Before I tell my E* nightmare story, the sad truth is that while people are born to complain, dish has also given people reason to complain, which makes it double bad!
Honestly, not any huge differences between E* & D* as far as programming, HD, and PQ (IMO).
So, it's possible to be happy with E*. I was, at least for a while. But what seems to happen is all in the details, just a bunch of little things that really irritate E* users.
The cause of the issues about E*, IMHO, stem from how E* just seems like another big greedy corp that will screw you 6 ways to sunday! Not saying D* doesn't do the same things, but they seem do screw you a bit less and in not as many ways.
Example, it's like choosing a president. When voting I always feel like I'm voting for the lesser of 2 evils as opposed to one that I think is clearly better. I just think, "who's gonna screw us the least".
I can tell you my experience with E*, and why I'm gonna cancel with 2 months left when D* is installed next week.
With E*, things started off fine and dandy. We had just got our first HDTV, and were thrilled with all the channels and HD programming. The promotional period was as advertised and our bill was affordable, so no problems 6 months in. Even 12 months in was OK.
The 1st real thing that got uspetting over time was that soon after we got E*, it was D* that added HD locals in our area. All this time has passed, and D* still has all the locals in HD, and E* still has no time frame on when they will provide them. A huge deal, especially during NFL season, I live in Steeler country.
While that's an issue specific to my area, but E* has been lagging in general with the HD locals, so I'm far from the only area with this problem.
As far as programming goes, overall I think D*'s HD packages are more appealing to most people right now. Not everyone, but most. However I do believe that as far as national HD both E* and D* are gonna more or less max out pretty soon and have pretty much every popular or semi popular channel that broadcasts in HD.
Also note that HD locals are going to cover everywhere pretty soon (or damn close to it), even the most rural of areas.
Thus, programming itself is going to be less of a factor as time goes on. E* and D* are only gonna get more similar far as that goes.
So what things are boiling down to, and we are starting to see it now, are which provider has the most, best, or cheapest premiums, PPV, ect. Then who has better hardware continues to be important (right now probably E* but both D* and E* have room to improve here).
But perhaps above all, and the biggest reason for complaints now and in the future, has to do with service in one way or another.
E*'s service is just awful, oh so awful. Just within 1 month, our bill jumped $14, this past month. The reasons are ridiculous. I know there was a price increase, but I damn well know it wasn't a $14 one on all packages. So they started charging us $8 more for our package, and they sneakily added another "optional" fee of some sort on as well for $6 or $7, something we never asked for. Even upon requesting that charge be gone, it doesn't help much.
Our package when we got it, no longer exists today. They put a different name on it and jacked us up $8. HOWEVER, according to dish we don't have the package they are charging us for (confusing, I know), but they say we need to pay it anyhow.
Why is this? I have a hunch its because the HD add-on dropped in price, and they want us to keep paying $30 per month for our HD as opposed to $20.
Only way they can keep charging us that extra $10 is by keeping us locked into an old package that technically doesn't exist anymore, thus they won't let us switch to the new package that will save us money (this on top of the fact that they are already sucking an extra $8 out of us starting this month for a package we do have, but don't have, according to them!).
This is hilarious, because a few months back, when we wanted to UPGRADE our package, it was no problem at all. They were so kind and upgraded us in like 5 seconds (cuz they get more money when you upgrade).
But when it comes time that our bill gets unfairly jacked and we want to switch packages now, all of a sudden they not only say "absolutely not", but are also rude in the process. And when we upgraded, they sounded so happy! What a contrast!
One more thing. After we first got E* and were happy with it, I recommended it to my grandma who had just got an HDTV, and we got the referal discount. She is an older lady of course, not good with technology, so I figured it would also be good if she had the same thing we did, so it would be easier for me to help her out, show her things, fix her up when need be.
