What I have done is hooked up the phone line to let the receiver do its test, and then immediatly disconnect it before the purchase could be recorded.
It was more on my part being lazy not wanting to wait for the receiver to dial out and for the movie to upload, then trying to delay in having to pay for a movie.
The biggest scam was a few years ago on Fathers day when Dish ran a Free PPV Movie. The catch was you had the hook up the phone line and let it dial out...
I walked a few customers through hooking up the phone line that weekend on the phone, and when I asked them to being up the purchase history I already knew a few people where not going to be happy campers!
Now if you want to hear something funney, I actually had a customer burn out a smart card from ordering too many PPV's. He maxed out the spending limit on the card, and then when that stopped he started to call them all in with the automated system. When you order on the phone, the purchase still writes to the card until the bill is paid....
So he ended up having like 50 PPV purchases on the card, and it was so bad the receiver kept on rebooting every 5 minutes
So I did an RMA on the card, got a replacement one in the mail and everything was good!
Then the issue was do I send the old card into Dish so they can download all the PPV? I figured there was atleast $200 in PPV on that card, and I just knew the customer could not pay it.
So I had gotten the customers new card on an advance exchange, and had to send the old one back. I was in a catch 22, because if I sent in the smart card then the customers bill would go sky high, which likely he would disconnect and I would get charged back on the installation. Don't send the card in and pay Dish $50 for a non-returned smart card....
So I ended up putting off sending back the card, but this time the guy had gone non-pay disconnect, and I got a chargeback so I was like screw the customer and send in his card so Dish could download the rest of the PPV purchases