Reliability Guarantee Is an Insult

[John2021]

Tell me which is a more accurate/honest headline: "Dish Reliability Guarantee Offers Credits for Weather Outages" or "Dish Offers Customers $0.14 Credit Per Hour of Weather Outages if Customers Call In and Report the Outage." The whole point is that they hide the truth in the details and fine print, which is gimmicky and dishonest. I probably wouldn't be so bothered by the whole thing if I hadn't wasted 10 minutes on the phone over it...and likely 30 minutes here now ranting about it!

You've Won a MILLION DOLLARS!*
*Zimbabwean Dollars
^^maybe not the best example as this turns out to actually be a few thousand USD.

i remember years ago a neighbors DTV went down because of bad weather. the rep told him sorry no credits we can't control the weather . though in todays world i wonder if there doing whatever they can to retain customers.

 

[Anonymous99]

i remember years ago a neighbors DTV went down because of bad weather. the rep told him sorry no credits we can't control the weather . though in todays world i wonder if there doing whatever they can to retain customers.

I would have frankly preferred this over the gimmick they're pushing with a reliability "guarantee." Then I would have known not to waste my time calling in.

 

[John2021]

I would have frankly preferred this over the gimmick they're pushing with a reliability "guarantee." Then I would have known not to waste my time calling in.

though sadly in todays world they will sell you the moon and stars to try and keep you!!!

 

[EarDemon]

buy they all say they have 99.99% reliability . it's a gimmic one more way to try and upsell the customer on why there the best provider.

Yes, in the residential or best effort world it is a bit of a gimmick. But in the commercial world it is not. Not sure if you've ever had the opportunity to deal with high availability services with an SLA, but the terms are clear and well defined. At work, my Spectrum Enterprise fiber is four-nines, with credits issued automatically if an outage is detected. I was talking with my account rep, and on fiber accounts used for cellular backhaul it is six-nines. No such SLAs are present on copper Business Services as they are best effort and use the same infrastructure as Residential.

I don't typically like to site wackopedia as a source, but in this case, even though the math is easy enough (and this is coming from a math dummy), I use the chart from there as a quick reference.

 

[navychop]

After major difficulties getting our telco to admit there was no phone service to our new construction, we finally got lines run. I set up future expansion to OC12. Used a small fraction of it before going under. But once established, we had zero outages.

 

[sam_gordon]

Tell me which is a more accurate/honest headline: "Dish Reliability Guarantee Offers Credits for Weather Outages" or "Dish Offers Customers $0.14 Credit Per Hour of Weather Outages if Customers Call In and Report the Outage." The whole point is that they hide the truth in the details and fine print, which is gimmicky and dishonest. I probably wouldn't be so bothered by the whole thing if I hadn't wasted 10 minutes on the phone over it...and likely 30 minutes here now ranting about it!

You've Won a MILLION DOLLARS!*
*Zimbabwean Dollars
^^maybe not the best example as this turns out to actually be a few thousand USD.

How long have you been alive? I'm assuming you've seen (and heard) various advertisements...
"UP TO 75% off" (they don't tell you that 90% of the store might be 10% off)
"Results not typical" (usually after showing the 'magic' effects of some pill)
"Virtually never needs service"

There is nothing dishonest about your first headline. They do offer credit for weather outages. Because you read that headline and thought "hey, I can get a bunch of money", you feel insulted? Caveat Emptor.

 

[NYDutch]

Tell me which is a more accurate/honest headline: "Dish Reliability Guarantee Offers Credits for Weather Outages" or "Dish Offers Customers $0.14 Credit Per Hour of Weather Outages if Customers Call In and Report the Outage." The whole point is that they hide the truth in the details and fine print, which is gimmicky and dishonest. I probably wouldn't be so bothered by the whole thing if I hadn't wasted 10 minutes on the phone over it...and likely 30 minutes here now ranting about it!

You've Won a MILLION DOLLARS!*
*Zimbabwean Dollars
^^maybe not the best example as this turns out to actually be a few thousand USD.

What dollar amount would you consider fair for a 5 minute weather outage that affects relatively few customers? Dish effectively paid you $18 per hour for your time on the phone. How long was your outage?

 

[Justy5]

23+ year customer here.

Had an outage yesterday with a significant storm. So, I thought I'd make use of their reliability guarantee today. I spent 10 minutes on the phone to be credited $3.

If they have an outage, why can't they just auto-credit us without having to make us call in for it? They're penny-pinching and want all the accolades of offering outage credits while minimizing actually having to pay them.

Also, let's not forget that you have to ask for the credit within 72 hours of the event!

It's always been like that. I was a former cable company customer and they had the same requirement unless the state utility required them to give a credit to each subscriber. Depending on the severity of the storm.

 

[Tampa8]

Tell me which is a more accurate/honest headline: "Dish Reliability Guarantee Offers Credits for Weather Outages" or "Dish Offers Customers $0.14 Credit Per Hour of Weather Outages if Customers Call In and Report the Outage." The whole point is that they hide the truth in the details and fine print, which is gimmicky and dishonest. I probably wouldn't be so bothered by the whole thing if I hadn't wasted 10 minutes on the phone over it...and likely 30 minutes here now ranting about it!

You've Won a MILLION DOLLARS!*
*Zimbabwean Dollars
^^maybe not the best example as this turns out to actually be a few thousand USD.

Now I see the complaint. Some want more monetarily than what they lost. And think Dish is hiding they won't.