iowgirl
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,120 
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Post by iowgirl on Mar 16, 2018 13:50:16 GMT
My Dish bill is nuts. We love having Dish, and love the DVR. We have a big package and it is insanely expensive. I see that a "new subscriber" can get it for about half of what we pay... I know that by the time they add all the extra hidden fees on it won't be that much savings .. but it is still quite significant. Our package is $159/month. By the time taxes, DVR fee, and "super stations" are added on it is $184. The new "introductory" price is $89 (which appears to include the locals). I am ambivalent about the Super Stations. DH did watch them some, but now with the Smart TV, I think we can dump them - saving $7/month...wooo... We have recently purchased a Smart TV and really enjoy Netflix and Amazon Prime and find ourselves not watching our Dish programming nearly as much. What we do watch is the more obscure channels that are only available by having the larger package, so scaling down our package size really isn't what I am looking for. I just want a better price if I can get it. I have called Dish before, about the cost and got no where. I called back when they had NBC off the air during the summer Olympics. They offered me a one time rebate of $5 - I told them to stick it. LOL  We have had Dish for 21 years... We really like it. So.. Cord Cutters - has anyone ever cancelled Dish, and then resubscribed to get the better price? I don't mind locking it in for 2 years. I would be happy to get that price - It would save about $800 a year, if I am looking at things right. If I do cancel, the resubscribe - how much is the "installation fee" - even though I already have the Dish on the roof, and I can hook the DVR up myself? Has anyone ever successfully negotiated a significant monthly price reduction? I don't want to totally get rid of the Dish. Our internet is too shaky to rely on it for streaming everything. We have a 300 GB/month limit and it is not unusual to have it go out for a week or two at a time. We do have a good terrestrial antenna, but we are so rural, that it isn't always a reliable source either.. digital TV wasn't a good upgrade for us! |
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naby64
Drama Llama
Posts: 5,916
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Post by naby64 on Mar 16, 2018 14:23:31 GMT
Not successful at that but my mom did cancel Dish, go with Direct for a year and then went back to Dish. All as new sub to save money. We just got some new equipment with them yesterday and I don't know all the wranglings DH had to go through but I think it made it a bit cheaper. Like you, our bill is around $187. BUT this is DH's hobby if you can call it that. So we have all the channels. Not that we watch them all. I just can't seem to get him to move over to Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime viewing. He's a surfer. Hard to do that with the latter options.
I am anxious to read if there are any success stories.
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pridemom
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 2,843
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Post by pridemom on Mar 16, 2018 14:29:21 GMT
We dropped Dish, but ended up with DirectNOW added to our AT&T bill for $10/mo. We get live tv, plus streaming, that includes HBO.
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Post by bianca42 on Mar 16, 2018 14:29:57 GMT
I know that with Verizon FIOS, they told my father that if he cancelled and resubscribed he would need to wait 6 months to get new customer pricing. Not sure what Dish's rules are. I don't know about cancelling in the husband's name and reconnecting in the wife's name though.
I would imagine you'd have to pay the cancellation and connection fees anyways.
If you are only watching a few obscure shows on obscure channels, price out buying a season of those shows on Amazon or something like that. If you're paying a huge bill for a few shows and could pay $20 for a whole season of the show, it might make better sense.
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Post by christine58 on Mar 16, 2018 14:49:25 GMT
I dropped Dish and went to Direct TV. I got my bill dropped by $20 a month when I called last Spring. I dropped down a 'level' and re-signed for another year. I pay $85 a month.
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iowgirl
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,120
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Post by iowgirl on Mar 16, 2018 15:35:41 GMT
BUT this is DH's hobby if you can call it that. I get that! DH loves watching TV, and really only gets a chance to do that in the evenings in the winter. He works every day of the year, and most of they year doesn't get home until dark. So some down time in the recliner watching TV is his 'thing'... I really don't want to go to Direct. I don't want to change our equipment on our roof. It is mounted on top of our 3 story house and really don't anyone else jacking around up there. I definitely do not want anyone pulling any new wires into my house either - but I would think they could use the same cabling. I have been less than impressed with installers! LOL I know that with Verizon FIOS, they told my father that if he cancelled and resubscribed he would need to wait 6 months to get new customer pricing. Not sure what Dish's rules are. This is what I am afraid of. But honestly - we are moving into spring, and the TV isn't on much... I would imagine you'd have to pay the cancellation and connection fees anyways. I have had Dish for 21 years solid. I am pretty sure I won't have any cancellation fees, but I would have to ship back the DVR.. which I love and can't get a new one anymore (of that model).. I see a lot of "no installation fees" advertised -but I am guessing I would have to be unhooked for a while. Sigh... I think I will give it a try this afternoon and see if I can get them to at least take some off per month. I don't have much faith... |
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Post by ladytrisha on Mar 16, 2018 15:51:45 GMT
We had Dish several years ago and they refused to upgrade our equipment even when it was failing. I hated their reps were all offshore and you only got a US based person when you went to cancel service. We switched to DirecTV and it was totally painless. There was no "down" time as you don't cancel Dish until they come out and install the new package.
