When we moved a few years ago, I had a choice of Comcast, Dish Network, or Direct TV. Needless to say, I was disappointed that I couldn’t get either Brighthouse (whick I’d had good experience with for years) or AT&T’s Uverse. Comcast was right out of the running from bad past experience and ongoing customer service problems in general and with family members.
I was pretty ambivalent between the satellite companies. But thanks to a friend getting Dish network had Dish, and between gifts and their referral bonus, we signed a two year contract.
Our initial demands were two TV’s (one HD, one not) with HD and DVR being a must.
Initial impressions were good. Liked the service with the big exception being the lack of local / network HD.
Over the next 24 months, we watched a lot of TV. Mostly good picture quality. Some bad picture quality at just the right times. We had one DVR get fried. Trouble setting up the replacement. Good customer service. Bad customer service.
So in review: it’s not been good, but it’s not been terrible.
Will I be remaining with Dish Network? No.
Why? Partially the bad customer support experiences, partially the inherent problems with having a dish, and also the trend of douche baggery practices of late by Dish Network.
Whatever am I talking about?
We got these vouchers in the mail from Dish Network for two or three on-demand movies. The fine print read each voucher was for a maximum value of $4.99. So we sat down to see what our options were, and all the options were $6.99, and many of the options we had already gotten on Netflix. So there was nothing “free” about the promotion – just some crappy marketing promotion that makes them look like D-bags.
The other more recent thing was the programming guide. It usually displays 5 channels, but recently it only displays 4, with the bottom slot being an ad for an on demand film. I thought I was already paying more than enough to watch programming riddled with advertising. Now advertising was infringing my my attempt to decide what to watch. Sure you can get out of it by pressing a button each time, but the fact that it’s there each time by default is annoying. If they’re going to make Ad dollars on me, then charge me less for having it given your new revenue stream Dish Network.
Everyone knows about the inherent problems with dish. It’s usually confined to bad weather equals no video. Well that’s not been the case all the time. I’ve had sunny, blue sky days with no satellite reception. I’ve had signal drops just long enough to confuse the DVR into stop recording in the midst of a scheduled recording.
So far, Uverse has been pretty good. There have been a few learning curve things, but it’s been pretty good thus far.