Service pause restored automatically, then suspended for non-payment

cac303

Well-Known SatelliteGuys Member
Original poster
May 8, 2012
29
2
Atlanta, GA
Hi all,

I have been a dish customer for about 20 years. I moved out of an apartment a year ago in preparation of getting married and called to pause my Dish service for a few months while I transitioned. I was married in the fall and moved into my wife's house. It took a while to get moved in and settled, but now I am ready to do the dish mover and get service reconnected in my new home. About a month before I was ready to start the process, I got an email that said my bill was late. I have gotten $0 monthly bills from Dish the entire time of the service pause, so didn't notice until too late that I was suddenly being charged my full monthly service fee.

I figured a mistake had been made, and when I called in to get service moved and turned back on I could clear it up. When I finally did call in, I had a very poor experience. I was told by the support rep that my service had been disconnected due to non-payment. I laughed and said that I had paused the service months before, so there was nothing to disconnect.

He then said that the service was automatically resumed after 9 months and that I had been told that would happen when I called to pause the service. I don't remember being told that, but I may well have been since it was a crazy time and I was calling lots of services to get things turned off as I moved. I explained that I hadn't realized that I needed to call to extend the service pause and that my dish receiver had been in a moving box since I paused it last year (Dish should be able to pull up the records that show that it has been and still is offline) and that if they would remove the charges for the months that I had the service mistakenly turned on, I was ready to schedule a reconnect and would start paying in full once I was connected.

The customer service agent offered me a $50 cost offset, then refused to let me talk to a manager when I insisted that was the next step. When I told the rep that I wouldn't proceed without talking to a manager and was considering disconnecting the service, he said that I could pay the balance or cancel service, but he wouldn't let me talk to a supervisor. I just want to get service turned back on now, but I don't think it reasonable to have to pay over $300 for TV services that I didn't receive as my receiver was in storage. I also understand that DIsh was paying license fees for those two months that they want to recoup, but that just begs the question as to why Dish would, as a matter of policy, turn someone's service back on without them calling in to turn it back on.

So, I think where I have landed is that I am going to go ahead and pay the balance for the 2 months they say that I owe, and just cancel the service. Dish would seem to prefer to get 2 months of dead money from me rather than reactive me with a $0 balance so that I can start paying them again in perpetuity.

Two lessons learned though. First, before you suspend the service, drop the package down to the minimum so that if they turn it back on before you are ready you are getting billed the cheapest amount, not the full package price ($150/month in my case) for your normal programming package. Second, there has been a decided change in tone at Dish customer service since I last called in. To have an escalation refused and no attempt made to resolve the issue in a mutually beneficial way was jarring and a surprisingly negative experience.

Am I being unreasonable?
 
I think you are being unreasonable. You should be knowledgable of any transaction you may make. It is widely known on this website that the maximum 'pause' that you can do is 9 months. I have no doubt that you were told that when you went to pause. You also had to pay a small amount monthly to effect that pause, it is $5 a month. There is no way that you can extend a pause, the limit is 9 months. When a pause ends you automatically go back to full service unless you cancel. I am actually beginning to wonder if you got a non payment disconnect because you didn't pay the $5 monthly payment because you didn't mention paying it in your post.
 
I think you are being unreasonable. You should be knowledgable of any transaction you may make. It is widely known on this website that the maximum 'pause' that you can do is 9 months. I have no doubt that you were told that when you went to pause. You also had to pay a small amount monthly to effect that pause, it is $5 a month. There is no way that you can extend a pause, the limit is 9 months. When a pause ends you automatically go back to full service unless you cancel. I am actually beginning to wonder if you got a non payment disconnect because you didn't pay the $5 monthly payment because you didn't mention paying it in your post.
I guess you have very little interaction with dish csrs...if you can find an english speaking one they are usually clueless

Sent from my SM-G950U using the SatelliteGuys app!
 
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I have a different take on this.
Yes, the 9 Month pause is a fact but the OP says he may have been told so he acknowledges that. If his account of what happened on the phone is accurate then it is a CSR that cares nothing about her job or DISH. DISH is bleeding customers. You have on the phone someone who made a mistake, owes for two months but wants to continue service after pausing while getting married, moving etc. He couldn't talk to a supervisor, or get some mutual agreement to have him continue as a customer? Forgive a month, get a payment up front for the remaining month and get him back?
 
I think you are being unreasonable. You should be knowledgable of any transaction you may make. It is widely known on this website that the maximum 'pause' that you can do is 9 months. I have no doubt that you were told that when you went to pause. You also had to pay a small amount monthly to effect that pause, it is $5 a month. There is no way that you can extend a pause, the limit is 9 months. When a pause ends you automatically go back to full service unless you cancel. I am actually beginning to wonder if you got a non payment disconnect because you didn't pay the $5 monthly payment because you didn't mention paying it in your post.