And lately the problems she has had have been piling up to where I get a call at least every week where she has issues with the hardware. We've been OK with our hardware, but she hasn't (and she has exactly the same hardware we do, so maybe thats hit or miss). I can usually sort her out, but last week her DVR completely quit working, hard drive totally dead, took hours of work just to get her vip722 to display TV until we got it replaced.
But before any talk of replacement was done (despite that I knew 100% that the drive was toast), she was put on the phone with somebody in India who kept running her through the same troubleshooting for hours that I already did with her, and that another CSR already did with her. Talk about a waste of time!
Would have been cheaper for E* to just send the new damn 722 rather than pay CSR's to run her in circles for 6 hours.
As I knew would happen, those calls got her nowhere. Yeah I'm smarter then the E* techs apparently, although that's hardly a compliment!
OK, so my grandma lives by herself. E* knew this, she told them she does and knows nothing about tech. She assumed that once E* finally agreed the hard drive was toast (which took enough of her time already) that a repair man in our area would come and setup her new 722.
Nope! They actually told her that they would send her a replacement to her house, and that she needed to hook it up herself! HA! My old grandma setting up a 722 and removing the old. That's a good one!
They told her that it would be really easy!
Just removing the old one is too hard for her, she would have to get on her knees, dig back into a cabinet, unhook all those connections, pull it out, & she was also told to box it up and send it out.
For me that's the easy part, but for her even that is just too much to ask an old lady to do, especially when she is paying so much $$ every month to E*. E* really can't just send somebody over to do what would be for them a 5 minute job? But for her might take all day?
Luckily, she has me to help. Even for me I got stuck a little setting up the new 722. Cuz it needs to be setup from scratch just like on a new install. Isn't just play and play. I only got so far, then it wouldn't activate, asking for a smart card that we didn't have, so I had to suck it up and call E* and after a while they got it activated.
Then there was still a couple more things to do that my grandma wouldn't have a clue about. Finally we saw some TV! Only to find out that her channels were mega screwed up. We waited to see if they would fix themselves.
No luck. She had no locals, none of her HD, but instead we had all these pay porn channels working and thats about it! Embarrassing in front of my grandma, to say the least!
So...had to call E* yet again! Tell them to fix up our channels back to where they should be. About 15 minutes later we had them.
This whole process took me a couple hours (good chunk of that on the phone with a CSR, or waitng, but still...). The fact that they expected my grandma to do all this herself was crazy.
She very likely would have hurt herself just unhooking/handling the reciever to get it ready to ship out and getting the new one hooked up. That would have been bad enough, but the whole setup process if she were alone probably would have done even more mental damage then physical. My brain damn near exploded dealing with these guys. If she had done it all herself it might have killed her dead!
In the end it was that, combined with our own issues with billing and whatever else, that really just made me say "enough".
I know D* isn't perfect & people have issues with them to, but E* is worse to deal with out of the 2, for sure. Hell, for all I know they might be the worst company in the world just in general to deal with.
I talked to D* about our issue with billing and them not letting us change packages and options.
They said that if at any point, after the promotional period or not, we want to adjust packages, add or subtract this or that, that we will be able to do it. We are not locked into any package, setup, or add-ons. We can adjust if need be. And I have that recorded and in writing.
They also said that after the promotional period ends that they will give us whatever other promotions they have at 12 months from now to help keep the bill down after that period, or add perks to keep making our contract worth while.
Oh, and on top of their normal promotion, I also scored an extra 12 months free showtime.
I think I can safely say that D*'s service is not only just better service, but were really willing to work with us, talk with us, confirm some things, and in the end help us from having a jacked up bill, getting stuck with something we can't afford, and then threw on the yr free showtime as a perk for the cherry on top, to convince us to switch, most likely.
Again, lesser of 2 evils. I'll probably get pissed about something with D* at some point, but I still feel safer with them. I feel like I have a little more control over things, at least compared to the crap that E* pulled on our family. Lastly, after a few conversations with CSR's, all of them are american! God bless the USA!
Now, trying to get old grandma to switch to D* as well, she already said she would be more than happy to. Mostly for HD locals that she wants, something we are really looking forward to as well.
