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Zach, or other DIRT member. Have an account for my wife's grandmother (Her address but bill comes to and is paid for by us). Not sure how long we have had this for her, but it is no longer under contract. She has a 322 but currently only has one set connected. The grand kids all went together this year and bought her an HD set. My question is two fold. First is what sort of fee if any will there be to upgrade her 322 to either a 221K or 222K. Not sure if she would put the old set in another room or not. At 94 when she says she doesn't need two TVs you do really argue with her. Second is having been a dish customer for more than 2 years would she be eligible for HD for life for free or would I either have to pay the $99 or re-up her for another two years? Do want to sound cruel or morbid but at 94 two years is not a given, although we all hope she breaks 100.

hdflsts2002 said:

Zach, or other DIRT member. Have an account for my wife's grandmother (Her address but bill comes to and is paid for by us). Not sure how long we have had this for her, but it is no longer under contract. She has a 322 but currently only has one set connected. The grand kids all went together this year and bought her an HD set. My question is two fold. First is what sort of fee if any will there be to upgrade her 322 to either a 221K or 222K. Not sure if she would put the old set in another room or not. At 94 when she says she doesn't need two TVs you do really argue with her. Second is having been a dish customer for more than 2 years would she be eligible for HD for life for free or would I either have to pay the $99 or re-up her for another two years? Do want to sound cruel or morbid but at 94 two years is not a given, although we all hope she breaks 100.

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The receiver upgrade depends on the account. She will have to pay the $99 for HDFFL, or do the 24 month commitment with autopay and paperless billing. But with the receiver upgrade, there will already be a commitment

If you send me her phone number or account number in a PM, I can get you more details on the receiver upgrade

MattG@ DISH NETWORK said:

The receiver upgrade depends on the account. She will have to pay the $99 for HDFFL, or do the 24 month commitment with autopay and paperless billing. But with the receiver upgrade, there will already be a commitment

If you send me her phone number or account number in a PM, I can get you more details on the receiver upgrade

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Could cost you big bucks for the receiver upgrade on top of the $99 or 24 month commitment. What they don't want to say in public on the forums is that they discriminate against people with less than perfect credit and force them to pay for equipment upgrades that everyone else gets for free. For some people, that could mean like $150 with a 24 month commitment or $250 outright with no commitment, and you probably still have to pay the $15 to ship back the equipment you've sort of paid for when you quit the service down the line.

With cable you pay $0 upfront for the equipment no matter what your credit, and then a small monthly fee for HD, usually with no commitment.

Not being a flack for cable here. If I didn't think it had it's own problems, I'd have cable right now instead of Dish. I'm just saying, people should know this information. And as soon as they stop discriminating against people with bad or unestablished credit by making them pay extra, I'll stop talking about it. It's usually the well off people who get the price break and the poor who pay through the nose when they use credit scores and stuff to make these kind of determination. I'm not a fan of the practice.

The cable companies equipment is so crappy an old they don't care if they get it back or not. It is also why the cable companies equipment is outdated compared to the sat companies. Why put out new equipment if they are going to give it away and half the time it doesn't come back or it comes back inoperable.

I think this is where Dish went wrong years ago. Dish is only subsidizing equipment costs because cable gives their junk away. Everyone thinks they're entitled to a dvr or an HD dvr for free. If they really want it buy it outright. They might take better care of the equipment if they own it and are responsible for replacing it if they let their cat sleep on it and it overheats. I've never been a fan of leasing or commitments, that is why I buy all my equipment. If I want to paint my receiver orange and black with a lovely pistol pete logo :clap, I can.

HanoverPretzel said:

Could cost you big bucks for the receiver upgrade on top of the $99 or 24 month commitment. What they don't want to say in public on the forums is that they discriminate against people with less than perfect credit and force them to pay for equipment upgrades that everyone else gets for free. For some people, that could mean like $150 with a 24 month commitment or $250 outright with no commitment, and you probably still have to pay the $15 to ship back the equipment you've sort of paid for when you quit the service down the line.

With cable you pay $0 upfront for the equipment no matter what your credit, and then a small monthly fee for HD, usually with no commitment.

Not being a flack for cable here. If I didn't think it had it's own problems, I'd have cable right now instead of Dish. I'm just saying, people should know this information. And as soon as they stop discriminating against people with bad or unestablished credit by making them pay extra, I'll stop talking about it. It's usually the well off people who get the price break and the poor who pay through the nose when they use credit scores and stuff to make these kind of determination. I'm not a fan of the practice.

