Avoid receiver lease fee?

JTOUPS

Well-Known SatelliteGuys Member
Original poster
Mar 11, 2007
31
0
Is there any way to avoid Dish Network's additional receiver leasing fee?

It may be a pointless question, but I thought it was worth asking.



Thank you,

John
 
Not really. Even if you buy and own your receiver, they just sock you with another fee, costing about as much.

Not much point in owning anymore. Leasing seems the smarter move today.
 
You can avoid the lease fee by purchasing a receiver, but then you'll be charged an additional receiver fee which is the same as the leased receiver fee. The first leased receiver fee is included in the cost of the qualified programming package so there is no advantage to buying over leasing unless you want to avoid a commitment to E*.
 
Yeah, that's what I figured........just thought there might be some sort of trick out there (like most other things)

Usually you can find anything on the internet!
 
Yeah, that's what I have now, but fixing to upgrade to a 2nd dual tuner receiver.

And I doubt by telling "Dish" you'll leave them, they will hook you up. But it may be worth a shot. They may waive the fee for 10mths or something. Ya never know....I'll keep you posted.
 
You can avoid the lease fee by purchasing a receiver, but then you'll be charged an additional receiver fee which is the same as the leased receiver fee. The first leased receiver fee is included in the cost of the qualified programming package so there is no advantage to buying over leasing unless you want to avoid a commitment to E*.

Only way to avoid leased receiver fee . . . only have one receiver.

For most subscribers. Some are being charged the lease fee on their one and only receiver. My mom is in this group. DISH CSR's claim they're powerless to remove the fee, and emails to the ceo address have gone unanswered since Monday. She pays annually and her year is up in May. If they haven't straightened this out by then I'm going to switch her to directTV. I should anyway as they have her locals in HD now, and DISH doesn't offer them at all. She has to fork out an additional $12.99 to AAD to get em' in crappy quality. With the new subscriber deals she'd come out way ahead for the length of the contract. Even if she decides she prefers DISH after that, she could probably come back as a returning customer and get rid of the fee that way. It's amazing DISH is going to make her do that when she's generally happy with the service. She didn't even get much of a deal on the receiver in question - a 211 for $75.
 
I have one receiver (vip 622) on my account. Should I be charged the $7 leased receiver fee? I chatted with support and they said that I get charged that because I have an HD DVR. Thanks!
 
I have one receiver (vip 622) on my account. Should I be charged the $7 leased receiver fee? I chatted with support and they said that I get charged that because I have an HD DVR. Thanks!

It depends on when you got the 622, I was getting dinged for the $7 fee with only the one 622 on my account. Here's an email from the ceo at dishnetwork responding to my query. I took them up on the offer and swapped out one 622 for another, Dish paid the freight both ways, now I don't have the $7 lease fee. Good for one year, I figger in another year I'll probably have changed receivers (unless I still get the hd absolute package at or near the current pricing:)

Subject: RE: 622 lease fee
Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2009 09:02:55 -0700
From:xxxxxx@Dishnetwork.com
To: xxxxxxx@hotmail.com

Dear Mr. xxx,:D (not my real name or occupation)



Thank you for your email and bringing your concern to our attention.







You upgraded to your current HD-DVR receiver at a time when all upgraded receivers were assessed a leased receiver fee regardless if they were the only receiver on the account or not. I have requested to have our back office promotion team make an exception to waive the leased receiver fee but that request has been denied. I have been advised that the fee is a valid fee and cannot be waived. The only way for us to have the fee waived permanently would be to have the receiver replaced under our current upgrade procedures. I would be willing to replace the receiver at no cost to you with the same model. We would be able to ship you a replacement receiver that would not be assessed the leased receiver fee. Please let me know if this is an acceptable resolution for you and confirm the shipping address that you would like the replacement receiver shipped to. We thank you for your patience in this matter and DISH Network appreciates your business.



I apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused you and please feel free to contact me if you have any further questions.



Thanks,
 
For most subscribers. Some are being charged the lease fee on their one and only receiver. My mom is in this group. DISH CSR's claim they're powerless to remove the fee, and emails to the ceo address have gone unanswered since Monday. She pays annually and her year is up in May. If they haven't straightened this out by then I'm going to switch her to directTV. I should anyway as they have her locals in HD now, and DISH doesn't offer them at all. She has to fork out an additional $12.99 to AAD to get em' in crappy quality. With the new subscriber deals she'd come out way ahead for the length of the contract. Even if she decides she prefers DISH after that, she could probably come back as a returning customer and get rid of the fee that way. It's amazing DISH is going to make her do that when she's generally happy with the service. She didn't even get much of a deal on the receiver in question - a 211 for $75.

Check into replacing (on an upgrade) the 211 to a 722, then she'd have a hd dvr with no lease fee, of course she'd have the dvr fee then, would she think the $5.98 dvr fee was worth it?