Honestly, not any huge differences between E* & D* as far as programming, HD, and PQ (IMO).
So, it's possible to be happy with E*. I was, at least for a while. But what seems to happen is all in the details, just a bunch of little things that really irritate E* users.
The cause of the issues about E*, IMHO, stem from how E* just seems like another big greedy corp that will screw you 6 ways to sunday! Not saying D* doesn't do the same things, but they seem do screw you a bit less and in not as many ways.
Example, it's like choosing a president. When voting I always feel like I'm voting for the lesser of 2 evils as opposed to one that I think is clearly better. I just think, "who's gonna screw us the least".
I can tell you my experience with E*, and why I'm gonna cancel with 2 months left when D* is installed next week.
With E*, things started off fine and dandy. We had just got our first HDTV, and were thrilled with all the channels and HD programming. The promotional period was as advertised and our bill was affordable, so no problems 6 months in. Even 12 months in was OK.
The 1st real thing that got uspetting over time was that soon after we got E*, it was D* that added HD locals in our area. All this time has passed, and D* still has all the locals in HD, and E* still has no time frame on when they will provide them. A huge deal, especially during NFL season, I live in Steeler country.
While that's an issue specific to my area, but E* has been lagging in general with the HD locals, so I'm far from the only area with this problem.
As far as programming goes, overall I think D*'s HD packages are more appealing to most people right now. Not everyone, but most. However I do believe that as far as national HD both E* and D* are gonna more or less max out pretty soon and have pretty much every popular or semi popular channel that broadcasts in HD.
Also note that HD locals are going to cover everywhere pretty soon (or damn close to it), even the most rural of areas.
Thus, programming itself is going to be less of a factor as time goes on. E* and D* are only gonna get more similar far as that goes.
So what things are boiling down to, and we are starting to see it now, are which provider has the most, best, or cheapest premiums, PPV, ect. Then who has better hardware continues to be important (right now probably E* but both D* and E* have room to improve here).
But perhaps above all, and the biggest reason for complaints now and in the future, has to do with service in one way or another.
E*'s service is just awful, oh so awful. Just within 1 month, our bill jumped $14, this past month. The reasons are ridiculous. I know there was a price increase, but I damn well know it wasn't a $14 one on all packages. So they started charging us $8 more for our package, and they sneakily added another "optional" fee of some sort on as well for $6 or $7, something we never asked for. Even upon requesting that charge be gone, it doesn't help much.
Our package when we got it, no longer exists today. They put a different name on it and jacked us up $8. HOWEVER, according to dish we don't have the package they are charging us for (confusing, I know), but they say we need to pay it anyhow.
Why is this? I have a hunch its because the HD add-on dropped in price, and they want us to keep paying $30 per month for our HD as opposed to $20.
Only way they can keep charging us that extra $10 is by keeping us locked into an old package that technically doesn't exist anymore, thus they won't let us switch to the new package that will save us money (this on top of the fact that they are already sucking an extra $8 out of us starting this month for a package we do have, but don't have, according to them!).
This is hilarious, because a few months back, when we wanted to UPGRADE our package, it was no problem at all. They were so kind and upgraded us in like 5 seconds (cuz they get more money when you upgrade).
But when it comes time that our bill gets unfairly jacked and we want to switch packages now, all of a sudden they not only say "absolutely not", but are also rude in the process. And when we upgraded, they sounded so happy! What a contrast!
One more thing. After we first got E* and were happy with it, I recommended it to my grandma who had just got an HDTV, and we got the referal discount. She is an older lady of course, not good with technology, so I figured it would also be good if she had the same thing we did, so it would be easier for me to help her out, show her things, fix her up when need be.
And lately the problems she has had have been piling up to where I get a call at least every week where she has issues with the hardware. We've been OK with our hardware, but she hasn't (and she has exactly the same hardware we do, so maybe thats hit or miss). I can usually sort her out, but last week her DVR completely quit working, hard drive totally dead, took hours of work just to get her vip722 to display TV until we got it replaced.
