Dish almost didn't activate my 522

grizduck

Member
Original poster
Dec 29, 2003
13
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I just received my 522 from Fedex today that I bought on e-bay last week. I called to activate it and they said "Sorry sir, we cannot activate 522's except for new lease customers" I told them that I called last week to confirm that they WOULD activate it. They said it was a new policy as of last Friday. Holy crap, I thought I'm out $400 bones. I asked to speak to a manager and after 15 minutes, they agreed to activate it. So just a heads up for those of you wanting to buy a 522. They might not activate it.
 
grizduck said:
I just received my 522 from Fedex today that I bought on e-bay last week. I called to activate it and they said "Sorry sir, we cannot activate 522's except for new lease customers" I told them that I called last week to confirm that they WOULD activate it. They said it was a new policy as of last Friday. Holy crap, I thought I'm out $400 bones. I asked to speak to a manager and after 15 minutes, they agreed to activate it. So just a heads up for those of you wanting to buy a 522. They might not activate it.
I'm glad you posted this. I have been wondering. They announced on the last retailer chat that the 522 & 322 receivers would not be activated except for new DHP customers. I have been thinking about unloading a few of them on ebay myself. I may not now if they are actually going to enforce the activation issue.

I'm glad to hear that they went ahead and activated yours.
 
I won't worry about it too much......Dish told me via an email that sometime next quarter they are going to start selling them to the non-DHP customers. So I figure this will only be a temp. thing.
 
Oh man! I have one on the way, should be here some time this week. I bet they're going to tell me the same thing. Not really sure way they are doing this? You would think they would not care which receiver you have.

I've been with E* for more than 6 yrs. remember the old 4700 models? Might have to threaten to leave, I have no commitments with Dish except the $$ I just spent on a new 522 which I could resale later on ebay I guess.

Could always go with cable. Was recently checking into what they offer and they have dual tuner dvr's and same channel line up as Dish for approx same price. I already have Road Runner with them so could add Digital Cable pretty easy and with no commitments.

Guess I will wait and see what happens when I call to activate.
 
I am going to wait for the 522 to become available to existing subscribers to see if they have a deal like they do on the 510's.
 
ejcsfla -

If I were you, I'd throw a fit like I did and tell them that you called prior to ordering. I really did call, but they don't know that. The manager was very responsive to my concerns. i'm sure they would do the same for you
 
Well my 522 just arrived. I will set it up later when I get home and make the (now dreaded) phone call to have it activated - will let you know how it goes... :p
 
Added a 522 with success

Well it only took 3 trys but I finally got my new 522 activated. :D :D

I was expecting the worse after reading grizduck's post but the type of receiver I wanted to add to my account was never even an issue.

(1st Call) I hooked it up last night and made my first call (of 3) to activate the unit. The CSR was very nice but obviously new. She was more worried about telling me what my new monthly balance was now going to be with the addition of adding a new receiver then she was with the model of the receiver. She never asked what model just told me it should activate in 5 to 10 minutes. (It didn't)

(2nd Call) After waiting approx 30 minutes after the first call I still could not access any of the channels so I made my 2nd call. This CSR said that they had added the new receiver to my account but did not activate it. He tried to do it again but said his computer would not let him. He had no idea why this was happening. This is where I started to get nervous! He said my account showed that I had 5 receivers on it and that I would have to verify each receiver number before he could activate the new one. I said I would call back tomorrow and do what he suggested. I dont know why he thought this was necessary but it was late and I didn't want to argue with the guy.

(3rd Call) Called back today to give it another try. This time the CSR just looked up my account and asked which receiver I was trying to add and said she sent the hit to activate it and that it should be working in 15 minutes. She even stayed on the phone with me while I waited. My channels showed up in about 2 or 3 minutes and we said good bye. Easy as Pie!!

My question is, what was the big deal? Why was it so hard for me to add a new receiver to my account? I don't think it had anything to do with it being a 522 because they didn't even ask what kind it was. IMHO I think Dish has a real problem with keeping CSR's on staff so you're always talking to less experienced people.

