jeremyfrombenton

Tired of paying upwards of $100.00 or more per month for a bunch of channels on Satellite TV you never watch? I was. I have dish network and I had the top 250 package with locals. With the product insurance and DVR fee I was paying around $105+ per month. Those clever dish network people have planned their packages so you have to subscribe to the highest basic package in order to get the channels most people like to watch.

I was tired of this, so I called and told the foreign operator that I wished to cancel my service because I wanted to pay off some bills and I was tired of spending so much money per month for so many channels that I never even watched. (If only we could design our own program packages, but Dish Network and DirecTV are far too clever to let us do that.) Anyway, the foreign lady informed me she could downgrade my package for me to save some money and I said no. She then transferred me to a very nice American woman who informed me I could suspend my account for a mere $10.00 per month for six months. I thought, $10.00 per month just to keep my receiver in my house and have no programming, I said NO THANKS!

She then told me about the dish network Essential Pack, a package I had never heard of. It allows you to have your local channels and several of the basic channels that people actually want to watch. The package includes access to all PPV channels and the following; Food TV, Comedy channel, HGTV, TVGN, The History Channel, Oxygen, WE, AMC, QVC, TBS, ESPNA, ESP2A, CBSCS, MUSIC, MTV2, CMT, BOOMERANG, Cartoon Network, Discovery Kids, Discovery, TLC, Hallmark, CNN, CNNHNN, (Sorry, no Fox News) BITV, TRU, MSNBC, CSPAN and CSPAN2, NASA, The weather channel and several other shopping channels, KTLA, and TBN. I wish SPIKE TV was one of the channels; I will miss catching up on old reruns of Star Trek Voyager and Next Generation. There are several other channels included that I never watch and I’m sure most people don’t watch them either. All these channels are included with the locals for $14.99/month. If you are out of your contract you can subscribe to this package.

Of course, if you have a DVR you still have to pay the $5.98/month for having a DVR. After confirming this with the customer service lady I informed her that was still too much money and I wanted to cancel my service. So, she asked if I would stay if she knocked $10.00 per month off my bill for 6 months since I had been such a good customer for over two years, so I agreed. Now my bill will be $11.00/ month before taxes for 6 months. When I checked my statement online it showed I had 3 months of free HBO/Cinemax/Showtime. I assume this is how the customer service person justified my $10.00 credit because I don’t have access to those channels.

I am somewhat reluctant to be too excited over this offer because I have not yet received a bill with the new plan. But, if I have problems, I have the name and ID of the customer service person that told me this and I will call and talk to her supervisor if my bill is not correct. I will update this post as soon as I get a bill and let everyone know how it turned out. So, if you are tired of paying too much money for your satellite TV, give this a try. Remember, this post is just for Dish Network subscribers who are no longer under a contract.

-Mitch

This entry was posted on Friday, May 23rd, 2008 at 7:04 pm and is filed under Financial, Media (A/V), Television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.