I use Dish Pause quite a bit as I travel for my job, up to a year at a time. Since you pay ahead with Dish usually my last payment before a pause has a credit and Dish uses that for the $5 monthly until the credit is exhausted. A nine month pause can be extended, the last time I paused for 9 months I decided to cancel, the CSR instead offered to extend the pause for an additional 6 months, I accepted and am not back with Dish.

It is a good idea to reduce your service level before you pause as this will minimize unanticipated costs when restarting the service.

I've been with Dish since about 2009 and have only really accumulated about 4.5 years of billed service, so pause has worked well for me.
 
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I have a different take on this.
Yes, the 9 Month pause is a fact but the OP says he may have been told so he acknowledges that. If his account of what happened on the phone is accurate then it is a CSR that cares nothing about her job or DISH. DISH is bleeding customers. You have on the phone someone who made a mistake, owes for two months but wants to continue service after pausing while getting married, moving etc. He couldn't talk to a supervisor, or get some mutual agreement to have him continue as a customer? Forgive a month, get a payment up front for the remaining month and get him back?
He did state they offered to waive $50 off. That’s not a small amount, granted he may not agree since he has the other $250 to consider. That is still 1/6 of his bill being taken off.

As far as them being able to see that you weren’t using the receiver, satellite tv is a one way path. Unless your receiver is connected to the internet(disconnecting internet is not a work around) then they have no way of knowing you were not using the service.
 
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He did state they offered to waive $50 off. That’s not a small amount, granted he may not agree since he has the other $250 to consider. That is still 1/6 of his bill being taken off.

As far as them being able to see that you weren’t using the receiver, satellite tv is a one way path. Unless your receiver is connected to the internet(disconnecting internet is not a work around) then they have no way of knowing you were not using the service.

Ok but that wasn't my argument. Using it, not using it, of course DISH does not know or care if you are. Nor do they need to. But if $50 was enough for him why couldn't he talk to a supervisor? But mostly the industry is losing subs and you have one on the phone a 20 year customer who you can't make a deal with? He didn't say I want both months forgiven, I like him would be more mad a long time customer can't even get past a CSR who has no real motivation apparently.
 
Ok but that wasn't my argument. Using it, not using it, of course DISH does not know or care if you are. Nor do they need to. But if $50 was enough for him why couldn't he talk to a supervisor? But mostly the industry is losing subs and you have one on the phone a 20 year customer who you can't make a deal with? He didn't say I want both months forgiven, I like him would be more mad a long time customer can't even get past a CSR who has no real motivation apparently.
That second part was in response to his post directly. He said that they should know he wasn’t using it. I was explaining that the technology doesn’t work that way.
 
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My neighbor had a house fire on February 11th 2018, and when we called in around Thanksgiving 2018 to reactivate service they did the same thing and said the account was disconnected for non payment.

Guess what?

Directv credited all the money back , and shipped free replacement receivers

Yes it’s policy, but being in the business 20 years I have seen lots of customers get screwed this way, say FU dish or Directv and and up switching because they refuse to pay for service they don’t have
 
My neighbor had a house fire on February 11th 2018, and when we called in around Thanksgiving 2018 to reactivate service they did the same thing and said the account was disconnected for non payment.

Guess what?

Directv credited all the money back , and shipped free replacement receivers

Yes it’s policy, but being in the business 20 years I have seen lots of customers get screwed this way, say FU dish or Directv and and up switching because they refuse to pay for service they don’t have
DISH also has a catastrophic event policy so if that was the case for Cac303, he would have gotten credited as well.
 
Remember when you could pay annually and get a free month?

Now they just forced everyone on auto pay

Not everyone.
I have been with Dish almost 20 years and have never been on auto pay.
I have received several spiffs where auto pay was a "requirement".
I seldom have a problem getting escalated to retention when I request it.
 
Not everyone.
I have been with Dish almost 20 years and have never been on auto pay.
I have received several spiffs where auto pay was a "requirement".
I seldom have a problem getting escalated to retention when I request it.

When I mean forced auto pay, it’s the connivence of not mailing a check every month.

I used to pay annually not to have to pay then every month and get the discount.

Once they took away the discount, I used to lump sum pay them and have my bill eat away a credit balance.

Then I was WTF was I doing providing Charlie an Interest free loan for a year.

So put my Amex on auto pay, and not only held on to mr money had a bit of satisfaction that dish had to pay Amex to process the transaction.
 
As a closure to this thread, I called in to arrange the return of the equipment, they transferred me to a thinking human, and we worked out a deal and everything is good. It is just so hard to get past the level 1 drones.
 
As a closure to this thread, I called in to arrange the return of the equipment, they transferred me to a thinking human, and we worked out a deal and everything is good. It is just so hard to get past the level 1 drones.


and the deal was.........