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Yes, for a reason. Give it a little thought. If you don't give back the (often crappy) Cable equipment after not paying your bills (often the reason for bad credit) the Cable company, who is based in your area, can come and ask for it back. Charter does exactly that. Dish and Direct can't do that.
Banks, Car companies (for loans) charge higher interest to people with bad credit, because they are more likely to not pay on time or at all. Some credit card companies won't give you a card with bad credit. It goes on and on. I think you are confusing someone with little money, with someone with bad credit. Dish will give someone the same deal no matter how much money you have, as long as your credit is good. Why should I pay more so someone who is known to not pay bills (bad credit) can get the same deal I do? Because that would be outcome, we would all pay more.

osu1991 said:

I think this is where Dish went wrong years ago. Dish is only subsidizing equipment costs because cable gives their junk away. Everyone thinks they're entitled to a dvr or an HD dvr for free. If they really want it buy it outright. They might take better care of the equipment if they own it and are responsible for replacing it if they let their cat sleep on it and it overheats. I've never been a fan of leasing or commitments, that is why I buy all my equipment. If I want to paint my receiver orange and black with a lovely pistol pete logo :clap, I can.

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Well, here's the thing, when you buy equipment outright, usually you expect that you can do something with it even if for whatever reason you aren't able to put any more money into it at some point. Buy a DVD player? If you can't afford to rent or buy any DVDs after a certain point, you can at least watch the DVDs you already have. Buy an MP3 player or a CD player? If you can't afford to buy more MP3s or CDs after a certain point, you can still listen to what you've got. Buy a laptop computer? If you can't afford home Internet service for a while, you can still use it to play music, watch videos, play games, do speedsheets/word processing, and so on and so forth at home and access the net periodically at the McDonalds, a friend's house, etc..

What can I do with a Dish Network receiver if I cancel the service down the line? Nothing? Then I don't want to buy one. To me, if the only thing it can do is utilize a service you have to pay a monthly fee for, then it's part of the service to me, especially when you can't even take it to another service like Directv or whatever (It only works with Dish). I'm not really interested in owning it unless they're giving it to me for free or I can buy it for a song.

And the thing is, if your credit score isn't as high as they like and do pay the minimum they charge extra for the equipment, you still have to send it back, right? You only get to keep it if you pay a still higher cost is my impression. Not that keeping it does you any good if you don't have the service!

The cable companies equipment is so crappy an old they don't care if they get it back or not. It is also why the cable companies equipment is outdated compared to the sat companies. Why put out new equipment if they are going to give it away and half the time it doesn't come back or it comes back inoperable.

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I'll admit the talk about who has the better technology, cable or satellite, is a little over my head. But the HD cable box I had a couple years ago seemed fine to me. If Dish wants to get the same type of box and will give them to people for no extra equipment fee, great! I don't know that whatever extra bells and whistles Dish's boxes might have are worth the difference between $0 and $150 (or whatever) to many people, if they're really any better in the first place.

Tampa8 said:

Yes, for a reason. Give it a little thought. If you don't give back the (often crappy) Cable equipment after not paying your bills (often the reason for bad credit) the Cable company, who is based in your area, can come and ask for it back. Charter does exactly that. Dish and Direct can't do that.
Banks, Car companies (for loans) charge higher interest to people with bad credit, because they are more likely to not pay on time or at all. Some credit card companies won't give you a card with bad credit. It goes on and on. I think you are confusing someone with little money, with someone with bad credit. Dish will give someone the same deal no matter how much money you have, as long as your credit is good. Why should I pay more so someone who is known to not pay bills (bad credit) can get the same deal I do? Because that would be outcome, we would all pay more.

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Well, one thing is, poor folks can't always get credit these days, so a lot of them are dealing with what technically isn't bad credit, but unestablished credit. They still deny you the same way, but you didn't necessarily fail to pay anything (or if you did, it's so long ago it's no longer on your credit report). And, my guess would be that a lot of people who truly do have bad credit may have it as a result of losing a job or crippling medical bills or some other circumstance beyond their control.

I don't know, to me a lot of this credit stuff seems more like an extra penalty for being poor than anything else. And, it can't be the only way to do things- I know because we didn't used to do things that way. It used to be they'd check your credit if you were buying a house or a car and that was pretty much it. Now they check it for everything under the sun.

HanoverPretzel said:

Buy a laptop computer? If you can't afford home Internet service for a while, you can still use it to play music, watch videos, play games, do speedsheets/word processing, and so on and so forth at home and access the net periodically at the McDonalds, a friend's house, etc..

What can I do with a Dish Network receiver if I cancel the service down the line? Nothing?

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Same with buying and owning Dish equipment. If you can't afford the service for a while, turn it off and when you can afford it restart the service. If you own the equipment, no contract, no termination fees, etc... come and go as you please. As for what can you do with it if you cancel down the line -- RESELL IT. I've bought and re sold all my old receivers as I have upgraded over the years. The only ones I haven't sold are the two 508's on my account now, that the kids use. These will soon be obsolete and I will be deactivating and replacing them with a 211 in a month or so.

osu1991 said:

The only ones I haven't sold are the two 508's on my account now, that the kids use. These will soon be obsolete and I will be deactivating and replacing them with a 211 in a month or so.

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Why don't you wait and let Dish replace them both with two 512's that you will own and be able to resell?

Lots of personal things going on and I just don't have the time to deal with Dish wanting to send a tech out to replace them right now. I barely have time to clear my head and check satguys out.