I work for the largest retailer for Dish Network.
I think you guys are missing the point. Just a few months back you could get a customer approved with a 580 credit score or higher and it didn't matter if it was a credit card or a debit card. Now if the customers credit is between 580 and 700 they HAVE to enter a credit card. Yes dish can tell the difference between the two. Dish wants a credit card so they can charge it if the customers breaks the contact and doesn't return the equipment. They mess with the requirements meaning one day it's easy to get people approved other days I get "we are unable to approve the customer application for the promotion enter a credit card" on most of my customers. 9 times out of 10 they don't have a credit and I have to let the go since they do not want to pay a deposit. I would say I have lost on average 30 sales a month at $30 a sell.
We have told Dish about this, but they keep telling us that they have looked at the credit file of these customers and all of them have credit card, but don't want to give it up. They said we need to try harder to get a credit card from them. GET IT THROUGH YOUR THICK F-ING HEADS DISH THESE PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE A CREDIT CARD. Just because someones credit files says they have one does not mean they still have the card. Regardless they will not give it up and they are losing customers. I have several credit cards on my file that I don't use anymore as do others I know.
Anyway we are losing lots of sales over this and Dish lost 10,000 subscribers last month. If dish CEO's don't get their act together they are going to run that company in the ground with this BS. I mean these people are calling directv and getting approved so they are losing customers. Plus with them losing their bundle contract with at&t they are going to lose even more.
Oh and when they charge the customers cards for breaking the contract most of the time the customer deputes it and gets the charges taken off anyway. I know Dish is trying to reduce churn, but they are going the wrong way about it.
"They said we need to try harder to get a credit card from the(customer)"
I agree this is ridiculous. It is as though you're being told "The customer has no choice. Sell it".
I am no big fan of Dish either and don't go around tooting their horn. BTW that was a 10k net sub loss in the last quarter.
D*'s standards are just as high and D* has nothing similar to Dish Now. AT least that I know of.
Now, I do agree there must be some sort of protection for Dish when customers default or cancel early. And one cannot just simply dispute a charge on their credit card just because they do not want to pay. Those charges are legitmate. The customer agreed to them when thery signed the 24 month agreement. Also the equipment does not belong to the customer. Based on these issues Dish must have high credit standards.
If we want to insist the current system is faulty then we can simply go back to cash and carry. I'd make a lot more money doing installs because the aspect of free free free will go away with it. But that's isn;'t realistic. SO we're back to the system we have now
Fact of the matter is credit standards for many things have beeen lowered to unrealistic levels. And we now see the result. I realize that there are areas of the country where folks don't have credit cards have poor credit histories due to a poor local economy but this is a big picture issue.
I think standards should be raised and kept at these high levels to prevent the situation we're in now from ever happening again