Jane came home to find a Dish Network receiver on her roof. Jane never ordered service from Dish Network, and isn’t sure why she suddenly has a satellite dish on her roof. Dish Network isn’t sure, either.
Dish Network has no record of Jane in their system. They referred her to three Dish Network installation affiliates, but the affiliates hadn’t installed any dishes at Jane’s address. Jane asked the local police department for help, but they said it wasn’t a police matter. Frustrated and wanting the dish off her roof, Jane offered to send the receiver back to Dish Network. Because they have no record of installation, they won’t accept delivery.
Pictures and the email address for Dish Network’s CEO, after the jump…
Jane’s email:
My husband and I came home Monday from work and discussed a Dish Network 500 that had been installed on our roof — AND WE DIDN’T order it!I contacted Dish Network and they passed me from one person to another with little help, stating I was not in their database. No, I wouldn’t be, would I, if I didn’t order it! They gave me contacts info of affiliates in the Plano, Texas area who install their equipment, but none of the 3 companies turned up anything.
The Customer Solutions (an oxymoron if ever there was) department of Dish Network 500 suggested I call the local police and file a police report. When I phoned the Plano Police Dept. they suggested it was not a police matter but if I wanted to file a judgment against Dish Network 500 in civil court I could pursue that avenue and gave me the number.
I even offered to personally remove it from my roof and ship it to Dish Network 500, but the so-called Damage Control dept. didn’t want it because they said they didn’t install it. So it appears to be of NO VALUE to them, not even the flimsy $100 it may be worth!
I am going to contact a local news affiliate and report this to their consumer investigative dept. and see what happens.
Got any suggestions?
If escalating through customer service isn’t helping, shoot straight for the top. Email Charles Ergen, CEO and Chairman of the Board for EchoStar Communications, the company that owns Dish Network. He can be reached at: CEO@echostar.com. You should also confirm that Dish Network isn’t about to start billing for service you didn’t request.
Photos of the dish:
— CAREY GREENBERG-BERGER
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Top Posts Of The Week And Open Thread
@blankfaze:
How much time have you got? I have cable TV from Cox San Diego, as well as a separate business-class internet account which my employer pays for. Problems:
1. Price. Cox is charging $85 for a decent selection of digital cable TV, plus $100 for the business internet. Dish is giving me more channels, receivers in multiple rooms, and high-def as well, for about half that. And free DVR, which will also save me $12.95/month I pay for TiVo. AT&T is setting me up for business DSL at less than half the Cox rate, with twice the speed and, by all accounts, much better reliability.
2. Customer service. On the one hand, let me start with a compliment: it’s easy to get ahold of a human at Cox. Unfortunately, what answer you get depends on who you talk to. Case in point… I’m going to be switching from standard digital TV to high-def service. So I called Cox CS to ask what it was going to cost me and what it would take. I don’t want to turn this into a novel, so let me just say that three different calls got me three different answers. On the business internet side, your first- and second-tier support folks are often rude, clueless, and unhelpful.
3. Quality of service. It sucks, to be rather impolite. TV picture quality is often poor, with all kinds of brief dropouts and blocky artifacts. I particularly love those times when the cable box occasionally resets itself during the night and doesn’t power back on, leaving me with a TiVo full of recordings of a blank screen. The same goes for the internet service. Regularly the throughput slows to a crawl, DNS just stops resolving, or known high-reliability web sites just vanish temporarily. And I live in fear of seeing a Cox truck stop at the pole in front of my house.
Also, and unrelated issue: in looking over some of your comments, I noticed that you often comment on Cox and other telecomm providers. You may be unaware that it’s considered good netiquette to mention that you’re employed by them so as not to give the illusion that you’re an unbiased party.
I’d have to go with this being a prank. I used to install directly for Dish Network (I worked for the company, not a subcontractor). One thing I can tell you is that the dish itself is a mass produced item, and Dish Network has millions of them. They do not want it back. It also has no identifying marks (i.e. serial numbers) on it. There is no way to track who it came from or when it was installed, etc.
Also, unless an installer really didn’t like their job, they would NEVER install ANYTHING on the outside of a house without a responsible adult being there. If we were on a job, and the person had to run five minutes out to pick their kid up from school, we had to drop what we were doing and go sit in our van til they got home.
