Hello,
I was a good client of Dish Network for over a year. Signed up for all the bells and whistles.in total, Dish Network has made over $1500 on me alone.
You'd think they'd want to keep customers like me. I never called into customer service for any problems, when disruptions occurred (and they happen quite often with Dish Network) I never called to complain. I figured they would eventually take care of it. Bottom line, I am not a whiney customer, pay my bills on time, and I signed up for all the channels!
Here's the skinny...
Dish Network gives you the ability to pay online via Debit card or checking account. I pay my bill every month online through a check. Well, I switched bank accounts last month so I had to pay my October bill using my new checking account. So I made my regular payment online as I normally do.
Turns out something was wrong.
I woke up one morning to find all my cable channels were gone. Not a big deal, I figured it was just another usual disruption in service and it would eventually come back on. A few days go by, and there are no changes.
So I go online to see if can do some troubleshooting and discover that my service has been turned off due to lack of payment. Having made my regular payment & receiving a confirmation code of the payment, I then called into their customer service department to find out what the issue was.
The agent did what all customer service agents in these call centers do... Gave me an automated scripted answer to every question I asked and was unable to really help me at all. She was nice, but couldn't help me at all.
So, I had the issue escalated to her supervisor, Serena (agent/floor employee code: SJT). Horrible interpersonal skills, extremely rude, and a complete lack of empathy. Immediately defensive before she even listened to the issue.
I simply said that I had switched banks and made my last payment through my new checking account. It might have been possible I entered in my checking account information wrong or their computer system tried to bill my old account. All that I knew was that my new bank had no record of Dish Network attempting to do a draft from my account for the bill. Plenty of other bills I paid online did NOT have this issue. Well, I am now no longer allowed to pay my bill online via a check or any other method. I must now physically mail my payments in or drive down to an ACS check service and pay it through them.
I explained to Serena that I am a good customer and this was just a minor error on my or their part and asked if she could help me out. I took care of the payment in question 5 minutes ago using my credit card. I just asked if she could find out what happened here.
She refused to investigate. "Nope, we can't help you and that's just the way it is due to corporate policy. Your check did not go through and that's what we do."
I again asked if she could investigate because it was probably just a technical error or I mis-typed the account number.
She again refused to investigate.
While I was having her shut down my account she was actually enthused and happy to be doing it! Wow. Like she had won an argument or something.
It was pretty funny, as she was typing in the stuff to shut the account down really looking forward to giving another bill, it turned out Dish Network acutally OWED ME money ($65.06). Oh the irony!
So Dish Network lost my business due to a supervisor named Serena (agent/floor employee code: SJT) & an overall lack of business policy to take care of their customers with good payment histories.
I am now a happy Time Warner customer and they are getting my money.
I do not recommend Dish Network to anybody and below are just a few of the major issues you will encounter (there are others but I can't sit here all day).
On the technical side...
The satellite service is very arcane - looks like something straight out of 1980 - possibly a couple of kids straight out of college did the programming interface for their GUI.
The upload/download stream to the satellite is horrible - really grainy, lots of delay.
The service is interrupted ALL THE TIME.
If you call in for customer service, get ready for one of the most difficult automated phone systems on the market today. It is next to impossible to get to a human being.
You will spend at least once a week having to re-scan you signal channels in order to fix audio/picture/etc. Issues with the system. This process is slow - takes about 20 minutes to complete. Really frustrating if something is on you really want to watch.
On the business side...
If Dish Network owes you money, they will not send it to you. YOU have to call THEM and request that they pay you what they owe you.in my case, I have to wait 10 days and call back in and request that they pay me what they owe me ($65.06)
They have poor business hiring practices. I understand it's hard to find people to work customer service phones BUT don't put unqualified people in supervisor roles above them.
BOTTOM LINE: Stay away from this company.
Darren
Dallas, Texas
U.S.A.
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