DISH LOSING MORE CUSTOMERS

[gregg75]

the last line from the article.............and my comments

The company says it will freeze consumer prices through Jan. 2013.
And then it will nickel and dime the hell out of them!

I switched to DirecTV which is better, but they go up a dollar or two
every year also. Have they ever considered that lowering prices might
actually attract customers?

http://www.deadline.com/2011/08/dis...pectations-as-subscriptions-fall/#more-155247

 

[CrazeeCarroll1]

Hey Greg... As long as the like such as ESPN and the rest keep jacking up their rates E* and D* along with every cable providor will always raise their rates each year... I am a very happy DirecTV customer, but know there is a rate hike each year... Atleast unlike with Comcrap here in Rockford they raise their rates usually twice a year... CC1

 

[FreddyE1977]

Talking with people I know who subscribe to Dish, the #1 complaint seems to be

unannounced, random and arbitrary changes to the channel lineup I am paying for

#2 complaint seems to be snotty and arrogant reaction by their "customer service"
folks to complaint #1.

 

[Darth_vader]

"Have they ever considered that lowering prices might actually attract customers?"

Even better idea: removing prices altogether would probably attract even more "customers" yet!

 

[CrazeeCarroll1]

I had DISH for 10 years and when I upgraded to HD with them I kept having nothing but issues with their 622 and 722 RCVRS... They tried to say it was grounding so they had a tech come out and he said everything was fine, but kept trying to explain it was buggy software to the DISH TECHS!!! After coming home and not being able to watch EPIX HD I called DirecTV and had them install their service and I am going o 10 months with not one single issues other then the every so often "Rain Fade". I still miss the good ole' days of CBAND where you could pick and choose what you wanted to subscribe to and it was awesome, but moving to IL from SC and bringing a big 12 foot paraclips mesh dish would not have been the easiest thing to move LOL CC1

 

[gregg75]

I get about 25 more channels on DirecTV and they are not music channels which Dish
seems to have loads of (like probably 70+). I had Dish for about 10 years and my
system was an antique. They had no interest in updating the hardware as long as it
was working, so the new DirecTV was like buying a new car.

 

[Markxxx]

Just out of curiosity why do people abbreviate DISH as D*? Is it to distinguish it from a generic satellite dish?

 

[CrazeeCarroll1]

LOL Makr I think it had to do with all the different DBS services that were around in the 90's... PrimeStar P* ECHOSTAR E* (Dish Network) AlphaStar A* DirecTV D*... My Guess. CC1

 

[Rollo-Smokes]

LOL Makr I think it had to do with all the different DBS services that were around in the 90's... PrimeStar P* ECHOSTAR E* (Dish Network) AlphaStar A* DirecTV D*... My Guess. CC1

If you visit DBSTalk.com, a fourm for satellite TV users/enthusiasts, they differentiate the services the same way.

 

[mjlarochelle]

I'd be curious whether satellite dishes in general are becoming less popular in parts of the U.S. that get snow. I work for a smaller cable company in Canada and we have had several customers switch to us from satellite dishes because of outages caused by snow that they could not remove from the dish by themselves.

 

[carolinaradio]

Dish has crappy service, programming, and support. Goes out every time the weather is slightly off.

Am way more pleased with Charter.

 

[landtuna]

It's possible your pizza pan is slightly off the signal and needs a tune-up. DISH used to have a pretty decent self-tuning program in their receivers that almost anyone could use to fine tune the dish. I don't remember DirecTV having anything similar.

Signal attenuation in rain is a common problem for pizza pan systems since a raindrop is almost the same size as the electrical signal. Light rain, clouds, wind (dust) and snow should not be a problem as they are with OTA digital signals.

 

[Darth_vader]

"I still miss the good old days of C-band, where you could pick and choose what you wanted to subscribe to. That was awesome."

I think you can still do that. Haven't tried it myself, being that I work strictly FTA these days, but I imagine there's probably some broadcaster somewhere that'll let you do it.

 

[TomParks]

Now dish removed INSP from their lineup. Its stupid stuff like this that makes subscribers flee. :-\

 

[landtuna]

"I still miss the good old days of C-band, where you could pick and choose what you wanted to subscribe to. That was awesome."

I think you can still do that. Haven't tried it myself, being that I work strictly FTA these days, but I imagine there's probably some broadcaster somewhere that'll let you do it.

Nope. Virtually all commercial programming is either gone from C-band or has scrambled using broadcast-quality equipment (which you can buy but it is very expensive).

I miss C-band too. I had a great 25-year run. My 3-meter Orbitron mesh is now a flower pot.

 

[Darth_vader]

"Virtually all commercial programming is either gone from C-band or has scrambled using broadcast-quality equipment (which you can buy but it is very expensive)."

I'm sorry, but have you looked at the Lyngsat charts lately? That's just simply not true. "This TV", "RTN", Associated Press, Bloomberg, the various CW and ION feeders and even simulcasts of a bunch of local commercial stations (amongst others) are all available unscrambled on C-band from various birds. FTA DVB-S, which you can pull in on any low-end digital box. There may not be many *cable* channels operating unscrambled these days but there certainly is unscrambled commercial programming if you look for it.

[size=8pt]Links outta here:
http://www.lyngsat.com/america.html
http://www.lyngsat.com/freetv/United-States.html (the pink-coloured rows are C-band)

 

[landtuna]

"Virtually all commercial programming is either gone from C-band or has scrambled using broadcast-quality equipment (which you can buy but it is very expensive)."

I'm sorry, but have you looked at the Lyngsat charts lately? That's just simply not true. "This TV", "RTN", Associated Press, Bloomberg, the various CW and ION feeders and even simulcasts of a bunch of local commercial stations (amongst others) are all available unscrambled on C-band from various birds. FTA DVB-S, which you can pull in on any low-end digital box. There may not be many *cable* channels operating unscrambled these days but there certainly is unscrambled commercial programming if you look for it.

I spent several years after the demise of the Videocipher II doing the FTA thing and found that it was not worth the trouble (for a viewer). FTA might be find for a hobbiest but you won't find many ordinary people willing to put in the effort ala C-band.

And I don't consider services which broadcast OTA terrestrially worth spending satellite equipment money upon. Much cheaper and easier to get those OTA than over sat. Of course, if you are out in the boonies then you don't have options.