Complaint / Review
DishNetwork
Dish Network Unauthorized charges for equipment pending return

I recently canceled service on a second receiver, with Dish Network. The customer service rep explained nothing about a needed return—I'd assumed I paid for the receiver when paying for installation.

A week or so later a box shows up, with 1 page of instructions that basically say "use included label to return equipment." There's no label. I'm a little puzzled still... But don't have the time to call and ask about it till later in the evening. Before I get a chance, an automated system calls me and tells me that I have 40 days to return the equipment or I will be charged.

So no problem I goto dishnetwork.com and do a chat. An online chat supposedly got me a label on the way.

9-14 days later no label and my wife notices a charge on a credit card. After some looking, it turns out that this is a charge for the receiver I'm waiting on a label for! No problem, I'll call and they'll fix it, right? Wrong! The "customer service" reps, (I talked to three, including two supervisors) all gave me the same song and dance, "We will refund you when you return the equipment; We can't do anything about a refund, the refund department issues; we have no way to contact them directly; we can ask for a refund, but we can't promise it will be issued; there's no one else you can talk to" and on and it went, till the second supervisor hung up on me. All of this combined with an endless series of repeating myself and spelling stuff for the staff who apparently didn't speak English fluently or were trying to discourage me. I half suspect it was all a ploy to discourage me.

It ended up I had to call the corporate office (1-866-319-4564) to speak to a dispute resolution specialist to get my refund issued and a mailing label re-sent. I am not sure if I actually got the credit yet and won't be for a few days. But I wanted to warn everyone who falls victim to this.

Dishnetwork was such a great company in years past, but I guess now they are big enough to steal from their customers and not care. Don't let these crooks take your money without warning!