Thursday, April 30, 2009

Quality Customer Service Is Dead

We had DISH Network satellite problems earlier in the week. The DISH Network repairman was scheduled to arrive between 0800 and 1200 hours on Tuesday and at 1130 DISH Network called to tell us he would not be at our house until sometime between 1200 and 1700 hours.

At 1630 my husband called DISH Network to ask where the repairman was and was told DISH Network could not get a hold of the him but that they expected him at our house sometime between 1930 and 2030.

At 1830 the DISH Network repairman called us to let us know he was a hour-and-a-half away and would be at our house a little after 2000 hours. He showed up at the time he said he would and had our problem solved in 15 minutes. It turns out he was so late because the service call before us, which had been installing and hooking up a new satellite dish, took longer than he expected. When he got there he found out the man had nine television sets and wanted them all connected to the satellite.

Now, at this point DISH Network should have either sent another DISH Network repairman to our house or informed the new customer that the DISH Network repairman could only hook-up two or three of the television sets on this call since that is what a normal instillation entailed and to schedule another appointment later in the week to connect the remaining six or seven. DISH Network would not be able to do the first thing I suggested since they evidently only have one DISH Network repairman available for a very large service area. Remember, the DISH Network repairman was in a town about a hour-and-a-half drive away from us, his next call. We know they did not think of my second suggestion or the DISH Network repairman would have been at our house on time and I would not be blogging about it.

Let me point out that we were never angry with the DISH Network repairman. We were angry with DISH Network because they have only one repairman covering an area too large for one person to handle completely on his/her own if there is any type of problem, they were stupid enough to tell a customer that they could not reach their own repairman to find out what the delay was, and they seem to think running their business this way is OK. This was not the first time a DISH Network repairman showed up at our house hours after the scheduled time. It also happened the day the satellite dish was installed.

As you can imagine my husband was very upset with this DISH Network fiasco. He was very angry because we had to wait all day for a DISH Network repairman to show up eight hours after he was scheduled to be at our house. He was also angry with DISH Network for not do a better job of keeping us informed about the delays. We got two phones calls from DISH Network customer service and only one of those was initiated by DISH Network.

I must admit that he was already angry with DISH Network because he was told he had a 24 month contract with DISH Network when he knew he had only signed a 18 month contract. Turns out DISH Network had started requiring new customers to sign 24 month contracts right when we had our satellite dish installed but our DISH Network repairman had only the old 18 month contracts with him and that is the contract my husband signed. How could DISH Network not know this?

You are probably wondering why we just don't go to another provider. We tried, that is why my husband was looking at our contract with DISH Network, but when he talked to DIRECTTV they lied to him about what broadcast feeds we could get saying, yep, we could get East coast or West coast stations when we already know this is not true.

In all fairness I must add that DISH Network has a quality product. We are happy with the clarity of the signal and the quality of the DVR box. You can store an amazing amount of recordings on that thing. My husband's attempt to find another company was based on his frustration with DISH Network customer service and I think DISH Network should know that at one point my husband was ready to have DISH Network come and get their equipment. Any more problems with DISH Network and I know he will have it removed. It is not like television is a necessity of life, we could get alone with out it.

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