About to jump from DTV to Dish - questions

[Jackonearth]

Worst case scenario, doesn't Dish have no credit options these days? Like prepaid service or something like that?

 

[HipKat]

Yes, but without purchasing - or a crafty tech that knows how to talk to CSR's, they're using Hopper 1's for pay as you go accounts

 

[JJinVista]

I have a pretty good idea why there's a delay between you removing the credit freeze and Dish being able to evaluate your credit.

When a credit grantor evaluates your credit history, they can do either of two inquiries - a "hard" inquiry, or a "soft" inquiry.

A Hard inquiry pulls your full credit report and by law, results in an "Inquiry" record being logged against your credit history. This Inquiry is a record showing who looked at your credit history, and it must stay on your report for a number of years.

A Soft inquiry does not reveal the full credit report to the requestor; it computes only your credit score, and it's done for the purpose of prescreening you before you are solicited for an offer of credit. For example, when you get those offers in the mail to open a credit card - you've been prescreened and selected for solicitation based on your credit score and some demographic data. Soft inquiries do not result in an "Inquiry" record being logged against your credit history, since you didn't apply for credit.

I worked for one of the 3 credit bureaus in their info systems for over 20 years, so I'm familiar with how these things work. For efficiency reasons, prescreen systems are batch processes working with COPIES of the online credit database, processing hundreds of thousands of credit-active consumers, computing their credit score (generally for a specific industry) and merging their credit data with their demographic data. There's also legal reasons they create a COPY of your data during this process; federal law prevents a company from carrying your demographic data on your credit history "file", so the two types of data (credit, demographic) must be merged in a process that creates a static copy of your information.

In the two times I've been with Dish, I've never had a hard inquiry generated against my credit and never shown a "Dish Network" tradeline as one of my lines of credit. Most recently, I've started up with Dish a few days ago. I just checked my credit report as I'm writing this and NO inquiry has been logged against my credit history. This leads me to believe they are doing a Soft inquiry against your credit history and thus, are working with a COPY of the national credit database which has been distilled down to something as brief as Name, Address, Social, Date of Birth, and Score.

In this case, Dish is operating under the Prescreen / Soft Inquiry method in order to determine how much hardware they're willing to risk and install in your house before they start getting any revenue from you. It's actually thoughtful from one perspective - they don't hit your credit report with an inquiry, regardless of their decision, so your credit score won't be affected by shopping for a Dish quote.

But as I said above - Dish is probably working with a static copy of the credit database, and in your case, your frozen credit history has been OMITTED from what's been prepared for their front-end qualification system, due to you recently having a credit freeze in place.

The key for timing your repeated attempts at getting past their front-end qualifying system is to find out how often the credit bureau who is providing this service refreshes Dish's "prescreen" file. I can't see how they would do that more often than weekly; could be monthly at best.

 

[DJ Lon]

Dish insists I need to give them a pin number for a credit check from Equifax; I called Equifax and talked to a human and they told me Dish is nuts

 

[Tony S]

I know that I have a PIN number with Dish. They use it to verify that it is me they are talking to. Perhaps the customer service agent is looking for your Dish PIN, rather than an Equifax PIN.

 

[DJ Lon]

I know that I have a PIN number with Dish. They use it to verify that it is me they are talking to. Perhaps the customer service agent is looking for your Dish PIN, rather than an Equifax PIN.

I'm still going through the retailer, he's relaying Dish's requests to me. Not a Dish PIN

 

[DJ Lon]

I did some digging and got a phone number for someone named Charles McKay who is in charge of escalations at Dish, his secretary listened to my issue and said she is so sorry and will have someone call me back shortly

 

[Jackonearth]

Dish insists I need to give them a pin number for a credit check from Equifax; I called Equifax and talked to a human and they told me Dish is nuts

I love it when one incompetent corporation calls another incompetent corporation nuts

 

[DJ Lon]

A big-wig called me back, created a new account for me and had the ability to override the standard Dish computer verification with a "live" one (you were right JJinVista) and my install is tomorrow.

Hallelujah!

 

[DJ Lon]

Too bad every person that was affected by the Equifax blunder and wants to order Dish is going to have to go through this

 

[ncted]

Too bad every person that was affected by the Equifax blunder and wants to order Dish is going to have to go through this

Glad you got it worked out.

Unfortunately, it isn't just Dish. it is affecting so many people I know, people with good credit, who are trying to buy cars, homes, get cell phone service, etc. The whole credit industry needs an overhaul.

 

[DJ Lon]

The whole credit industry needs an overhaul.

I know that's right

 

[DJ Lon]

Install went great! I got a 3rd-party installer, he was very nice and had Joey 3.0s. He even installed the dish and splitters exactly where they were 9 years ago when I first bought my house.

 

[DishSubLA]

Dish insists I need to give them a pin number for a credit check from Equifax; I called Equifax and talked to a human and they told me Dish is nuts

I believe they do issue a PIN when freezing, but I would NOT give anybody my PIN to unfreeze my credit access.

