Not a Good Start Dish Network...:mad:

nickg420

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Aug 31, 2005
788
179
Flowery Branch, Ga
I just swapped from DTV on Thursday to Dish with Hopper and awoke this morning to a HD failure. So now I've lost all the recordings I just caught up from the switch and I will have to catch up and miss recordings again.

Not even a week and already have issues...And the best they can do is send me a replacement in 2-3 days. Not have a tech come by and swap it today or tomorrow.

Thus far....I'm a little disappointed...
 
Not sure where you are located, but having a tech come by and do a replacement has always been an option especially since as a new sub you are covered by the protection plan. You need to contact a DIRT rep here on the Forum to see if they can help. Their names are in red and are usually on duty in the PM.
 
Dish can't help it when hard drives fail. Definitely contact DIRT and they'll fix you up.


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You had a hard drive failure that quickly? If so, that is very unlucky. I have yet to have a customer's hard drive go out in a Hopper and I haven't read about too many others having that happen. Looks like you just got unlucky with one.
 
I just swapped from DTV on Thursday to Dish with Hopper and awoke this morning to a HD failure. So now I've lost all the recordings I just caught up from the switch and I will have to catch up and miss recordings again.

Not even a week and already have issues...And the best they can do is send me a replacement in 2-3 days. Not have a tech come by and swap it today or tomorrow.

Thus far....I'm a little disappointed...
That is terribly unlucky! Though, how much could you have possibly lost on the HD in five days, other than the World Cup?
 
Is the HD actually bad, or did the Hopper just want to reformat it?

First, you should never let it reformat it without rebooting first to see if the problem clears up.

Second, there seems to be a rash of this needing-to-reformat-the-drive problem since the last software update. (Well, penultimate software update as of a few days ago, although I don't know how widespread the latest update has gone yet.) That tells me that there isn't a rash of bad drives, just buggy filesystem code. (It also tells me that Dish isn't capable of writing a decent filesystem recovery routine! On no other system I've ever owned or used have I been unable to recover at least most of my files from a corrupted disk that didn't have catastrophic physical damage!)
 
Not sure where you are located, but having a tech come by and do a replacement has always been an option especially since as a new sub you are covered by the protection plan. You need to contact a DIRT rep here on the Forum to see if they can help. Their names are in red and are usually on duty in the PM.

Being covered or not covered by the protection plan does not affect whether or not a tech comes out to deal with a receiver with a hard drive failure. A receiver with a hard drive failure is RA'd (swapped out by a Return Authorization), and no, a tech is NOT scheduled to come out and replace it, it is done via UPS, with the 2-3 day time frame. Dish does have the ability to do UPS next day, at an additional cost of $20 to the customer.

Technicians generally carry enough receivers to cover their install jobs for the day (techs, can you chime in? do you carry a few extras? No extras? Details, please?), so if a technician visit is scheduled, it is not guaranteed that the tech will even have the right receiver on their truck. Possible? Yes. Guaranteed? No.

This wasn't always the case in the past, sometimes techs would be sent out, but some customers got even madder if the tech didn't have the same receiver on the truck. Some techs have said they look at their work orders, and make sure they have proper spares on the truck.

I know, I know...when people don't get the answer they like, they all scream "Contact DIRT", but they follow the same policy, and Dish policy is to not send a technician to replace a bad receiver. One can be scheduled to assist an RA receiver AFTER that receiver has been delivered by UPS.



As a Dish employee, my opinions are my own, and do not represent my employer in any way.
 
I've had HDD failures that occurred within hours or less than a week with both Dish and TiVo over the years. No matter how well they package these DVR's to isolate them from shock, the boys at the shippers always toss and throw them across pretty fair distances. They there are the dropping of the boxes and the long hot and bumpy journey through to and from the hubs and then from your region to your home with even more abuse a long the way. Quickly failing HDD's are not that rare. I have had situations with both TiVo and Dish where it took a 3rd box replacement to not get a quickly failed HDD. It's the times we live in.
 
