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When there were NO DVR fees at all and they had the 501/508/721/921 pvrs to offer, DISH added more subs than ever before. Charlie even advertised it as:" Tapeless record for Free, while the other guys(DIRECTV) charged $9.99 to do the same thing." DISH charging no fees even forced DIRECTV to lower their dvr fees back down to around $4.99 to compete . Although now DIRECTV just hiked their dvr fees back to $8.00. IF DISH would go back to NO dvr fees they would once again slaughter the competition and add subs like crazy ,just like they did in the early 2000s ,when they offered the 501/721 pvrs. Which is exactly what DISH needs right now to survive and thrive: MORE Subs. Instead they seem to make up for the lack more subs by adding more FEES, on the remaining few that stay with DISH. Stupid and short sighted for a company to do .

MikeD-C05 said:

When there were NO DVR fees at all and they had the 501/508/721/921 pvrs to offer, DISH added more subs than ever before. Charlie even advertised it as:" Tapeless record for Free, while the other guys(DIRECTV) charged $9.99 to do the same thing." DISH charging no fees even forced DIRECTV to lower their dvr fees back down to around $4.99 to compete . Although now DIRECTV just hiked their dvr fees back to $8.00. IF DISH would go back to NO dvr fees they would once again slaughter the competition and add subs like crazy ,just like they did in the early 2000s ,when they offered the 501/721 pvrs. Which is exactly what DISH needs right now to survive and thrive: MORE Subs. Instead they seem to make up for the lack more subs by adding more FEES, on the remaining few that stay with DISH. Stupid and short sighted for a company to do .

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Yes, if Dish or Directv offered the DVR for Free and didn't charge a DVR Fee they would probably sign up customers left and right and everyone would get a DVR.

You got to consider that DVR's cost satellite and cable companies more money to manufacture, and you got the ongoing maintaince issues because the hard drives do go bad and need to eventually be replaced.

The people on this board are tech savvy, and see the value in spending money upfront to save money on an ongoing basis.

I have been selling satellite for 14 years, and I can tell you from experence that 90% of the customers out there will not spend any money out of pocket unless they absolutly have to. All they want to hear is free free free.

Almost every customer on this board I sell to requests an HD/DVR with their installation. Typical customer calls me on the phone, and we are at about 60% who get DVR's. I had a lady yesterday who got Directv and wanted (2) TV's with HD. I have to fight with her for 2 hours, because when you don't get DVR with Directv they charge $99 for the second HD receiver.

So the option was get a DVR, spend $10 per month and we can upgrade both TV's to HD for Free, or spend $99 and get just HD on both TV's.

Ofcourse she wanted both TV's with (2) HD receivers for Free, and you just can't do that configuration for free on Directv with their current promotions.

Then I had to hear that she tried ordering Directv a month ago and they offered her 2 HD receivers for free and didn't require her to get the DVR. I knew darn well she was lying to me to try to get a deal, or she was sold a DVR and she didn't know it.

People just do stupid things to try to save a buck. I always look at it like this, what is the big deal about spending an extra $10 per month?

You go out to Lunch and its an easily $10, Two Gallons of Gas is almost $10, there are so many things people waste their money on every month, yet its impossible for some people to see getting a DVR,

Claude Greiner said:

People just do stupid things to try to save a buck. I always look at it like this, what is the big deal about spending an extra $10 per month?

You go out to Lunch and its an easily $10, Two Gallons of Gas is almost $10, there are so many things people waste their money on every month, yet its impossible for some people to see getting a DVR,

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These are the same people that call threatening to cancel if they do not get something FREE. Sign of the times- feeling of entitlement. What ever happened to having to work for the things you want? What ever happened to you get what you pay for?

There is a reason the "Absolute is ending" thread is still going on. It is laughable that people say "all my credits are ending so I am leaving if they won't do anything".

We own all our equipment, self install, and have gotten absolutely nothing from dish. However, our system is exactly the way we want it and everyone is HAPPY. It stinks that there is never anything to watch and most of our programming comes from our locals. Dropping from AT250 would save a whopping $20/mo and it is just not worth it considering the amount of channels that would be lost.

Cannot wait for a la carte to become a reality:

TV À La Carte: The Movement to Pick Your Own Programming

SAT radio does it!!

empiretc said:

These are the same people that call threatening to cancel if they do not get something FREE. Sign of the times- feeling of entitlement. What ever happened to having to work for the things you want? What ever happened to you get what you pay for?

There is a reason the "Absolute is ending" thread is still going on. It is laughable that people say "all my credits are ending so I am leaving if they won't do anything".

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I think it's the corporations that have the sense of entitlement. They feel entitled to money from our wallets- and for that amount of money to increase constantly beyond the cost of inflation. Sometimes they even drop channels or programming and raise the rates (Ask the people in NY who can no longer see their local sports on Dish)!

