Dish Network collections, notice, bad business Internet, Internet

When my military orders ended I had to move onto a civilian job in the Atlanta Area the appartment we could afford and within reasonable commute to work would not allow us to have a satellite dish. I had the apartment send a letter to Dish explaining this and they stated we still owe them money becuase it is not their fault that I decided to move to a place that doesnt allow their service. So my wife calls them and finds out what the termination fee is and how to cancel our service. They tell her that all we owe is $114 and we need to send back their equipment in their box. So we pay and send back. That was in June. Today (Oct 31st) I get a call from a collections agency stating that we owe over $180 plus the fee for shipping in their box.

 Dish never once tried to contact us they just waited until they could send it off to collections. Unbeliveable. I am in the middle of buying a house and they are dropping this on me. Now what kind of message does that send? We are buying a house and we could have had Dish at the house for the next 30 years we will be in that house and they are throwing all of that away for $180. I really feel screwed here, they wont even let a guy leaving military service get a break. Is there anything that we can do about this poor treatment?