Well it's over with now, but I still seem to have a problem. I can access the guide and select one of my pay channels but I have to do it through the guide. If I press the channel up or down button it will jump to one of the Dish channels like the unit is still not activated. If I continue to channel up or down I only get a selection of the Dish channels. I have to go though the guide to select one of my pay channels. Hopefully this will clear up after leaving the unit on for awhile.

Well sorry for the long post, thought other people might be interested in my attempt to add a 522 to my account without leasing the unit. My advice, just have patience, you will need it while dealing with Dish's CSR's.
 
Maybe the reciever audit is a random thing, and the first 2 times you called in you got hit by it and the computer did not activate the reciever.
 
ejcsfla said:
Oh man! I have one on the way, should be here some time this week. I bet they're going to tell me the same thing. Not really sure way they are doing this? You would think they would not care which receiver you have.

I've been with E* for more than 6 yrs. remember the old 4700 models? Might have to threaten to leave, I have no commitments with Dish except the $$ I just spent on a new 522 which I could resale later on ebay I guess.

Could always go with cable. Was recently checking into what they offer and they have dual tuner dvr's and same channel line up as Dish for approx same price. I already have Road Runner with them so could add Digital Cable pretty easy and with no commitments.

Guess I will wait and see what happens when I call to activate.

If you have used Dish's DVRs and switch to cable or at least Time Warner's DVR, you will hate it. I mean, hate it!! The dual tuner was nice, but that was its only plus. It won't even tell you how much recording time you have left. I don't know how many shows were cut off due to inadequate space. What a POS.
 
grizduck said:
I just received my 522 from Fedex today that I bought on e-bay last week. I called to activate it and they said "Sorry sir, we cannot activate 522's except for new lease customers" I told them that I called last week to confirm that they WOULD activate it. They said it was a new policy as of last Friday. Holy crap, I thought I'm out $400 bones. I asked to speak to a manager and after 15 minutes, they agreed to activate it. So just a heads up for those of you wanting to buy a 522. They might not activate it.
Where did you order it from on ebay? I can't locate any 522's except new subscriber systems. How much did you pay?
Thanx in advance.
 
shellbmb said:
If you have used Dish's DVRs and switch to cable or at least Time Warner's DVR, you will hate it. I mean, hate it!! The dual tuner was nice, but that was its only plus. It won't even tell you how much recording time you have left. I don't know how many shows were cut off due to inadequate space. What a POS.

Actually I have been trying out the cable DVR's for the past week and your right, I don't like them.

The dual tuner is nice and the series recording options are definitely better than Dish's 'time based' setup, but it was not as easy to use. Too many different buttons to push just to make a simple choice. And as I kept hearing from the wife "why aren't the channels grouped together like on Dish?". The only grouping was the movie channels (HBO, MAX, STRZ), the rest were all over the place. Maximum buffering is one hour so if you hit pause and come back over an hour later you can't rewind. Not sure the buffer time on Dish's DVR's? I also noticed that they crash pretty easily too. Had to reboot 4 times in one week.

I think they have up to 80 hrs. of record time, but you would never know because it doesn't show anywhere.

If I had no other choice I could live with it but would be harder to do now that I've had experience with 501, 721, 522 dvr's. Even with all the gripes I must say Dish has done a good job. They're simple to use and you don't get lost in menus and options.

Hopefully with new DVR competion coming from Direct, Dish will put more effort into their DVR's and we'll all benefit.
 
Why dont they make an option in the receiver to where you can group the channels the way you want it in the order you want, channel number you want, etc? Too much for them on the software?

The buffer times on the 501/508/510 is one hour while on the 721 and 921 is two hours. The 522 is one hour or two hours per tuner, not sure of which it is.

Perhaps there was a glitch in the computer that actually let it get activated when it shouldn't have that you lucked out. Either that or they are just informing the CSR's to not activate them but I doubt that since the computer recognized the receiver preventing it from getting activated.
 
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