question about Dish's "HD Activation Fee"

It should have been a known quantity going in... The reason they charge it is two-fold:


1. They can.

2. They wanted to limit folks getting HD receivers without subscribing to HD content. After all, why would you get an HD receiver if you weren't going to watch HD?


The receiver does decode OTA HD... but you have other choices to get that much cheaper... so Dish figures you shouldn't get their receiver without wanting HD.


All that said... I would swear I read somewhere that Dish was going to stop having that "enabling" fee... but maybe it was only for new customers or something?

Okay. No, I've been a customer for about 2 years now. Do you think I can demand my roughly 24 x 8 = $192 dollars back?


They're also charging for the DVR "service", etc. It's all very strange and counterintuitive. Why don't they just rent you a given box for a given rate and use its features, since that directly addresses the company's need to recoup the box cost and the customer in understanding the cost structure? The way they're doing it leaves the profit and loss up to the success of these tactics, which is a dubious business strategy.



Quote:
Originally Posted by doug_k /forum/post/16830277


Okay. No, I've been a customer for about 2 years now. Do you think I can demand my roughly 24 x 8 = $192 dollars back?

Click to expand...

You can certainly demand it, but if they gave it back it'd be surprising.

I wouldn't expect "back pay" either... but if you're nice, you might be able to get them to waive it. I wish I could find where I remember reading about them doing away with it... OR maybe I'm remembering something said on a Charlie Chat?

Thanks for your thoughts guys. Hopefully they will get rid of it. Honestly, it's about time for HD to be standard now anyway. HDTV has been around for nearly a decade, and all TVs sold are HD.