Also, while we're on the subject of promotional rates, I understand why you'd ask "Why would people feel they're entitled to them?". Here's the thing, though, every time Comcast has a rate increase, their public relations rep is quoted in the newspaper downplaying it, usually mentioning that 50-60% of their customers are on promotional rates and won't be effected. When the cost of your package keeps going up and up, to the point where you may not be able to afford it anymore, and you hear that over half the other people on the service are getting a price discount, you naturally are going to call up and want that same discount. I called, didn't get it, and walked, and I felt perfectly justified in doing that.

When I switched to Dish and was upset that they charged me an installation fee and wouldn't hook me up with HD or the free HD for Life they advertised, it wasn't because I in a general sense felt "entitled" to free install or free HD equipment and HD service at no additional charge, it's because they advertised it and other customers were getting it. You see a big ad for something, and you know other people are getting better stuff for less money, and it's natural to be a bit ticked that they "fine printed you" into being a second class customer.

We own all our equipment, self install, and have gotten absolutely nothing from dish. However, our system is exactly the way we want it and everyone is HAPPY.

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Good for you. Stop using your own happiness as an excuse to call the rest of us "entitled" or "whiners" or whatever this week's buzz word is (I don't really mean to direct that solely at you, I mean it in a general sense- a lot of people say stuff like what you're saying- about a lot of different things). People have every bit as much right to be a little disgruntled as you do to be happy with the state of things. We don't all have to march in lockstep having the same opinions.

HanoverPretzel said:

I think it's the corporations that have the sense of entitlement. They feel entitled to money from our wallets- and for that amount of money to increase constantly beyond the cost of inflation. Sometimes they even drop channels or programming and raise the rates (Ask the people in NY who can no longer see their local sports on Dish)!

Also, while we're on the subject of promotional rates, I understand why you'd ask "Why would people feel they're entitled to them?". Here's the thing, though, every time Comcast has a rate increase, their public relations rep is quoted in the newspaper downplaying it, usually mentioning that 50-60% of their customers are on promotional rates and won't be effected. When the cost of your package keeps going up and up, to the point where you may not be able to afford it anymore, and you hear that over half the other people on the service are getting a price discount, you naturally are going to call up and want that same discount. I called, didn't get it, and walked, and I felt perfectly justified in doing that.

When I switched to Dish and was upset that they charged me an installation fee and wouldn't hook me up with HD or the free HD for Life they advertised, it wasn't because I in a general sense felt "entitled" to free install or free HD equipment and HD service at no additional charge, it's because they advertised it and other customers were getting it. You see a big ad for something, and you know other people are getting better stuff for less money, and it's natural to be a bit ticked that they "fine printed you" into being a second class customer.



Good for you. Stop using your own happiness as an excuse to call the rest of us "entitled" or "whiners" or whatever this week's buzz word is (I don't really mean to direct that solely at you, I mean it in a general sense- a lot of people say stuff like what you're saying- about a lot of different things). People have every bit as much right to be a little disgruntled as you do to be happy with the state of things. We don't all have to march in lockstep having the same opinions.

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Your wall of text has made one thing very clear, some people just should not have pay tv.

empiretc said:

Your wall of text has made one thing very clear, some people just should not have pay tv.

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Seems kind of arrogant for someone to be telling other people what they should and shouldn't have, doesn't it?

Tampa8 said:

That's not entitlement, it's business. They feel entitled to our money? They better or they won't be in business, in the case of Dish I want their service so they better want you to pay. And when you say cost to increase beyond the cost of inflation, you just don't understand what doing business entails.

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While I don't understand the ins and outs of the television provider business, I do understand that Dish's quarterly earnings reports keep showing huge profits, even during quarters where they lose a lot of subscribers. They're pocketing a lot of the extra money we're paying them. Not singling out Dish here, all these major providers seem to do it. There could be lower monthly rates if they reduced their profit margin a tad (And it might even pick up more people and not impact that profit margin as much as it would seem at the onset).

Some valid points for me there. I'm guessing you didn't get the free install or free HD for life because you didn't get a high enough package?

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Nope, failed a credit check. Not even bad credit anymore, unestablished credit. I loath the entire credit system with a passion at this point. It used to that if you had unestablished credit, someone would give you a low-limit credit card and you could reestablish it, and you didn't even need good credit for much (Just car/house loans), now you need it for almost everything and they're like "Send us $300 as collateral and we'll give you a secure card and not even take what you spent out of the $300, we'll keep the $300 as long as you have the card and you still have to pay the card off with other funds". Then if you go through the process, they won't even guarantee it'll make your credit good or get you a real card (Which is a very real concern, because I'm low-income enough that they might just say "We're not giving you sh*t no matter what your history of on-time payments is"), they just say it *might*. Screw that.