If she watches much on the locals, I think going to Direct makes a lotta sense, what's the point of having a hd receiver or dvr, and watching a crappy sd picture?
 
Check into replacing (on an upgrade) the 211 to a 722, then she'd have a hd dvr with no lease fee, of course she'd have the dvr fee then, would she think the $5.98 dvr fee was worth it?

If she watches much on the locals, I think going to Direct makes a lotta sense, what's the point of having a hd receiver or dvr, and watching a crappy sd picture?

She's not interested in a DVR - I've tried. She's afraid that she won't be able to figure it out. Might be able to try a 222. But it's amazing to me that DISH refused to remove the lease fee on your 622 but shipped you a replacement instead. Do they try and think up ways to waste money? Did you end up with a new contract commitment?

Someone should tell them to read their own statements. It even says there that the first lease fee is included in qualified programming.
 
She's not interested in a DVR - I've tried. She's afraid that she won't be able to figure it out. Might be able to try a 222. But it's amazing to me that DISH refused to remove the lease fee on your 622 but shipped you a replacement instead. Do they try and think up ways to waste money? Did you end up with a new contract commitment?

Someone should tell them to read their own statements. It even says there that the first lease fee is included in qualified programming.

Yeah, I thought it was kinda silly to send one 622 back (which had been a great performer for 16 months, didn't want to jinx it:D) for another, but saving $84 plus tax a year was worth it. This was done with no commitment, I'm currently not under contract.

The "no lease fee for the first receiver" is true now, but it wasn't that way when I got my 622 (around July of 2006); I'm guessing your mom probably got her receiver before they ended the lease fee also (seems like it was in the first part of 2007 that Dish changed it).
 
Yeah, I thought it was kinda silly to send one 622 back (which had been a great performer for 16 months, didn't want to jinx it:D) for another, but saving $84 plus tax a year was worth it. This was done with no commitment, I'm currently not under contract.

The "no lease fee for the first receiver" is true now, but it wasn't that way when I got my 622 (around July of 2006); I'm guessing your mom probably got her receiver before they ended the lease fee also (seems like it was in the first part of 2007 that Dish changed it).

At least they responded and solved your problem I've only used the ceo address a couple of times, but always got a fast response. Never expected to be ignored for a week. I'd take a similar deal for her - ship her a replacement 211 with no fee. Even though it doesn't make sense.
 
She's not interested in a DVR - I've tried. She's afraid that she won't be able to figure it out. Might be able to try a 222. But it's amazing to me that DISH refused to remove the lease fee on your 622 but shipped you a replacement instead. Do they try and think up ways to waste money? Did you end up with a new contract commitment?

Someone should tell them to read their own statements. It even says there that the first lease fee is included in qualified programming.

Jaystil,

If anybody can't figure out how to use a Dish DVR then they should give up TV entirely and start reading.
 
Jaystil,

If anybody can't figure out how to use a Dish DVR then they should give up TV entirely and start reading.

Probably a wise choice for us all.

I can tell you've never tried to teach technology to the over 70 crowd.
 
Yeah, he should go to a retirement home and teach a technology class or better yet, answer questions on a tech support line for seniors. I've been there brother.

Acer
 
Yep. Let's be charitable. When I taught a basic Computer Science class at a local Jr College, I had a senior in the class. His policy was to take each class twice. IIRC, he attended classes for free if there was an opening. Many people in that school were single mothers, people trying to get a non food service job.

I see some of the elders' attitude growing in me. I can't for the life of me see why anyone sticks with Twitter. :p
 
She pays annually and her year is up in May.
The lease fee on the first receiver on the account is covered in the cost of the basic programming package. The problem for your Mom is that she pays annually. Annual pricing is discounted (roughly one month free) and therefore doesn't cover the lease fee.

I don't know what they offer in terms of annual pricing anymore, since it isn't even mentioned anywhere on their website that I can see. But, I can tell you about two of the packages that I am familiar with. My year was up this week and I just made a change. I too was paying a lease fee that couldn't be explained. I talked to several CSRs that couldn't explain it. When I called to change packages I brought it up again and finally got the explanation, it was because of the annual package discount.

Classic Silver 200 is $47.99/month or $528 annually. So if you pay annually, that would be the equivalent of $44 per month, a savings of $3.99 per month over the regular price.

Classic Gold 250 is $57.99/month or $638 annually. So if you pay annually, that would be the equivalent of $53.16 per month, a savings of $4.83 per month over the regular price.

So she is spending $7 to save $4 or $5 dollars. Not only that, but annual pricing is not a qualifying package to get local channels for $5 per month, instead it is $5.99 per month.

So by switching to monthly, she could actually save $3 to $4 per month (more if her state charges taxes).

At one time, paying annually made sense, if you were a satisfied customer that planned to be around for a while. Now, it seems there would be very few cases where it would be an advantage to the customer.
 

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