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If you own, you don't have the hassle of sending a receiver back and paying $25 if you leave Dish.

Skip06 said:

If you own, you don't have the hassle of sending a receiver back and paying $25 if you leave Dish.

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To me this theory doesn't make a lot of sense. I can understand if you do not like contracts or think you won't keep the service 2 years. The time and money you spend on the equipment and installing it should offset any kind of savings you're getting from shipping a receiver back.

Like others have stated:

Pros: No contract, can deactivate/activate when you want, great for satellite enthusiast who like to install themselves
Cons: Still have the monthly fee so you don't save any money, have to purchase the equipment, have to install or pay someone to install it(for the non DIY guys)

Scherrman said:

To me this theory doesn't make a lot of sense. I can understand if you do not like contracts or think you won't keep the service 2 years. The time and money you spend on the equipment and installing it should offset any kind of savings you're getting from shipping a receiver back.

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Guess you've missed the stories on here of people getting charged full price for receivers they've shipped back. Seems it took months to get straightened out. I have a 222, at the time it was cheaper for me to buy it then to pay Dish for someone to hook it up. Hooking up a couple of wires wasn't a problem for me. Now I don't have to worry if I decide to leave Dish, (been with them this century). So I came out ahead at the start, and don't have to spend time packing it up and driving to a UPS drop off or any expense at the end.
I fully understand people that had VCR's blinking 12, or aren't physically able to mount a dish or do an install, leasing and having Dish do the work is the only way to go for them. As I'm getting close to that point, if I ever upgrade, I may have to lease.

I fault you logic. The only people who have to lug a leased receiver back to Ups/Fed Ex is those who have canceled Dish or in most cases are returning a defective receiver. In the 18 years I've been with Dish I only had to take faulty receivers to a shipping service after Dish has sent me a replacement. And again, the cost of buying a receiver varies widley depending on what you want.

dwarren2 said:

I fault you logic. The only people who have to lug a leased receiver back to Ups/Fed Ex is those who have canceled Dish

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I fault your reading comprehension, if you canceled Dish is what I was referring to.

I leased exactly once -- when I went HD and needed a new dish (1000.2 WA). Up until then I had owned and installed a single tuner/LNB receiver (3700?), a DVR 508, a Dish 500, a DVR 721. All my purchased receivers have been bought through Mark at Dish Depot.

Then Dish obsoleted the 721 and sent me DVR 522 to replace it (and read me a long spiel on the phone saying the replacement was a lease which turned out not to be the case). The first 522 I received had a faulty tuner 2, not sure how that made it out of QC. The second had scrambled sound after about 5-10 minutes on the same program. The third worked as far as I could tell, but I was already turned off to the quality of refurbs from Dish.

By early 2009 when my SD TV went TU for the second time in 6 months, I decided to go HD. Dish offered a free install. The installer, a contractor, did a great job installing the new 1000.2 (two RG6 coax from the dish to a grounding block), and running a single RG6 cable for the new DVR 722 (was going to give me a 622 until I requested the 722). When he went to leave he asked me what I wanted to do with the 522 since it showed as owned on his worksheet. Hmm, news to me. I think he gave me $10 trade-in for it and took it with him.

So the 722 was leased and all was well, until... It started acting wonky (freezes, reboots, etc. all known symptoms of a hard drive failing) about 4 years later, I decided to upgrade to a Hopper system. I probably could have fixed the 722 with only a compatible drive swap but couldn't (technically) because it was leased. Or I could have tried to get a functional refurbed 722 but didn't want to chance another possibly faulty Dish refurb.

Looking at my system and using information from Satelliteguys, I found all I had to do to hook a Hopper up was replace the existing ground block with a Solo Node, connect the 2 existing coaxes from the dish to the node, and connect the existing coax that used to go to the 722 to the node Host port.

So I ordered a Hopper with Sling with Solo Node in March of this year from Dish Depot ($199) and did the install (really just replacement) myself. I also bought a Joey in case I ever wanted to add a viewing room to the system in the future but so far haven't activated it.

Sorry for being so long winded, but the point I'm trying to make is that if you are the least bit handy, owning is probably the preferred way to have a Dish system (at least it is for me) since you can do fixes much more efficiently than through the Dish repair cycle. Add to that the other advantages people before me have listed. One last caveat -- once past the infant mortality period, the hard drive is the most likely component to fail on these units. If you decide to go this route, be sure to stockpile a replacement hard drive before it becomes unavailable for purchase. The HD used in my HWS is a Seagate ST2000VM003.

I can't really agree that self-repairs are a valid reason for owning at all. I've had two units die over the years (HDs). Dish swapped both out 100% free (and I have never had the service plan). Never had a unit down more than 48 hours.

Ordering the parts myself may have saved a day in shipping time and 15 minutes on the phone, but would have been much more expensive.

Skip06 said:

Guess you've missed the stories on here of people getting charged full price for receivers they've shipped back. Seems it took months to get straightened out. I have a 222, at the time it was cheaper for me to buy it then to pay Dish for someone to hook it up. Hooking up a couple of wires wasn't a problem for me. Now I don't have to worry if I decide to leave Dish, (been with them this century). So I came out ahead at the start, and don't have to spend time packing it up and driving to a UPS drop off or any expense at the end.
I fully understand people that had VCR's blinking 12, or aren't physically able to mount a dish or do an install, leasing and having Dish do the work is the only way to go for them. As I'm getting close to that point, if I ever upgrade, I may have to lease.

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Nope, I haven't missed the stories. I've actually contributed to those stories since it's happened to me twice. Even though it was frustrating to me it is not a hard problem to solve. All you have to do is show Dish proof that you purchased it with some form of an invoice/receipt. I'm not sure why it would cost you so much when leasing. I read more stories on here about how people are able to get fees waived because they threatened to leave or just asked.

Skip06 said:

Guess you've missed the stories on here of people getting charged full price for receivers they've shipped back.

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Sounds like you're using that as a valid argument for owning over leasing. Well guess what, just as frequently people have had stories of owned equipment unknowingly being changed to leased, then find out when they go to cancel and get charged a huge bill. So that reason is nullified.