Dish can write good hard drive file system code. My 722k has not got any issue for more then 3+ years (touch wood)

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My 612's have been solid for years now. Also knock on wood.
Having been with DISH so long I don't give it a second thought that it might be a couple or more days to get a replacement receiver but if someone was coming from Cable, I also see how they would expect the problem to fixed sooner. It's a reason I would not and do not have just one receiver.
 
Like a computer, if something is to die, it will happen within the first month of use. Be happy the hard drive didn't die after you filled it up.

DISH doesn't make the hard drives and this kind of failure while rare does happen, its a mechanical device. I wouldn't be mad at DISH. (Although if they could get you one faster it would be nice) :)

One of the nice things about the Hopper is you can still watch TV even when the hard drive is dead. That's something i find cool. :D
 
A bit off topic for the OP's problems but...

In truth, it's amazing they hold up as well as they do with the horrible power distribution grid in parts of the country. My voltage is so unstable (not to mention the horrible on/off/on/off with every little blow or lightning storm I marvel that anything with a chip in it survives...and, they often don't. There's a lot more equipment destroyed by dirty power than most suspect and the layman almost invariably blames whatever manufacturer never realizing the true culprit.
 
When the tech installed my HopperWS, he left me his office number and his cellphone number and told me if I had any trouble or questions to call him before calling Dish. I think your five days falls within the installation timeframe. Call your installer, if you have his or his offices number.
 
When the tech installed my HopperWS, he left me his office number and his cellphone number and told me if I had any trouble or questions to call him before calling Dish. I think your five days falls within the installation timeframe. Call your installer, if you have his or his offices number.

They are not supposed to do that anymore from what I was told, we were doing that thru out office as well but Dish was getting upset since they weren't able to track the work being done from internal work orders setup. Basically the office and techs were trying to control the ignorant trouble calls or now called RC12's but Dish figured they were losing too much money by not being able to charge back the office/techs as often *rolls eyes*

As for the HDD failure...hey it happens and yes as a tech I'll say first hand that we didn't really care that many extra's however we almost had to cause they would allow stupid same day drop in work orders which really caused problems and Dish shouldn't be doing in the first place. And yes, I'll say this that when we would show up for a failure or something and didn't have it OMG did people get pissed if you had to setup a RA. Some wouldn't care but most would and most would get irrate, I know once I had to just walk out and leave without saying another word from the abuse I was getting.

I would set up an RA for just about every receiver I found defective even if I had an extra just to save it for those stupid lame drop ins that could have effected me. Don't have the receiver for a drop in then you ended up wasting hours either going to get it or if lucky someone would bring it to you or meet them half way which again was lame and Dish shouldn't be doing.

HDD failures are just like anything else you buy, you never know what you get anymore but that shouldn't effect how the business is running or operates. I've seen people drive off a new car off a lot and have to return the next day to fix something or a recall..ect. You just never know and it happens.
 
Just remember techs. When you mark no problem found, or just "ra" the reciever, it knocks the agent that scheduled that appointment. And that's one thing that affects promotions and raises. I don't know how many times I went back into the account to see the work the tech did, and saw that he replaced the node and marked it as a replacement reciever. Or that he had to change the hdmi cable, and marked it replacement reciever. I understand what you are wanting to do, but atleast mark it something mutually beneficial. Like "changed node".
 
Just remember techs. When you mark no problem found, or just "ra" the reciever, it knocks the agent that scheduled that appointment. And that's one thing that affects promotions and raises. I don't know how many times I went back into the account to see the work the tech did, and saw that he replaced the node and marked it as a replacement reciever. Or that he had to change the hdmi cable, and marked it replacement reciever. I understand what you are wanting to do, but atleast mark it something mutually beneficial. Like "changed node".

You're correct. Techs talk about some of the ridiculous policies Dish imposes on their techs, but NPF for a tech visit is one that is a metric call center employees are measured on. CSR sends a tech out for, say, a complete signal loss (015). Tech goes out, has to realign the dish, replace cabling, but if that tech notes that he replaced the receiver too (perhaps even unrelated), it counts as NPF (no problem found) against the CSR that set up the tech visit. I don't blame the tech like I blame the reporting system and the inflexibility of the people who control it.

As a Dish employee, my opinions are my own, and do not represent my employer in any way.
 
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