Balance your overall satisfaction to what is most important to you. If paying less is the main objective and that is your overall satisfaction go to someone else who provides that. If a company won't give you discounts that another one will, go with them.

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That's what I'm doing. But it means I'll likely keep bouncing from provider to provider every couple years. It seems like it'd have been easier for, say, Comcast to just give me a better every day rate versus losing my television business for two years and then me maybe coming back on a promotional rate for a year or two after, and they leaving again, etc.. I mean, I went 6 months without Internet from them, came back 6-months later and got a promotional rate that was like a third of their normal cost to provide Internet for a year, and then I'll probably roll into a bundle with returned tv and keep getting that cheap, and so on and so forth. If they had just given me a bit of money off tv and internet each month when I called and asked, I probably would have stayed in the first place and they'd have made a lot more $$, and wouldn't have to keep sending out install and uninstall guys out. Would have been better for them and less of a hassle for me.

When Comcast's PR people keep saying in the press that more than half their subscribers are on a promotional rate, it's sort of a clue that their regular rate isn't so much their regular rate so much as what people pay who aren't paying attention and don't keep jumping through to different promotions or churn occasionally and come back. I was struggling to pay it and felt like a sucker, so I jumped ship.

Can't find someone else who will be much cheaper or give you the discounts than that's the going price, and maybe with what you want companies just can not afford to have you as a customer. Not much more complicated than that. Trying to tell a business how to run their business will only end in your dissatisfaction. You should ask for what you want of course. Not getting it doesn't always make the business wrong however, you have choices.

I fully agree you have every right to be unhappy and discuss it just as those who are happy post. I do think you will remain unhappy if you want businesses to owe you anything, and then be unhappy if you don't get it. If they truly are discriminating there are laws for that as well as bait and switch, etc... Short of that, you have the ultimate power, to give or not to give a business your money. (Possible exception- power company unless you are prepared to generate your own power..... )

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I basically agree with that. The one sort of caveat I might toss in there is that I do think consumer protection laws in the US are very weak relative to say, Europe, and many regular business practices here would be considered discriminatory or bait and switch overseas. I don't dispute that they can legally do this stuff here, but that doesn't mean it's ethical. Of course, expecting ethical behavior from a large corporation is like expecting mathematical computations from a walrus. It probably just isn't that realistic.

I am pretty new to the forum, but I have seen a few posts from certain users with a decent amount of negativity. The reality is, Pay TV is a luxury. Dish's responsibility as a business is to make money for their shareholders and provide a quality product at a reasonable price. It's pretty plain and simple, and I think they do just that. If you want a company to focus on doing something that will benefit you, stop paying for TV and use an OTA antenna. Then put the same amount of money into a savings account, or better yet an investment account. Then the big corporations that you invest in will be benefiting you. I can understand just as much as the next guy that times are tough. I remember my grandparents telling me about their tough times during the first depression, and money wasn't wasted on unnecessary stuff.

As a former business owner who dealt with a large number of customers, I learned that you can't make everyone happy.

#1_realist said:

I am pretty new to the forum, but I have seen a few posts from certain users with a decent amount of negativity. The reality is, Pay TV is a luxury.

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I'm fairly convinced that if they could make any case for it at all, some folks would go around saying that food is a luxury. And, sure, by some standards (bare minimum to survive), cable or satellite, is a luxury, but the fact is, we're talking about total penetration for cable and satellite at 90% in an article I just looked up, and it cited that number as an 18 year low. People grew up with this stuff, many having had it all their adult lives, and, while of course it's not necessary to live, people are going to want to hang on to it and have, in some cases, real difficulty adjusting to missing it.

Plus, many people don't have over the air television available in their area (and that number increased with the digital transition, because people who used to get "snowy" reception often now simply get no signal due to the way the technology works- digital is "all or nothing" signal wise), and even for those who do, it offers less than it used to in many areas. For example, when I was a young child, before we got cable, there used to be like 70 OTA baseball games a year from my local team in it's main market, with those same games dual broadcast in several secondary markets. The cable and satellite RSN channel got a slight majority, but it was only slight, and many of the key games were on OTA- plus all the playoff games. Now, only 25 games are OTA (non exclusively) and only in the home market with no secondary markets allowed to pick up the games, and some playoff games have migrated to cable/satellite as well.

OTA isn't the same as it used to be, because it used to be assumed that it's all the majority, or at least a sizeable minority had. Now it's assumed that nearly everyone has something in addition to that- because almost everyone does- and so some sports teams and leagues feel little compunction about moving their stuff almost entirely off OTA tv.

Coach Knight said:

Mr. Realist, welcome to the forum! I agree with you totally, but I must tell you that for some, logic is not important.

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Maybe people just don't buy into your ideology. That's not a rejection of logic, it's just people who see the world differently. Some folks like to see the world as some sort of contest of survival of the fittest. Others like to see it as a place where we rise or fall together, and try to make sure there's a good minimum standard of living for the folks who struggle.