If, however, this WAS installed by Dish OR a subcontractor, the dish should be mounted to your roof with five or six 3″ lag bolts. We’d just slap them right in there. The holes will also be sealed, either with silicone caulk over the bold heads, or with tar squares which the bolts were drilled through.
The problem you face is this: You can dismantle the dish. There are a few 7/16″ head bolts holding the post to the plate that’s mounted to the roof. That will get the whole shebang off, except for the footplate. If you take the footplate off, the holes in your roof (which are currently sealed well and will not leak) will no longer be sealed, and you’ll just have six 1/2″ diameter holes in your roof. These will leak.
My suggestion would be to take most of the dish down, leaving the footplate (it’s really not very big or noticeable). The only way you’ll get anything out of the company is if you can prove that they put the dish up, which you will have a very hard time doing. All of that stuff could very easily have been found in the trash and put up by some punk kids.
@fhic:
1. DSL for half the price and twice the speed? What speed was your business HSI quoting you? I don’t know how much you know about DSL but, suffice to say, unshielded twisted copper pair is not a great medium for data. Basically, downstream rates exceeding 6 Mbps are very rare for DSL and can only be accomplished if your location is very close, within a few thousand feet, to a DSLAM.
2. As far as customer service: Getting significantly different answers is not really acceptable. There are different options, are you sure the reps were not just going about it different ways? So far as I know, in San Diego the HD tier is free of charge (excluding HBO/Showtime HD); you will need an HD converter, which is $5.25 in San Diego.
3. If you have “blocky artifacts” then you have signal issues. Tiling is basically the digital equivalent of a snowy picture you would see with analogue cable. Have you had a technician out to your house to look at your levels? Tiling is a physical issue and that’s the only thing that will get it fixed. Your issues with internet only seem to corroborate that. It’s not a matter of “that’s how their service is”. It’s a matter of addressing things like levels issues and line damage that are causing *you* to have a poor quality of service. As far as your box resetting, I am assuming you don’t have a DVR as you mentioned you have a TiVo. SA DVRs will shut off at about 1 am each night to extend hard drive life. If it is not a DVR box, that should not be happening; it is caused by software/OS or hardware failure, and the box should be replaced.
I’m not personally familiar with the San Diego system but if it anything like my local Cox system, then we work until we get it right and the customer is satisfied with their service.
As far as your “netiquette” (I hate smushwords) comment: I am aware of the convention but I do not agree with it. It is not necessary for me to disclaim my employment each time I comment on a cable/telecom related issue. Moreso, employment does not equal bias.
I’m not sure I quite understand why some commenters think she should just rip the thing down, discard it, and forget it.
There’s HOLES IN THE ROOF. She didn’t want holes there, and those can be very troublesome down the road.
Why should she have to deal with the dish at all when it was completely unsolicited?
I completely agree with “The Meathead.” Although my initial response would have been to just remove it, unless it doesn’t bother you, and discard it, but then the whole “damage to the home” comes in. I work for a cable contractor in the DFW area, and I’ve actually heard from a couple different satellite installers that they’re asked to NOT remove the dishes, as it’s free advertising. Just like having an 18″ billboard on the side of your house. The satellite mounting bracket is a couple different pieces, if I remember correctly. She should be able to remove the dish itself, and the arm that holds it up, without having to remove the actual piece that bolts to the home, at least until she can find some resolution.
Oh come on now! I realize this is a dated article but it is funny!! A Free Dish TV system isn’t so bad is it?
I bet they are happy now and saved a lot on their pay tv costs. I love my Dish Network TV and would recommend it to anybody. Check it out if you like [dishnetwork-tv.synthasite.com]
It makes me sing like Susan Boyle all night long.
This is not a reciever this is an antenna. It has no lnbf. There are no serial numbers on it. If no one was there and installer especially a contractor would not install it. They get paid by the job and would just be waisting their time(losing money). Also people talking about hooking it up to your tv and getting free dish….this is useless since they dont have a reciever to decode the signal coming from the non-exsitant lnbf.
It’s an oldie – but an obvious goodie. All that is on the roof is the mount, the dish and a chunk of cable. Someone obviously got the incorrect house, discovered the error and stopped the install. Then – they hauled their posterior South before they got caught!
Good old Dish Network! Perhaps a fellow by the name of BRENT SMART from the Albuquerque DN office could be responsible? He’s a talker – but not too good on details.