721 dying, expected the worst, pleasant surprise

iKramerica

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Feb 20, 2004
258
15
My 721 is going nuts, and I was pretty sure it was not recoverable.

So I called Dish, expecting to have to buy a new receiver and argue with them.

The tech said that for a 721 with this problem, they do an out of warranty advance exchange for $20 plus shipping and tax, for a total of $38 or so. I made him repeat it because I couldn't believe that. I was expecting to have to argue and fight and tell them I would cancel if they tried to charge me $500 or something like that.

It's a refurbed unit, but so what? It will be newer than mine and work.

I'm a computer guy and we talked about how these units are put together. He said the 721 and other dish PVRs have an issue where over time the power supply goes bad due to overuse. They don't use server class power supplies, just AT class supplies, and he said that over time, the PS is overloaded by constantly drawing max power, eventually burning it out depending on the quality of the power coming into the unit. I know my house now has horrible power coming from the street, often down at 105v, and very dirty. My old house had hospital grade balanced power for electronics.

Makes sense.

I asked him about going to a 622, and he said that would be $299 and over 30 day wait. He said they don't discount it below that because the demand is too high right now. He also suggested that I not get one at this time anyway, and follow my original plan which was to wait until the fall.

I asked him about the major software problems on the 622 and he was as coy as possible about what he thinks about it, but steered me away from it for a while, calling it a "brand new computer, and you know what that means." He said the vast majority of the problems have shown up on installation, but the other problems were real and hard to fix.

I won't say his name, as honesty might get him reprimanded...
 
Stargazer said:
I think the standard out of warranty repair for a receiver is $49 for a basic one and $69 for an HD or DVR.

Nope Had Mine Replaced a few weeks ago ( Lost all recordings- It did a HD Reformat ( I know cause I watched it Reboot & say Installing HD Image , Also Had been having Frequent Audiu Dropouts & Pixelation) Anyways I thought we the Dish Protection Plan cause we Pay $115 a month & Have had Several receivers Replaced with no CHarge , ANyways CS Rep said It wasn't on the bill, So I could either pay the $20 for shipping or ad the $5.99 a month Protection plan and get another 721 , I choose the latter Cause I own All my receivers
 
Considering all they do for a 721 refurb is reimage the harddrive, shouldn't cost too much.

A buddy of mine keeps a copy of his original 721 HDD for emergencies (have had to use it twice in the past for recovery)
 
No, there have been power supply failures and I believe early on there were circuit board changes.
 
Derwin0 said:
Considering all they do for a 721 refurb is reimage the harddrive, shouldn't cost too much.

A buddy of mine keeps a copy of his original 721 HDD for emergencies (have had to use it twice in the past for recovery)

That's not true in all cases.

That's only true of the only thing wrong is a corrupted HDD.

A refurbished unit must be tested to original specifications or it can't be sold as refurbished, only as used.

If they were to refurbish my current unit and send it to someone else, they would need to test the whole thing, likely replace the power supply, and then test it again.
 
iKramerica said:
I won't say his name, as honesty might get him reprimanded...

Thank you very much for that, as a dish tech myself I have to be very careful as to what I say to my customers because you never know who they will repeat it to and how twisted out of shape it will become.

iKramerica said:
That's not true in all cases.

That's only true of the only thing wrong is a corrupted HDD.

A refurbished unit must be tested to original specifications or it can't be sold as refurbished, only as used.

If they were to refurbish my current unit and send it to someone else, they would need to test the whole thing, likely replace the power supply, and then test it again.

I really wish that the department(s) that handle the refurbishing of equipment were as thorough as you are describing but the reality is that I usually send back 1 - 4 peices of refurbed equipment each day when we have them in our facility. The worst part for not getting fixed right is the dp -34 thats refurbed, nothing else comes close for bad refurb work as they do.
 
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