I'll try to keep this relatively brief. Whatever debit card you used to pay for your service, needs to be cancelled as soon as you break ties with this company.
We got Dish Network last year because the local representative told us there was no service contract and we could cancel at any time with no penalties. That appealed to us since we weren't sure if we wanted to keep satellite. Dish Network was the only one who offered a month-by-month deal. They came and installed the dish and set everything up. I signed two pieces of paper: one saying we'd return the equipment if we cancelled service, and one saying it was installed and working. I read over both carefully. Nothing stated that we had to have it a certain amount of time. We had asked the salesperson about that several times specifically to be sure.
After a couple of months, we decided we'd rather use the money for something fun like music lessons together. No problem, right? We called to cancel the service and found out that the installer had entered us into a two-year-long contract. How'd he do that if I didn't sign anything? I suspect he copied my signature onto a contract, since it was all carbon paper, and he wouldn't have made the sale otherwise. They would not let us out of the fraudulent contract except to change it to one year instead of two. We found out when it was supposed to expire and marked that date on our calendar so we could cancel as soon as possible, especially now that we knew we were dealing with a dishonest company.
We were finally able to cancel at the end of July. Huzzah! About mid August we got the boxes to return the equipment. When we were packing the stuff up, we find out that we're supposed to get up on the roof to get the stuff off and send it back. Since it has been unusally rainy and they made us take off the parts that were on the ROOF, we weren't able to get it fully packed until two days ago, to be shipped off today (my scheduled day every week to take the car). It got done this morning. So two weeks after receiving the boxes, the equipment was shipped off.
Early this morning my husband called the bank to check our balance. All of our money— savings, everything! Was gone. He called the bank as soon as they opened at 9:30 to find out where it all went, we had been saving our money and all the bills had already cleared. The bank told him that Dish Network had cleared a payment that took up half of it, and had all our money that was left after that one tied up in another pending payment. Before each big payment they had cleared $2 payments (testing the water to see if they could get away with it before making the big withdrawals?). Not only that, there were EIGHT more "payments" pending so far.
I called Dish Network and the rep. Didn't know what was going on, said we had to pay to reconnect, oh— we cancelled? He saw that our contract had ended some time ago. He didn't know why they were taking our money, we still had time to send in the equipment before being penalized. He'd take care of it. Fat chance, I thought.
So there we go. All our money— for food, prescriptions, everything— gone. The representative had even said when we cancelled that we'd have no more payments because we cancelled service before the next billing period started.
I had to go to the bank to take care of it. The bank representative said she'd seen it a lot with satellite companies. Apparently they use debit cards so that when they use it to steal from you, they generate an "authorization code" so it looks like YOU made the charge. It's hard to prove that way. I had to report my card as stolen to keep them from charging it any further. Fortunately the bank (which is run in a PROFESSIONAL manner) will be able to refund our money— but not until Tuesday.in the meantime the bank rep. Told me just to write a hot check for groceries.
So beware. If your contract runs out and you cancel service, CANCEL YOUR DEBIT CARD. They will do a $2 charge before each big one to see if it goes through. Be watching and if a $2 charge shows up suddenly from Dish Network, they are about to drain your account— you need to act fast. Remember the Dish representative I'd talked to? It seems that right after I talked to him, another $2 charge came pending on my account.
It's all being taken care of. Just wanted everyone to know to WATCH OUT for this scam.
Brianne
Amarillo, Texas
U.S.A.
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