So I had an interesting encounter a few weeks ago with Dish Network. Bear with me as it starts bad, takes an unexpected turn, and then ends pretty well.
The Bad
So our DVR started acting funny sometime around the 26th and 27th of April. Finally on the 28th, things really started to go wrong. The whole thing froze, and forces a restart. I let it sit for the evening, and got back to it after coming home a little early anticipating a customer service call in my future.
Before the call, I took it through its paces. Replicated the problem many times, and completely cycled the machine more than a few times (unplug it and let it sit for a few minutes before rebooting it). No error message would appear, but the machine would always freeze when any DVR function was requested. Then I took a deep breath and called.
I wasn’t on hold too long, and when I got someone t took a few minutes to get my account pulled up and verify that I’d cycled the machine. After a little more description of the problem, I was put on hold. All things totaled, I was on hold for over probably in 20-30 minute range. Since I had my laptop open and TweetDeck up, I tweeted while on hold:
On a marathon phone call with Dish Network tech support… The DVR has been giving us headaches…
My customer service rep would come on every few minutes to confirm that I was still there and to assure me he was looking into the problem. Finally he said that there were similar problems reported in the area and that it would be fixed in 15 minutes.
We relegated ourselves to Netflix for the evening. And the problem never fixed itself like I was told it would. I would get back to it the next day with customer service when I got home from work.
The Unexpected
The next morning I got a reply on twitter from the Dish Network corporate Twitter account asking me if my problem was solved. I replied that it hadn’t been fixed, so after a few exchanges I was emailed an advanced technical support number that wouldn’t require any wait time.
The Good
When I got home, the DVR had now began giving me a warning signal upon powering up that no DVR function would be possible. But I picked up the phone and called the number I was sent, and it only took a few minutes to diagnose that the hard drive in the DVR had failed. The process for sending me out a replacement unit started. It would arrive in 4 days thanks to the weekend.
Nice little nugget… There was no record in their system about my support call the previous night. That’s a little crappy.
But I got the DVR, and after a couple minor headaches with the poor manual, everything was right as rain.
I’ve got to give props to Dish Network for intelligently using Twitter as a customer service portal.