Apparently you can't cancel your Dish account without them taking punitive action against you.
It started when Dish tried to double charge me for a PPV movie my wife watched. We used a coupon online for it and they decided they'd take the coupon and then charge us again.
Well. This was the proverbial straw upon the camels back. I called up and told them to take their service and stuff it (Nov 8). My contract terminated at the end of that cycle on the 13th.
I was told to mail back my receivers and they'd provide boxes. Fine. The boxes arrived via UPS (beginning of December) and since Dish didn't require a signature they were left, on our porch, during a rainstorm. Needless to say... They were destroyed.
I called back about 5 days later and told them. I was assured that new boxes would be sent. Fine.
I received a letter from Dish the beginning of this week stating that if the equipment wasn't returned our account would be automatically debited for the amount of the receivers on 1/13. I called again (1-5-11) and spoke with another rep who assured me the boxes would be sent and that my account would not be charged.
Imagine my surprise when I went to Walgreens today (1-8-11) to pick up my daughters medicine for her chest infection that my account was overdrawn. $300 overdrawn due to a $1400 charge from Dish Network.
Numerous phone calls resulted in nothing being done. I was told, in essence, this was their right and that I should have sent back their equipment. They have no records of my previous calls. Fortunately I do in my call logs. I have records of phone calls to Dish Network's 800 number on 2 separate occasions. After asking to speak with a supervisor and then being hung up on twice I called my bank and reported it as fraud. Unfortunately for me my account will stay overdrawn until Tuesday at the earliest. Dish refuses to reverse the charges until the recievers are mailed back and in their system (which can take up to 2 weeks). I can't take them to a distributor. I can't take them to an agent. The only way Dish will take their boxes is if they are mailed, UPS, to them and they'll get to it eventually. Sometime after that they'll go ahead and issue a refund check.
As I said. I reported it as fraud to my bank. If the charge sticks I have to follow up and the bank will remove it after review.
Beyond all of this the other issue is that they're charging me for 3 receivers. I only have 2. I had purchased (for over $400) a Dish 942.. One of their first HD PVR's. It's HD crapped out and instead of buying a new one I switched to the ViP 622.. At that time I upgraded and added a second receiver. This was over 4 years ago. At that time they told me I had to mail back the 942. I told them they could have it back. For $400. Oh. We see you purchased that. No problem. We'll remove that from the account and I never heard about it again. Until today. 2 charges for $400 each for the 2 ViP622's and a single charge of $450 for the 942. Which in Dish Network land equals $1326.48.. Not $1250.
Needless to say I'm angered over this enough to be looking into filing a civil suit against them Monday. I just need to look over the paperwork to see what all is involved.
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