Program Access Fee

dungenessHD

Active SatelliteGuys Member
Original poster
May 7, 2006
17
0
This is probably not new news, buy...I am paying $10.00 a month ($5.00 for each of two receivers) for a Programming Access Fee. The person at Dish said that this was because I did NOT have a telephone line attached to my set "to make downloading easier." I guess the logic is that I am being charged for something I do not use. Can anyone clarify this for me? The Dish Person even laughed at the craziness of it, but said "that's the way it goes."
 
if you have 2 room receivers they waive the fee of the second room when you plug in phone line into the reciever. That's the correct way to look at it
 
I think the true reason is to try and prevent people from giving a second receiver to someone else.
 
Yeah, I was very surprised the 211 doesnt require a phone line connected. I would suspect that the next round of single tuners will have the requirement though. I hope they will just figure a way to do it over the satellite as more and more people only have cell phones. If I didnt have DSL I would not keep my land line.
 
Simple,
You activate the dual tuner or any reciever on your account and install at another location rather than your service address. If the phone is plugged in and not calling from your service number the dreaded audit team gives you a call. If you dont plug it in you cannot tell where it is located. Hence thats why I bet you will see the phone line connection become required in more new recievers.

Also BFG is correct, that is a more accurate way to describe it. In truth though Dish is just using the dual tuner as an excuse to bring the phone line requirement. Since about 80% of the installs I did were dual tuner, IMO, it stands to reason that it would help to prevent account stacking.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by db2521
I think the true reason is to try and prevent people from giving a second receiver to someone else.

Please explain how somone would do that when both receivers are in the same box
So it sounds like....
Dish has a requirement to have 2 or more receivers connected to a phone line to keep people from sharing their account/receivers with another residence. However, to keep from confusing their CSR's - a dual tuner equals 2 receivers on the CSR Check-List/Cheat-Sheet. :D :D :D
 
And we know that confusing a CSR is not hard to do at all, let alone trying to understand what they are saying.
 
The tech that hooked up my d1000 was too lazy to hook up a phone line to one of my rooms.... his quote was "you dont really need to have it hooked up"