But before any talk of replacement was done (despite that I knew 100% that the drive was toast), she was put on the phone with somebody in India who kept running her through the same troubleshooting for hours that I already did with her, and that another CSR already did with her. Talk about a waste of time!
Would have been cheaper for E* to just send the new damn 722 rather than pay CSR's to run her in circles for 6 hours.
As I knew would happen, those calls got her nowhere. Yeah I'm smarter then the E* techs apparently, although that's hardly a compliment!
OK, so my grandma lives by herself. E* knew this, she told them she does and knows nothing about tech. She assumed that once E* finally agreed the hard drive was toast (which took enough of her time already) that a repair man in our area would come and setup her new 722.
Nope! They actually told her that they would send her a replacement to her house, and that she needed to hook it up herself! HA! My old grandma setting up a 722 and removing the old. That's a good one!
They told her that it would be really easy!
Just removing the old one is too hard for her, she would have to get on her knees, dig back into a cabinet, unhook all those connections, pull it out, & she was also told to box it up and send it out.
For me that's the easy part, but for her even that is just too much to ask an old lady to do, especially when she is paying so much $$ every month to E*. E* really can't just send somebody over to do what would be for them a 5 minute job? But for her might take all day?
Luckily, she has me to help. Even for me I got stuck a little setting up the new 722. Cuz it needs to be setup from scratch just like on a new install. Isn't just play and play. I only got so far, then it wouldn't activate, asking for a smart card that we didn't have, so I had to suck it up and call E* and after a while they got it activated.
Then there was still a couple more things to do that my grandma wouldn't have a clue about. Finally we saw some TV! Only to find out that her channels were mega screwed up. We waited to see if they would fix themselves.
No luck. She had no locals, none of her HD, but instead we had all these pay porn channels working and thats about it! Embarrassing in front of my grandma, to say the least!
So...had to call E* yet again! Tell them to fix up our channels back to where they should be. About 15 minutes later we had them.
This whole process took me a couple hours (good chunk of that on the phone with a CSR, or waitng, but still...). The fact that they expected my grandma to do all this herself was crazy.
She very likely would have hurt herself just unhooking/handling the reciever to get it ready to ship out and getting the new one hooked up. That would have been bad enough, but the whole setup process if she were alone probably would have done even more mental damage then physical. My brain damn near exploded dealing with these guys. If she had done it all herself it might have killed her dead!
In the end it was that, combined with our own issues with billing and whatever else, that really just made me say "enough".
I know D* isn't perfect & people have issues with them to, but E* is worse to deal with out of the 2, for sure. Hell, for all I know they might be the worst company in the world just in general to deal with.
I talked to D* about our issue with billing and them not letting us change packages and options.
They said that if at any point, after the promotional period or not, we want to adjust packages, add or subtract this or that, that we will be able to do it. We are not locked into any package, setup, or add-ons. We can adjust if need be. And I have that recorded and in writing.
They also said that after the promotional period ends that they will give us whatever other promotions they have at 12 months from now to help keep the bill down after that period, or add perks to keep making our contract worth while.
Oh, and on top of their normal promotion, I also scored an extra 12 months free showtime.
I think I can safely say that D*'s service is not only just better service, but were really willing to work with us, talk with us, confirm some things, and in the end help us from having a jacked up bill, getting stuck with something we can't afford, and then threw on the yr free showtime as a perk for the cherry on top, to convince us to switch, most likely.
Again, lesser of 2 evils. I'll probably get pissed about something with D* at some point, but I still feel safer with them. I feel like I have a little more control over things, at least compared to the crap that E* pulled on our family. Lastly, after a few conversations with CSR's, all of them are american! God bless the USA!
Now, trying to get old grandma to switch to D* as well, she already said she would be more than happy to. Mostly for HD locals that she wants, something we are really looking forward to as well.
