Before calling DISH customer service...

[TG2]

I must not frequent that particular fast-food place. Myself and two of my kids always order our burgers with "only cheese" and I can count on two hands the number of times they've messed it up (I don't mean "two hands" to sound bad either - I'm guessing 95% or higher it's done right).

I'm the guy that always gets your screwed up orders so you don't have to. ie. the spread the horrible service around theory.

*I* can count on two hands the number of times in 10 years I haven't had an order be bad.

No Salt on fries? means *no salt on fries* ... what do they do? they stick a tray over the fry bin, dump the next batch of fries onto it, then grab the same scoop that they just packed salted fries with, without cleaning the salt off it, and so plenty of salt still migrates to the "no salt" fries.

McDonalds has had the Egg McMuffin sandwich for how many years? Since 1972? (so says a wiki) regardless of source.. its longer than most McDonald Employess have been alive ... the recipe ... the core foundation of the sandwich has not changed since inception .. cracked egg, canadian bacon, cheese, muffin ... yet the last time I had one ... < drive thru > it was on the 2 for 1 low price deal.. one was correct, the second had a folded egg (the egg that goes on most of the biscuit and non-muffin sandwiches)

An experiment I did .. every weekday for two weeks at the mcdonalds that was across the street from my house ... breakfast ... same order sausage biscuit with egg and cheese (and said that exact way as that is how they have it on the menu and to be as clear as possible) and only once out of 10 orders did the sandwich come as it should have.

So... I'm *that* guy.. the guy whose orders are always messed up .. so that the rest of you can have your 95% of the time done right. But lets also take you down that road.. I went through the drive through.. they made my sandwich .. my "special order" (with cheese, the biscuit sandwich doesn't come with it by default) so I got one without cheese ... most likely someone else got my sandwich ... so right there, not one bad order .. but two.

Its a lack of care in what someone does. Flipping burgers ... not important .. I'm surprised at the growing level of failures in the fast food industry, that we haven't seen a "Falling Down" moment reported in the papers more often (irate customer takes it to the next level, with a gun)

And the lack of care is not just in the food industry, its everywhere ... and if its not at the front line, the back line, and not the front or back line, then its at the managerial level.

 

[Hall]

Some would be insulted, but I think the majority would see it differently. Those that would be insulted would probably be the ones expecting next day service with anything less than that being totally unacceptable. ?

I've seen members of this site feel that a month's credit was warranted when there's been an outage, be it a hardware problem with their receiver or if Dish drops a channel (or channels). I've broken down the amount of credit people could get even though per their agreement, they're entitled to nothing. Just to shut people up, Dish will give $5/off for (3) months or something ! That's way above the dollar amount if one does the math.

I can see the conversation when a phone or chat rep says, "let's see how much of a credit you're 'due'..." and they do the math out loud, with the customer on the phone, and say, "okay, that works out to $x.xx. Would you like me to apply that to your account now ?".

 

[TG2]

Frontline agents are not allowed, under any circumstances, to hang up on a customer. What can be done, though, is to transfer the call to their manager, who has a little more power to tell the customer how it's going to be. I don't know that Dish does it any more, but it used to be that if an account was flagged as excessively abusive, that the customer would be terminated, and not allowed to reconnect with Dish. The Terms do allow that, if I remember correctly, as Dish can refuse to provide service to anyone. I've never done it, as I am remarkably calm, but I have heard anecdotal tales of people like that being transferred over to our Spanish IVR. Oprima Ocho!

So then there are two things you're saying dish can do ... be abusive to customers, and bar them based on criteria that you don't disclose to the customer.

... Oh customer's upset?? ... lets transfer them to the Spanish IVR ... and when they call back even more pissed, now what.. black ball them because one of your own sent them there, didn't record that factoid and now the irate customer is over the top complaining because every time they call they get spanish instead of english?

