Mar 01 2009
Digital Broadcasting and Dish Network
So here it is about two weeks after most everything is being broadcasted digitaly and Dish Network has shown their disguting greed. I have had Dish Network for over 3 years, my payments may be late on occasion but who hasn’t made a few late payments these days. I have never been turned off so I must be doing something right, or so you would think.
I turned my television on mid-afternoon to find that I had no satelite channels, thinking it must be some kind of interference or at worst one of my children unplugged something. I search and poke around looking for the source of my pictureless screen. Finding nothing out of place I begin to question myself on my last payment. Now I know I paid it less than a month ago so I went online to look up my debit card statement to see when it was paid. Found it and sure enough it was only 12 days ago that it went on my card.
I then call Dish Network to see how to fix whatever problem I was encountering. I get on the line with a snotty woman who tells me my bill is over $400, knowing that this figure was not correct I questioned her on the reason for such a balance. She starts babbling some nonsense about my April payment, confused I tell her that was impossible seeing as how it is only February. She then tells me it was April 2008’s payment and that on the 26th of February it was reversed. WHAT?!
How can my payment from 10 months ago be reversed now? Why would anyone wait almost a year to post a payment to a customers account let alone reverse it? This woman goes on to tell me how they had been trying to reach me by phone over the past two weeks. I pull up my caller Id and know she is lying through her teeth, no calls from any number that I do not recognize has come through in over a month. No message was left on my machine, no one in the house can recall getting a phone call from Dish Network and my last bill statement clearly shows my current balance at a reasonable $57.
She gets all huffy and puffy threatening this and collections agency that. I told that woman she was out of her mind if she thought I was going to give in to such a strongarm tactic as they were trying to pull. I know they think that I NEED their service with the recent digital switch, that is where they are mistaken. I have every resource available to me on the internet and tomorrow I will be building a tower that will hook me up straight to the internet through my television. Goodbye satelite and high monthly bills and hello internet freedom at no extra cost to me.
That is the beauty of technology people, when they create televisions with the capabilities they have today you are one cord away from cutting an entire bill out of your budget. That is my money saving tip for today, why pay satelitie or cable bills now that you can hook up your television straight to the internet and watch whatever you want whenever you want to watch it.
I used to have the same problem with Blue Ridge Cable here in PA. Not only did the payment practices lack, they billed one month in advance which made it appear as if my bill was larger than it actually was.
I did a lot of searching and found that for me, Verizon tripple package was the best. I got Directv with even more channels for half of what I was paying with Cable, plus a discount on my phone service and internet. Right now Directv has a promotion where if you refer someone and they sign up for serivce, you get $50.00 and so do they.
I think these days we really have to our research and not be afraid to ask for unannounced discounts and packages so we can afford to live comfortably.
~Momma http://savemoneymomma.today.com