The Sky is NOT Falling

On Friday I posted the rumor of the first details of Dish Networks new pricing structure which is expected to be announced at CES in two weeks. I have been contacted by a number of Dish Network CSR’s who have confirmed the new pricing as I posted it. (But Dish Network themselves have not officially confirmed them yet.)

However many readers, users of my forum and even I myself was confused by the new monthly receiver charges that I posted. It seems after talking with a number of CSR’s is that Dish Network is working to simplify their billing structure and make it easier for their customers to read and understand their bills. Dish has been accused of nickle and diming customers over the years because of the additional fees Dish customers were charged, now Dish is trying to make it easier for customers by combining these fees into one receiver charge for their customers.

With the new pricing for many Dish Network customers their bill will not be going up, I am hearing for some in fact their bills will go down, however for some (especially those with the America’s Everything Package with many Dish Duo DVR’s on their account will see the biggest increase.)

I am on the America’s Everything package, as I have 6 Duo DVR’s and up until now the DVR fees were included with the America’s Everything package. Unfortunately this changes on February 1st so I will be one of the few who’s bill will go up.

I wrote on Friday that I was concerned under the new pricing that my bill could go up $102, but thankfully this is not the case. A number of Dish CSR’s contacted me and explained how my own bill was going to be affected.

One CSR broke down my bill for me and explained things better.

The CSR wrote “You are correct in some fashion about the receiver fees but they are eliminating or rolling other fees into one. But it will increase some bills and decrease some depending on what they have for programming and type of receiver family they fall into.

For example in your case with 6 duo dvrs you would be charged 17.00 per additional receiver so it would be 17.00 x 5. But you would eliminate five of your dvr fee so you would subtract 5.98 x 5. Plus you would eliminate your other five A/O fees so that would subtract another 25.00 or 30.00. So your bill will be one of the extreme ones that goes up around 30.00 because the average family does not have 6 duo dvr’s. Plus if you have any tv2 connection fees those are going away. The receiver fee is only on additional receivers not the primary.”

For me on February 1st I will downgrade my programming from the America’s Everything package to the America’s Top 250 package. The America’s Everything Package is $102.98 a month and the America’s Top 250 Package is $62.99 so ultimately I will be saving $10 a month when the price change happens. We never watch the movie channels anyways, again the only reason why we kept the America’s Everything Package was because it included the DVR fees.

And while it appears Dish Network is trying to make things simpler it appears the new pricing is even causing confusion among Dish Network CSR’s. I asked a number of them the following questions and not one of these CSR’s who had training on the new pricing had an answer. In fact a number of them said these questions were asked at their training and no one had an answers.

Here are the questions that need to be answered:

1)If a customer has one receiver and its a 722k do they need to pay a DVR free or is it included? If it is then that means those customers bills are going DOWN?
2)How do they decide the first receiver on a customers account since the first receiver is free? Is the lowest price receiver going to be the free one?
3)What about the older Dish Network 501 and 508 DVR which currently have no charge for DVR service? What do their receivers fall under and will they need to have a plan with built in DVR fees?

A number of folks were mad at me for talking about the new pricing here in The Satellite Dish, but I think its actually helpful to Dish Network as they get to see the feedback and questions and see some of the other things which they might not have thought of, this will in turn give them time to to iron out the bugs and make the true transition a smooth one for all Dish Network customers and CSR’s.

The sky is not falling, ultimately it appears that Dish is trying to make their customers bills easier to understand and while things are not perfect yet it appears Dish is trying its best to move in that direction, and that’s something I can applaud. Sometimes as satellite customers we wants everything now, sometimes we forget that Rome was not built in a day.