New Policy For Those With OTA Only Locals

wfullmer

Member
Original poster
May 9, 2007
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This is a heads-up for subscribers who have been "Grandfathered" into the pricing established prior to locals being carried over the sats. At one time if you wanted the locals off the sats you paid $5 per month extra. Then Dish decided to have all packages include the locals and all were priced $5 higher. Those of us wanting to continue to receive our locals OTA were grandfathered into the older pricing. The understanding was if we made a change to the basic programming package we would loose that status...a downgrade for example.

Since I live in suburban Phoenix by positioning my small electronic antenna on my patio roof just right I get all the Phoenix stations and most of the Tucson stations for a total of 84 channels. I had no reason to get the locals from Dish. In fact, when a sports event is blacked out in Phoenix, I can watch it from Tucson.

Wednesday I received a replacement receiver from Dish because one had died completely. When the replacement was activated presto all of the locals appeared. The tech attempted to remove them, but couldn't.

Yesterday I sent a PM to a member of the DIRT team explaining the situation and was told it can't be done any more:

Our systems will not allow us to remove local channels anymore. Anytime the account is accessed, it will automatically add the local channels and once added, it will not allow us to remove them. I apologize for the inconvenience but I am unable to change this for you.

In fairness, they are giving me a statement credit of $5 a month for the time being and I do get the program info in the guide for a few of the stations but I also am getting a heck of a lot of duplicate clutter and have to enter the entire channel designation, i.e. 006.03 to address the channel I want.

I'm afraid this a sign of things to come in 2013 and for those in the same situation, you might want to think twice about making ANY kind of change.



 
There has never been a guarantee that GRANDFATHERING was forever. What DISH receiver do you have mine use 0063 and display as 006-3? If I punch just 6 it will go to 006-1.
 
You do have a DVR? You can record 2 OTA network channels from the Satalite on it now. I can record 4 OTA network channels on my 722K.
 
It is only a matter of time before a lot of the customer base will need their account accessed or equipment changed.
 
I'm afraid this a sign of things to come in 2013 and for those in the same situation, you might want to think twice about making ANY kind of change.
Nothing new here. The "change" policy has been in effect for some time.
 
It has been that way since the Locals were packaged in. I was using AAD for my DNS after Dish has to drop from the market. I upgraded to a VIP722K and I got Locals which I didn't want or could use very easily. Didn't matter, you get Locals period. Nothing new for a couple of years now.

I had Locals until Dish came back into the DNS market when DNS was substituted for Locals.
 
Wait till the next price increase, and the option will probably come back not to get locals again.

If you look at the price increase history they flip flop on the locals issue every other year to hide the price increase.

They need to maintain certain price points for advertising purposes.
 
IF they really want to help cut the cost of the price increases, they need to allow more Real ala cart choices. And NO, I don't mean offer Blaze or Current tv for $5.00 a month each. How about realigning the Welcome pack & Family pack to allow more channels and add HD To it for the same price or $10.00 more a month? This would give more choice to those who want to save money and still keep some choice of channels.
 
Just to make it clear, this is not new, a new receiver did invoke getting the locals. I do know of one person who got a replacement 612, but not from Dish and when he added it the locals were not added.
As mentioned while not ideal to pay $5 for those who really don't want the locals, you do get to record and watch more local channels at once. (Three recording, Four to watch if you include the TV itself on a VIP612 722, etc...) rather than just one to record and two to watch(again including from the TV), and get the guide. Worth $5 to me.
 
IF they really want to help cut the cost of the price increases, they need to allow more Real ala cart choices. And NO, I don't mean offer Blaze or Current tv for $5.00 a month each. How about realigning the Welcome pack & Family pack to allow more channels and add HD To it for the same price or $10.00 more a month? This would give more choice to those who want to save money and still keep some choice of channels.

As myself and others have pointed out, doubtful Dish wants people to stay in those packages, especially the Welcome package.
 
So what exactly does "Anytime the account is accessed" mean?

If I call in with a question, and they access my account, I'm stuck with a higher bill?

If I turn in one of my ViP722 DVRs to reduce my bill, they'll jack it up with the locals fee, reducing my savings?

Depending upon how you interpret that phrase, this could be a new extension of the policy.
 
Where are you located that you get Tucson? We're at 48th St. & Baseline, so I suppose being at the base of South Mountain all we see are the 38 Phoenix channels. My wife is from Tucson, I bet she would freak at getting channels from there?
 
There has never been a guarantee that GRANDFATHERING was forever. What DISH receiver do you have mine use 0063 and display as 006-3? If I punch just 6 it will go to 006-1.

I guess the lesson to learn here is "grandpa" dies at some point. In the future - when packages are discontinued - we should ask for those packages to be "eternalized" instead of "grandfathered".
 
I don't understand why people wouldn't want to get their locals from Dish, I can't count how many times I'm dvring from my ota tuner on my 722 plus Dish's feeds of my locals
 
dwarren2 said:
I don't understand why people wouldn't want to get their locals from Dish, I can't count how many times I'm dvring from my ota tuner on my 722 plus Dish's feeds of my locals

If you don't record network programing saving $60 a year could be important.

Ross

Sent from my rooted DROID RAZR Maxx using SatelliteGuys
 
I don't understand why people wouldn't want to get their locals from Dish, I can't count how many times I'm dvring from my ota tuner on my 722 plus Dish's feeds of my locals

60 bucks a year saved when I have media center PCs recording all the locals I want that are shareable across the home network. Dish doesn't make all the locals available, just the Big 4 in my DMA via the sat tuners.
 
South Mountain is blocking you from recieving Tucson. Take a look at this coverage map for KVOA.
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=80&q=call=KVOA&type=D

Yep, share a Condo in Tempe off of Baseline Rd, (Yes, Tampa, Tempe one letter is thousands of miles apart....:) ) I only have antenna TV service there and South Mountain is right in the way of Tuscon. Very nice Resort on the Mountain there however, watch movies outside while floating in the pool...... I'm often at Aunt Chilada's restaurant.....
 
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