locals appeared. The tech attempted to remove them, but couldn't.
Yesterday I sent a PM to a member of the DIRT team explaining the situation and was told it can't be done any more:
Our systems will not allow us to remove local channels anymore. Anytime the account is accessed, it will automatically add the local channels and once added, it will not allow us to remove them. I apologize for the inconvenience but I am unable to change this for you.
In fairness, they are giving me a statement credit of $5 a month for the time being and I do get the program info in the guide for a few of the stations but I also am getting a heck of a lot of duplicate clutter and have to enter the entire channel designation, i.e. 006.03 to address the channel I want.
I'm afraid this a sign of things to come in 2013 and for those in the same situation, you might want to think twice about making ANY kind of change.
Since I live in suburban Phoenix by positioning my small electronic antenna on my patio roof just right I get all the Phoenix stations and most of the Tucson stations for a total of 84 channels. I had no reason to get the locals from Dish. In fact, when a sports event is blacked out in Phoenix, I can watch it from Tucson.
Wednesday I received a replacement receiver from Dish because one had died completely. When the replacement was activated presto all of the locals appeared. The tech attempted to remove them, but couldn't.
Yesterday I sent a PM to a member of the DIRT team explaining the situation and was told it can't be done any more:
Our systems will not allow us to remove local channels anymore. Anytime the account is accessed, it will automatically add the local channels and once added, it will not allow us to remove them. I apologize for the inconvenience but I am unable to change this for you.
In fairness, they are giving me a statement credit of $5 a month for the time being and I do get the program info in the guide for a few of the stations but I also am getting a heck of a lot of duplicate clutter and have to enter the entire channel designation, i.e. 006.03 to address the channel I want.
I'm afraid this a sign of things to come in 2013 and for those in the same situation, you might want to think twice about making ANY kind of change.
) I only have antenna TV service there and South Mountain is right in the way of Tuscon. Very nice Resort on the Mountain there however, watch movies outside while floating in the pool...... I'm often at Aunt Chilada's restaurant.....