The "I've never done it" and rumor mill created by such a statement invariably shows there is a truth there. That it is getting done, and the cavalier attitude implied, while you will probably say wasn't meant, is that abuse isn't tracked .. and you could quite possibly come across one of those situations for a black balled customer, who is flagged for reasons that they didn't cause and you'd never know it. (ie. always getting transferred to spanish, because the customer is angry at the last time it happened, and still had even a marginally valid gripe that started the perfect storm into such flagged status).

Did you even question it? is there a process for questioning someone's flags? is there a full disclosure to the customer that this flag exists, and the criteria for getting onto and off of such flagged status? Its discriminatory behavior, maybe not as bad as those based on color or creed but just as discriminatory when they have no knowledge of their status and how to become your "good" customer, nor any recourse against Dish when it pulls the "we have the right to refuse service" bs.

A customer doesn't start out being bad ... a customer goes that way because of constant problems with the service provider (dish or as in my other post, fast food) ... Example.. the reason why I don't have Comcast for tv ... constantly killing signals of some channels over night while they "performed maintenance" for a year .. any over night shows on NBC & ABC were non-watchable because the signal was so degraded you would be lucky to catch a word here or there (analog days) not intermixed with heavy static in sound and picture..

Dish's support via phone has been the among the worst I've encountered.

 

[SomeDishGuy]

So then there are two things you're saying dish can do ... be abusive to customers, and bar them based on criteria that you don't disclose to the customer.

... Oh customer's upset?? ... lets transfer them to the Spanish IVR ... and when they call back even more pissed, now what.. black ball them because one of your own sent them there, didn't record that factoid and now the irate customer is over the top complaining because every time they call they get spanish instead of english?

The "I've never done it" and rumor mill created by such a statement invariably shows there is a truth there. That it is getting done, and the cavalier attitude implied, while you will probably say wasn't meant, is that abuse isn't tracked .. and you could quite possibly come across one of those situations for a black balled customer, who is flagged for reasons that they didn't cause and you'd never know it. (ie. always getting transferred to spanish, because the customer is angry at the last time it happened, and still had even a marginally valid gripe that started the perfect storm into such flagged status).

Did you even question it? is there a process for questioning someone's flags? is there a full disclosure to the customer that this flag exists, and the criteria for getting onto and off of such flagged status? Its discriminatory behavior, maybe not as bad as those based on color or creed but just as discriminatory when they have no knowledge of their status and how to become your "good" customer, nor any recourse against Dish when it pulls the "we have the right to refuse service" bs.

A customer doesn't start out being bad ... a customer goes that way because of constant problems with the service provider (dish or as in my other post, fast food) ... Example.. the reason why I don't have Comcast for tv ... constantly killing signals of some channels over night while they "performed maintenance" for a year .. any over night shows on NBC & ABC were non-watchable because the signal was so degraded you would be lucky to catch a word here or there (analog days) not intermixed with heavy static in sound and picture..

Dish's support via phone has been the among the worst I've encountered.

Wow. Methinks thou doth protest too much. You wouldn't happen to be one of those people that verbally abuse the Dish CSR agents when you call in, would you? You make some pretty ridiculous inferences, and I'm not going to waste my time refuting what you said, as I said one thing, and you are trying to say I have said something completely different.

A couple things: If you've had past problems, you surely know that:

1. The person you are talking to did not cause the problem
2. The person you are talking to is trying to help you


You can learn a lot about a person's character by how they treat people they feel are subordinate to them.

 

[SomeDishGuy]

FYI, not from the Dish agreement, but in the DirecTV one, they specifically spell it out.

http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/content/legal/customer_agreement

5. CANCELLATION

(c) Our Cancellation. We may cancel your Service at any time if you fail to pay amounts owing to us when due, subject to any grace periods; breach any other material provision of this Agreement; or act abusively toward our staff. In addition, we may cancel your Service if you elect not to accept any changed terms described to you, as provided in Section 4. Upon cancellation, you will still be responsible for payment of all outstanding balances accrued through the effective date, which may include the deactivation fee described in Section 2 and/or an early cancellation fee.