DishNetwork vs DirectTV
For the past few weeks we have been debating getting Satellite tv. So a few weeks ago we called up DishNetworks because we liked their prices and no contract required.
First they took all our info then did a credit check and said we did not meet the promotion we wanted with our credit score.
This made me curious so I decided to request my free credit report from the company that DishNetwork uses for their credit checks. Our credit report has zero bad elements but also had no good elements as I always paid for everything upfront with cash in any situation.
Next we decided well we will go with the pay for the equipment up front promotion and they said our credit score was again to low for this promotion.
So we read more online about DishNetwork and noticed there is an option to not use your full social security number (only use the last 4 digits) and to pay a $49.99 non-refundable fee. So we call up DishNetwork again and offer them $200 for equipment, $50 for the fee and $89 for the first two months service and are turned down again due to credit score. The lady said there was the option of paying $200 signup fee plus $200 equipment fee plus $88 for two months service and she could sign us up. Basically she wanted $488 upfront. This was simply not going to happen.
I called up DirectTV passed the credit check and all I paid was $21.95 setup fee and they will be out Sunday to set it all up.
So Piss on DishNetwork, I have DirectTV on the way.
DishNetwork missed out on $333 (which is equivalent to about a years worth of programming on DirectTV).
Damn!
I’m working on a decent credit score…I’ve got a few credit cards that I pay off in full every month, and a student loan that is all up-to-date on payments so far. It’s funny…I don’t have much actual money, but people would probably loan me some!
January 28th, 2005 at 4:15 pmYeah I don’t quite get the cash up front being undesirable vs a credit score.
I think it may be time to start accrueing some good credit.
January 28th, 2005 at 4:30 pmWell, I think it’s something like this: they figure you haven’t proven you can be trusted to pay debts over time.
January 28th, 2005 at 4:38 pmI could see that being very important if we were to be signing a year contract or something. So they could ascertain if we could be expected to maintain a contractual obligation.
But Dish did not require a contract so if someone did stop paying for service then they very easily could discontinue service by simply adding the hardware id# to a “disable” list or something (thus no need for a service call to disconnect).
But I do see your point, DirectTV does use a contract and they had no problems with us. And if anyone should place a greater emphasis on trust to meet contractual obligations of payment it should have been DirectTV.
Oh well it is a strange world with strange customs.
January 28th, 2005 at 5:00 pm