If they really cared about "stacking" they could have addressed it years ago by having SWM receivers check the serial number of the SWM they are connected to for residential installs. I'm not sure if the old SWM chips have a unique serial number but if not they could have given them one. Make sure all the receivers see the same serial number, or set of serial numbers in the fairly rare customers who have more than one SWM switch. If you're going to have everything installed by a professional, end users aren't going to replace their LNB or switch anyway so installers could take care of updating that info as part of the install process and the serial numbers would be on Directv's servers and sent through the satellite during activation/re-activation to be stored on the cards to allow the receivers do to the check.
They could have addressed the abuses of "moving" they most care about (people claiming they live in NY or LA when nowhere near those places, or located in Canada/Mexico) by having the receiver check that the '0's for spot beams match the 0s they would expect to see if the customer is truthful about their service location.
So I'm not sure I buy the ban on self-installs as having anything to do with stacking. Claude's explanation makes the most sense, but enforcing the IVR limits on new installs would seem to effectively address that. Building in some diagnostics so receivers could do their own troubleshooting and warn customers when they had install problems (i.e. seeing too low of numbers on certain transponders consistently, and running a DECA test at night once a week to see if there are problems with internal wiring) would have let customers know when something was wrong - and they could either try to fix it themselves or get charged full price for an installer visit to fix issues with a self-install.
My bet is that Directv will either start charging for installs or stop doing them entirely (referring people to third parties etc.) at some point, once AT&T TV is fully rolled out and they feel confident in it. They'll want to encourage customers to choose it since it is cheaper for AT&T to deploy, and the best way to do that would be by making customers who want satellite pay the difference in deployment cost by paying for the install.
Although that would be a solution, I don’t think it’s worth the hassle every time there is a SWM registration error, or an LNB or switch gets replaced have to go back and update the SWM serial number. It’s just going to crest un necessary calls to customer service.
I don’t think either provider cares about stacking these days, they are just trying to survive and retain customers.
A customer who is stacking is good for the providers in 3 ways...
1) it’s the content providers who are the ones getting ripped off. Dish, Directv are still collecting their $7 fee for the additional box.
2) Customers who are account stacking usually buy all their equipment. Rarely get free equipment for fear of a tech coming to their house and reporting them. (Like the techs really care)
3) these customers never request free service calls
4) these are stickier customers and are not switching providers any time soon.
Look at what Dish tried to do with the audit department. I saw this first hand, here is what was happening.
A) The innocent legit customers who got harassed would end up disconnecting out of frustration.
B) The ones they caught, would just gather all the receivers from their friends house, do they audit, connect the phone, let it dial out from the same number, call back and pass the audit and then business as usual.
C) The ones they did catch and refuse to activate, would go ahead and just open another account under a different name.
D) In rare, rare cases I would see a customer agree to split the accounts and pay separate bills for each receiver. I had many many clients back then, many of them rich customers in Mexico and the Caribbean. Money wasn’t the issue they just wanted American Tv. One customer didn’t want to be bothered, and decided to pay for 4 accounts.
Dish networks audit department was costing them more accounts then they where able to create.
I had customers back in the day I knew this was going on. I did care somewhat as I could have gotten (2) accounts out of it. However at the same time, those same customers wouldn’t have gotten any accounts from me if I had tried to enforce dish’s stupid policies.
I never actually stacked an account, but at the same time I didn’t ask If they where all going in the same house when I sold them.
Obviously If someone wanted 10 receivers, I would say something.
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