DirecTV was great - loved it - right up until AT&T bought it. Since then it has steadily gotten worse - we have a ton of pixelating and they refuse to work with us on the bill either. Even their customer service people, who were the absolute best, sound tired. And I'm sure they know they're going to be outsourced by AT&T.
We got rid of AT&T wireless and moved to Spectrum which has been flawless and so much faster, so we're going to switch our TV service to them as well. My DH and DS must have sports so I can't cut the cable, but I was able to get rid of a couple of boxes as I'm happy to have Roku on them instead.
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Post by AngieandSnoopy on Mar 16, 2018 16:55:53 GMT
So.. Cord Cutters - has anyone ever cancelled Dish, and then resubscribed to get the better price? I don't mind locking it in for 2 years. I would be happy to get that price - It would save about $800 a year, if I am looking at things right. If I do cancel, the resubscribe - how much is the "installation fee" - even though I already have the Dish on the roof, and I can hook the DVR up myself? Has anyone ever successfully negotiated a significant monthly price reduction? Years ago my late DH and I had Dish when we lived in Colorado, we owned our equipment. Lightning struck and fried our equipment so we had to cancel Dish because we had nothing to allow us to watch it and since we HAD Dish, they wouldn't allow us to get equipment from them without paying out the nose. About a year or two later after DH died, I tried to sign up with Dish as a new subscriber but they would NOT allow that because I had the same last name at the same address. I was so lonely and bored out there in the middle of nowhere and couldn't get TV. This was back when you could get decent TV on Dish with about $25 a month! So, don't know if they'd let you back as a new subscriber ever. Current DH and I have a Smart TV and Roku and just have Hulu and Netflix using our internet. Yes, we don't have the works but we are happy and don't have a high bill. |
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Post by JustCallMeMommy on Mar 16, 2018 17:36:26 GMT
I love my Dish and my DVR. DirecTV has been courting me hard, but I'm not willing to jump ship. Like you, I've been with Dish forever - since 1997. Even if you get a new subscriber rate, you usually just get the new rate for a year, so for me, it wouldn't be worth it, so I just go through occasionally and look at packages for something that meets my needs. Currently, I'm at the Smart Pack ($45) level plus local channels ($12). I also have the Heartland Pack (for cheesy Hallmark movies) and a couple of Superstations (to give me more DVR time options, though I'm not sure I really need these now). With receivers, I'm just under $100 a month. The only thing I REALLY missed with this package was Project Runway, but I found I could get it through Amazon Prime at the beginning of the seasons for a minimal season price (this season was like $3.99 - last season was closer to $10).
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Post by crazy4scraps on Mar 17, 2018 1:16:28 GMT
Since you don’t want to drop them, this is what my suggestion would be. Call them up and tell them that the bill is just way too much for your budget right now so you want to drop down to the lowest service package possible without totally cancelling. Live with that for a week or two, then call back and ask them what kind of a deal can they offer you to bump your service up? I’d be willing to bet that they will now give you the kind of discount you’re looking for.
My nephew is a total penny pincher and is a master at this game. He used to threaten to drop Comcast for something else when their rates got too high and that worked for a long time. But they finally got wise to that and stopped offering a better price to retain his business and would only give the good pricing to people who were either new or upgrading their service. So he started dropping the service down to almost nothing for a week or so (usually right before he was planning to be gone for vacation for a week so he wouldn’t even miss it!) and was able to get better deals if he “upgraded” to a more expensive package when he called back. If you can tolerate not watching anything for a week it would be worth the experiment.
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