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My wife and I have been a Dish Network subscriber for over 4 years. We've had no problems and made no complaints; they have been happily collecting our money by auto-billing my credit card all this time. We are still using the original 311 receivers we started with.

Last week, my wife got a phone call from Dish Tech Support saying that they had to upgrade our 2 receivers via instructions on the phone since the receivers are not connected to the phone line (we have cell service as our main phone line out here in the country); she was busy preparing for guests and told them to call back later. Yesterday, they called back and tried again. Again she was busy and they gave her a phone number to call for the upgrade. Immediately after that phone call, they terminated all of our programming leaving us with mostly Shop-At-Home channels.

Later when we had time, she called the number Dish gave her, and they gave her no explanation for cutting our programming despite giving us no warning and the last charge to our credit card gave us service into next week. Instead they insisted we do their manual upgrade right then and there. She was to access both receivers simultaneously and read numbers from the screens to them with no communication from anyone else (she was not allowed to speak to anyone else!). Any interruption in the call would render our receivers permanently disabled; this was not unlikely since our phone service is via cell phone and we are on the edge of the cell. Moreover, the cell phone cannot be used within remote control distance of the receivers without losing the call; hence I was ready to relay the numbers. Finally, the second receiver is in a connected building so that simultaneous reading of both receivers is a physical impossibility. She explained that she could not change the Laws of Physics to accommodate their crazy 'upgrade' scheme, but they would not relent saying that if we upgraded just one receivers at that time, the other would be rendered permanently disabled. I could not be allowed to relay the numbers on the screen.

We could not reach a solution that would allow us keep the service we had ready paid for, and Dish had already terminated our programming. We canceled our Dish account, and are awaiting the boxes to return the equipment. The 'tech' only mentioned returning the receivers, but in searching the net, I see that the LNB may have to be retrieved from my TV tower and shipped as well. DirecTV is installing our new system on Monday. The irony is that I had contemplated calling Dish and adding HD service when this all happened; now I've added HD with DirecTV.

Has anyone heard of this bogus-sounding upgrade of the 311 receiver via instructions over the phone? If so, what is this upgrade and why does it have to be performed by a single person with no help and why must all receivers be upgraded simultaneously? Dish claims this is all independent of the Smart Cards we successfully installed a few weeks ago so I do not have a clue about this 'upgrade'. Does Dish have an excess of customers that they simply call up some, drive them to distraction with non-physical demands, and dump them? I cannot imagine them trying this stunt with someone who is physically disabled as that would invoke several Federal laws.