ok, so my old 921 in the basement dies, and I call up to invoke my "free receiver" replacement per my $1.99 extended warranty (grandfathered price from a few years back..... due to go up next month).
I call up on 12/23, run throgh the idiot's fixit guide with the CSR (yes, the light is on, yes I unplugged it for 30 seconds..... what is it doing? There is a clicking sound from the hard drive and all I get is the HDTV medallion and then nothing). OK, the receiver has to be replaced according to the CSR. Bingo. They tell me another will be coming 2nd day air. In the meantime, I hook up a Dish 311 I have in reserve from winning a SatGuys contest on a Charlie Chat (thanks, Prize Goddess), and all is well as they supposedly deactivated my 921 and activated the 311. January 15th is when the replacement shows up (2 days equals 3.5 weeks in Charlie's World I guess). No biggie, it is only a backup in my basement for the kiddies to use. I wind up hooking it up on 1/20. Everything is fine on bootup, it says receiver has to be authorized.
I check online to see if anything hinky happened to my account and sure enough, I've got a $49.99 "Receiver" charge and a $14.95 Shipping and Handling charge. They also never took my 921 off when they added my 311. Sigh. I call up to activate and to "fix" the bad charges. I get a hold of someone who sounds like he is from New Delhi (uh oh). He tells me that he can remove the shipping charge but that I have to pay a charge to fix the receiver. Uh uh... I know the warranty is supposed to cover that. I argue with the guy for 5 minutes but he isn't budging. I ask for a supervisor.
Someone with better English comes on (actually, it's a huge improvement, as a female African American comes on and we start bantering with lots of jokes like we are hosting a radio show....) She goes on hold and gets things straightened out on the billing front after a bit, but my cheaper plan doesn't cover shipping. Oh well..... $15 to fix a 921 isn't too bad..... She tries to authorize the 921, but she has to use "a different computer" and there is a line of other CSRs waiting to use it.... OKaaayyy, they've got ONE PC that can authorize 921s? After 15 minutes she comes back and everything is working...... Total time for me to replace 311 with 921 and boot it up? 10 minutes. Time to fix Billing problem and authorize receiver? 60 minutes....
I call up on 12/23, run throgh the idiot's fixit guide with the CSR (yes, the light is on, yes I unplugged it for 30 seconds..... what is it doing? There is a clicking sound from the hard drive and all I get is the HDTV medallion and then nothing). OK, the receiver has to be replaced according to the CSR. Bingo. They tell me another will be coming 2nd day air. In the meantime, I hook up a Dish 311 I have in reserve from winning a SatGuys contest on a Charlie Chat (thanks, Prize Goddess), and all is well as they supposedly deactivated my 921 and activated the 311. January 15th is when the replacement shows up (2 days equals 3.5 weeks in Charlie's World I guess). No biggie, it is only a backup in my basement for the kiddies to use. I wind up hooking it up on 1/20. Everything is fine on bootup, it says receiver has to be authorized.
I check online to see if anything hinky happened to my account and sure enough, I've got a $49.99 "Receiver" charge and a $14.95 Shipping and Handling charge. They also never took my 921 off when they added my 311. Sigh. I call up to activate and to "fix" the bad charges. I get a hold of someone who sounds like he is from New Delhi (uh oh). He tells me that he can remove the shipping charge but that I have to pay a charge to fix the receiver. Uh uh... I know the warranty is supposed to cover that. I argue with the guy for 5 minutes but he isn't budging. I ask for a supervisor.
Someone with better English comes on (actually, it's a huge improvement, as a female African American comes on and we start bantering with lots of jokes like we are hosting a radio show....) She goes on hold and gets things straightened out on the billing front after a bit, but my cheaper plan doesn't cover shipping. Oh well..... $15 to fix a 921 isn't too bad..... She tries to authorize the 921, but she has to use "a different computer" and there is a line of other CSRs waiting to use it.... OKaaayyy, they've got ONE PC that can authorize 921s? After 15 minutes she comes back and everything is working...... Total time for me to replace 311 with 921 and boot it up? 10 minutes. Time to fix Billing problem and authorize receiver? 60 minutes....
