In reality a person can stay with their current sat provider & get a better price than any "new customer promo" without calling, threatening to cancel or any of that.
"Refer a friend" both sat companies offer it & it's an easy program to participate in.
With Directv the limit is 10 referrals a year. That is $1000 is bill credits. Their best new customer promotion doesn't even come close to that. All your referred friend needs is your account #, provide it when placing the order & you both get a $10 credit for 10 months. When a new customer provides Directv an email they send a confirmation with the account details & it clearly shows the referring friends account #.
Dish also has a limit of 10 referrals a year. For the existing customer who is doing the referring each 1 is worth a $5 credit for 10 months, up to $500 a year. It's not as good as Directv's program but none the less it's not to shabby either. Your referred friend gets a $50 instant credit on their 1st bill. You can go to your account in "mydish", click on refer a friend. You can then either email your friend directly with a referral or have 2 sent to your home, also under my referrals you can copy or write down the referral #. On Dish's paperwork the referral shows up beside the certificate#.
I personally have 4 dish referrals on my account right now & fully intend on maxing it out in the near future. I also have a directv customer who maxes out his referrals yearly. Referrals do cost sales people & retailers money. A former customer returning to dish with a referral doesn't cost anything, it's a wash.
The best way to make sure a referral gets added to a new account is to tell the sales person upfront you have a refer a friend & if for any reason it does not get added you will cancel the account before it ever even gets installed.