You cannot convince them that TV of any kind is a luxury because there will be arguments that they are entitled (despite the fact that not that long ago in history TV didn't even exist, not even for the rich and everyone seemed to live just fine).

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Not that long ago in history, electricity and running water didn't exist either. Would you suggest those things are luxuries? Times change. In Europe, at least one country has declared access to the Internet a basic human right- talk about times changing!

They will not buy into the idea that in America, there is opportunity to rise above any situation.

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That's mythology, if applied in absolute terms. Can some people "rise above" tough circumstances and succeed? Sure. That opportunity isn't there for everyone, though, and declining rates of upward economic class mobility is showing that in terms of hard numbers.

Coach Knight said:

Just for kicks I looked up the 5 year average Net Profit Margin (NPM) on some companies using Forbes.com (feel free to verify these numbers yourself). I used 5 year averages because they are much more accurate than a report on one year.

[...]Using your logic, you should be complaining every time you do virtually anything...from washing clothes, to talking on a cell phone, eating out, brushing your teeth, or even throwing back a cold one. If you don't like Dish, that is perfectly fine...but their profit margin is well within reasonable standards...and further complaining about this issue just shows that people either cannot comprehend this information, or simply want to argue. But there is nothing out of line with these numbers from Dish.

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I buy the $1 tubes of toothpaste. I doubt they make much money off me. But I do complain about the price of beer- pretty frequently, actually. I just don't do it in the television forum.

Anyhow, while I will grant your point that many corporations generate huge profit margins and it's becoming the new normal, I'd argue that the pressure to achieve that may be part of what causing these bubbles and financial crises, massive layoffs, and moves that don't benefit consumers. Like I said, they now feel the need to squeeze every last penny out of everyone, except about the CEOs, who can pay a cool $10,000,000 a year while they lay off loyal long-time employees and raise prices at whim.

In fact, these numbers suggest that what Dish is doing is providing an outstanding value!

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If you say so. Their first year prices aren't bad. Their regular price? Eh, it's about what everyone else's is if you want what I'd consider to be today's basic sports and news, channels-- your local RSNs, ESPN, ESPN2, NBCSN, CNN, MSNBC, FOXNEWS, etc.. My parents have all the channels I need in a cable package are actually cheaper than my regular price Dish package (Though cable prices might be different where I live). Unfortunately, I'm over a state line and the local cable here won't carry an RSN's alternate channel they use for some hockey games (But do actually provide extra RSNs from other adjoining regions, so more games, just less of "my" games), so there's that to consider. But when my contract expires, I may just have to sacrifice that, especially for a promo rate. Or I could look into Directv.

satjay said:

Good information, if folks want to see some profit margins, I can only imagine what the furniture industry is. I have a strong feeling they are pulling some high margins

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You're right, which is part of why I've never bought a new piece of furniture in my life. The couch in my apartment was purchased for $35 at a flea market. And, come to think of it, someone else saw it, knew I needed a couch, and brought it over and gave the thing to me, so I didn't even pay the $35. But you can't buy used television service.

HanoverPretzel said:

................
Nope, failed a credit check. ....
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That's what I'm doing. But it means I'll likely keep bouncing from provider to provider every couple years. It seems like it'd have been easier for, say, Comcast to just give me ...............................
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Let's say Dish uses their profits to start a cell phone company. How does that benefit me?......................
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And, yeah, call me old-fashioned, but I do think we'd be better off if businesses lived by the creedo that the customer is always right.................
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I just don't *anticipate* it helping me personally, .......................
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I buy the $1 tubes of toothpaste. I doubt they make much money off me..........
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But I do complain about the price of beer- pretty frequently...............................
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I'm fairly convinced that if they could make any case for it at all, some folks would go around saying that food is a luxury................
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You're right, which is part of why I've never bought a new piece of furniture in my life. .......
.........................................................
someone else saw it, knew I needed a couch, and brought it over and gave the thing to me...........
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But you can't buy used television service.......................

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This topic has been covered many times, and we all agree- the DVR fee stinks. Most of us have made our peace and adjusted accordingly. It is clear this fee is never going away. Some people will never be happy unless they get stuff free. A business needs to make money. If you don't like them, don't give them yours.


It is defenitely time to shut this one down.......................

One also has to remember the way the tax system works, Dish spends 300 million on a satellite, but can only deduct 20 million a year on it. The same goes with new customers, they may spend $800 setting them up but they can only deduct so much a year on the customer.

Essentially Dish has had to borrow and spend huge amounts of money in the past to build their system. The profits now are really working on repaying their investment.

And all of us that are "rich" have to pay so people can "bounce" from one provider to another. We are just not poor enough to understand..................

Essentially,...................................CLOSE THIS THREAD..........................

Thread has seriously run its course

closed