FWIW, this sounds more to me like the credit reporting bureaus making the process as complicated and inconvenient as they can. Remember, when we freeze our access to our credit report, it ends one of the most lucrative ways the credit bureaus make money: a fee for accessing data regarding a person's credit history, and these requests happen MORE than we realize, especially the lower end reports that do NOT count against you like a credit card issuer who just needs an vague idea of what kind of risk you are before inviting you to get their credit card. However, reports when getting a mortgage or other loan or even some trades person wanting a more detailed report because they have been stiffed in the past, those can count against you, but not the far, far more common lower end reports such as what a retail store (for their store credit card) or a major credit card issuer requests, that's a relatively low fee and won't count against you.

There are different levels of credit checks offered by the credit bureaus with each being more expensive the more detailed the request, but even the least expensive and most cursory of credit check requested still brings them tons of cash. Credit bureaus do NOT like to freezing credit and don't really want to do it, but they make it slow, inconvenient and costly when you want to "thaw" your credit data for someone you want to allow access. Hmm, they can freeze your credit pretty instantly, but take an icebergs lifetime to "thaw" the credit, and can charge do so, as well.

 

[ncted]

If they cared that much about making money off our data, they should take better care of it. The negligence in the Equifax breach goes beyond criminal.

 

[JJinVista]

Remember when you would buy an expansion card for a hardware upgrade and it came with a disk containing driver software?
Remember when you would have to buy the next version of a software product to get added functionality?

Remember how Microsoft thought to improve on this method by providing software updates automagically over the internet?
Well, this opened the door to malware having an expedited and automatic path into our homes and businesses.

I don't blame Equifax and the other companies who have fallen victim to hackers as much as I blame Microsoft, Apple, and the OS publishers who bought into this "automatic update" mindset which inadequately addressed security. IT departments are trying to put out fires and build firewalls for problems created by Microsoft and Apple, who were in such a rush to "connect the world" and create our seamless tie to the internet that they put computer security as a secondary concern.

Now only a small percentage of the software updates which you obtain are providing a functional improvement. The vast majority of software updates are fixing security holes caused by sloppy programming and inadequate software testing.

 

[ncted]

Remember when you would buy an expansion card for a hardware upgrade and it came with a disk containing driver software?
Remember when you would have to buy the next version of a software product to get added functionality?

Remember how Microsoft thought to improve on this method by providing software updates automagically over the internet?
Well, this opened the door to malware having an expedited and automatic path into our homes and businesses.

I don't blame Equifax and the other companies who have fallen victim to hackers as much as I blame Microsoft, Apple, and the OS publishers who bought into this "automatic update" mindset which inadequately addressed security. IT departments are trying to put out fires and build firewalls for problems created by Microsoft and Apple, who were in such a rush to "connect the world" and create our seamless tie to the internet that they put computer security as a secondary concern.

Now only a small percentage of the software updates which you obtain are providing a functional improvement. The vast majority of software updates are fixing security holes caused by sloppy programming and inadequate software testing.

While I agree in general about your comments on software quality, the Equifax breach in particular was largely avoidable. A large, rich corporation entrusted with crazy amounts of sensitive data should not have waited two months to patch a critical security vulnerability. They should have had routine scanning which would have alerted them to the fact that the "single employee " responsible for patching their Apache Struts implementation hadn't done so. Their security compliance officer was negligent. Their technical staff was negligent. The entire organization was lax. Their insurer probably has dropped them as a customer, based on my knowledge of what kinds of questions are on those audits. The real problem is we, their products, have no control over whether they even collect and store our data.

 

[DJ Lon]

I forgot to mention this since I've now seen it elsewhere on the forums...the installer did try to interest me in a Polk soundbar for my bedroom TV but when I said no he said "okay" and that was the end of it.

Also I don't know where to post this question so I'll just put it here...BTW the Hopper 3 is working great, it makes my old HR44 look like it was from the stone age! As to the question, the only thing I've noticed so far is that for some strange reason the DVR storage indicator (% left) on the DVR menu keeps disappearing and reappearing on the Hopper itself and the Joeys. For example, when it was installed it was there. Yesterday it was there for about a half a day then it disappeared. It came back later in the evening and today it's gone again. Is this a software thing?

 

[JSheridan]

I forgot to mention this since I've now seen it elsewhere on the forums...the installer did try to interest me in a Polk soundbar for my bedroom TV but when I said no he said "okay" and that was the end of it.

Also I don't know where to post this question so I'll just put it here...BTW the Hopper 3 is working great, it makes my old HR44 look like it was from the stone age! As to the question, the only thing I've noticed so far is that for some strange reason the DVR storage indicator (% left) on the DVR menu keeps disappearing and reappearing on the Hopper itself and the Joeys. For example, when it was installed it was there. Yesterday it was there for about a half a day then it disappeared. It came back later in the evening and today it's gone again. Is this a software thing?

Yes a software thing. It should appear and stay for a while after your receiver 'settles in'.