Has E* Gone Bonkers???

[AndyMon]

Holy cow!! I just got off the phone with a CSR and I'm left flabbergasted. I had been prepaying for my programming for the past several years in order to save a month's cost since they only bill you for 11 months if you prepay. It was worth it to me. When I was up for renewal a few months ago I was in the throes of deciding whether or not to go to D*, mostly because of the HD situation at that time so I switched to mo/mo billing. I wasn't about to pay $650 for a 6000 receiver w/8vsb and it seemed they were dragging their feet in regards to what the future would hold as far as programming and new receivers were concerned. As we all know, E* then started making announcements related to these issues and also offered the "deal" on the 6000's. So, I decided to stay and now that things are coming together I figured I'd go back to prepaying to get the savings. One note, in the interim I changed my programming. I dropped SHO and the distant nets and added the HD pack and HBO/MAX value pack to go along with my existing AT150. No problem, right? Wrong. Get this:

AT150 473 p/yr
HBO 154 p/yr
Max 132 p/yr

Total 759 p/yr

However, staying with mo/mo billing my cost would be 59.99 p/mo X 12 = $719.88 p/yr, a difference of $39.12.

Are they insane? They want to charge me about $40 more to let them have my money a year in advance. What kind of moron would come up with this kind of marketing scheme. The CSR was perfectly willing to let this happen until I asked for a breakdown of charges when something about the numbers struck me as sounding fishy. Amazing. I realize that the value Paks' fine print says they're available monthly but come on, this is nutso. You'd think they'd give you a break rather than charge more for prepaying. On a brighter note, they did allow me to prepay the HD Pak, saving $9.99 p/yr

 

[Tampa8]

If you want to say the CSR should be better at pointing out the best value I would agree with you. But I think Dish is actually ahead of the others on this particular combination.
Top150 with HBO and MAX value pack was never supposed to be a year payment option, becasue they are already better than probably anyone else for price. Your own figures bear this out. By getting the value pack of the three you;
1. Do not have to pay a year in advance to get the discount
2. By getting all three you actually get almost TWO months of top150 free over paying for it month by month alone.
3. You get one month free of each HBO and MAX.

I don't think we can expect a further discount. But there should be something in the software when the CSR keys in these three packages that says month to month is cheaper. The consumer should not have to know all this, and in fact I wonder how many get those three things and are paying by the year thinking they are getting the best deal?

 

[jerryez]

E* is not too bright. I have my online banking setup to pay E* with an electronic transfer each month, yet to get the Superdish deal they want me to sign up for credit card autopay, and Visa charges the vendor(E*) 4 1/2 % of my payment to them each month. They are throwing away money.

 

[AndyMon]

I don't really agree with your statement that we shouldn't expect a further discount. I guess I just think that if they get to utilize a not insubstantial amount of your cash a year in advance that they would be willing to make it worth your while, not charge you more than they do for a month to month deal. Wouldn't you like to have the money upfront?

I don't think we can expect a further discount. But there should be something in the software when the CSR keys in these three packages that says month to month is cheaper. The consumer should not have to know all this, and in fact I wonder how many get those three things and are paying by the year thinking they are getting the best deal?

 

[Tampa8]

I don't really agree with your statement that we shouldn't expect a further discount. I guess I just think that if they get to utilize a not insubstantial amount of your cash a year in advance that they would be willing to make it worth your while, not charge you more than they do for a month to month deal. Wouldn't you like to have the money upfront?

While I agree with that concept, in this case Dish is not offering a yearly rate on the actual package, becasue of the already discounted price. They are advertising a monthly rate of $59.99. If you want to circumvent that and pay for each component at the yearly rate you can do that, and that is where I say Dish should tell you there is a cheaper way. But Dish I'm sure took into account the already futher discount and decided they could not sell this package at an additonal discount. In the end, I don't see where Dish is asking you to pay at the yearly rate and somehow tricking you. It is more like they are telling us to pay at the monthly rate to get the deal and we are trying for something they are not offering.

 

[AndyMon]

I guess it is the concept that I'm having trouble with. It just defies reson that they wouldn't want the cash up front and do something to entice you, that's all. I don't think they're tricking me, they're just not doing what I expect them to. Nothing new there <G>

While I agree with that concept, in this case Dish is not offering a yearly rate on the actual package, becasue of the already discounted price. They are advertising a monthly rate of $59.99. If you want to circumvent that and pay for each component at the yearly rate you can do that, and that is where I say Dish should tell you there is a cheaper way. But Dish I'm sure took into account the already futher discount and decided they could not sell this package at an additonal discount. In the end, I don't see where Dish is asking you to pay at the yearly rate and somehow tricking you. It is more like they are telling us to pay at the monthly rate to get the deal and we are trying for something they are not offering.

 

[Tampa8]

I do understand what you are saying - and I bet if they were having cash flow problems they would give a further discount for paying a year in advance. One thing Dish is not good at is promotional deals - not that the deals are not good, but it is how they are structered!

 

[mkm4]

E* is not too bright. I have my online banking setup to pay E* with an electronic transfer each month, yet to get the Superdish deal they want me to sign up for credit card autopay, and Visa charges the vendor(E*) 4 1/2 % of my payment to them each month. They are throwing away money.

Unless you've seen E* agreement for Mastercard and Visa card services, you have no idea what they are paying. But a large company like E* is probably being charged much less than 2% of the transaction amont. I work for a small company that is being charged on average about 2.5% per transaction.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

The Everything pack and HBO Cinemax at 150 pack are already discounted. That could be the reason for that.

 

[Stargazer]

Dish Network has told me in the past about how it is cheaper to split it up and pay that a year in advance than it is to pay the AEP package a year in advance.

 

[mike123abc]

I switched from annual 150+all movie channels to the AEP because paying annually is not really cheaper any more. They have a discount with 150+all movie packs that comes out to around $1/month cheaper than the AEP.

But, the AEP now has channels that 150 does not have, and now PVR fees are cheaper too. So, there is no reason anymore to pay for a year in advance.

My only thought is that the pay a year in advance croud must be getting pretty small, and they can attract more customers with the value packs. So, they are moving to just abandon the pay in advance crowd.

 

[Stargazer]

I would think they would want those pay in advance customers because it is a lot simpler, saves them money from having tp send bills out to those customers, and they get to have that much more money for the year in advance which allows them to collect interest on it. When a customer pays in advance they are more likely to stay on with the service, no late payments, and are probably better customers. They should reward annual payments more since the benefit of paying annually seems to be diminishing year to year.