Dish Network Loses My Equipment, then Charges Me For It! Internet

IF YOU HAVE EVER BEEN CHARGED BY DISH NETWORK FOR UNRETURNED EQUIPMENT, THEY RIPPED YOU OFF. PLEASE KEEP READING.

I decided three months ago to cancel my dish. I'm a high school teacher/coach, so I'm rarely home to watch TV through the week. All of the TV I watch is courtesy of the DVR on the weekend. One day it hit me that I could watch all of this on Netflix and Hulu, and only pay a fraction of the cost, so I decided to "cut the cord" and get rid of my Dish.

So Dish sent me four boxes, with four UPS shipping labels. They told me to package the equipment and send it back to them. It would cost me around $75 to send all of the equipment back and used all of the labels, because I had to pay to use THEIR SHIPPING LABELS (*this is important to remember*). I even climbed up on my roof and took the actual "dish" down, thinking I had to send it back to. After talking to the customer service lady on the phone, she said all I had to send back was (1) the transponder off of the dish, (2) the two receivers in my house, and (3) the four remote controls.

After talking she walked me through how to pack the boxes, I had all of that packaged up and ready to ship. I still couldn't get over how they were going to CHARGE ME to use their shipping labels. My wife works for an agriculture company that does millions and millions of dollars in business every year, with tons of packages coming in and out. She said "I'll just make our own labels at work, and we'll ship it from there."

That sounded like a good idea, but I had cancelled on Dish years earlier, and I remembered how they tried to squeeze every nickel they could out of me then. I could easily see them trying to say, "well, you didn't use our label, and the package got lost..." So I told my wife, "you know what, go ahead and use their label. That way WE KNOW FOR SURE that the equipment gets there, and even though it will cost a little extra, we'll be done with Dish for good."

So she went to work the next day and sent those two boxes on the UPS Truck. This was mid June, about a week after we ended our service. June, July, and August passed. We were enjoying not paying that monthly bill for TV we didn't watch. Dish was in our rearview mirror,  when out of the blue one day, I got a phone call...

Dish said I owed them $607 for "unreturned equipment." I couldn't believe it. This was almost 3 months after I had cancelled!!! So I talked to the first low level customer rep, and after digging, she found out that one of my packages did make it back to them on 6/21/12. She apologized for the mistake, and then said that she still showed me owing for two more receivers.

Two more? I only had two in the first place, and you just said you got one back? Now I was confused. So she transferred me to her supervisor. This lady said she couldn't find the two boxes, so we were back to then not getting any equipment back. FANTASTIC!!! So after arguing with her, they passed me on to a third supervisor. She said they had received my package on 6/22/12, but I still owed for a DVR receiver and a regular receiver.

So I asked her exactly what they received on 6/22/12? She said an HD DVR Receiver. I explained to her that when I upgraded (Free HD For Life promotion), that the technician that installed my HD receiver had replaced that regular DVR Receiver. I didn't have it anymore. She agreed that I would not have two DVR's in my house (because I would have been charged monthly for that), and said that she would credit my bill for that expense. We were now trying to figure out where that one missing receiver was.

So if you are scoring at home: (1) I used their labels, (2) they charged me initially for three receivers, (3) then figured out I didn't have the DVR in the first place, and (4) found the HD DVR, providing me with the tracking number and the date they received it.

She told me I was still going to be charged $300 if I couldn't give her the shipping number for the missing receiver. I was outraged, and asked "how are you going to charge me for losing a package that was shipped WITH YOUR LABEL? How are you going to charge me for that label, and then say you lost it?" This was crazy! She just said I had to find that second tracking number, or I would be charged.

So next I called UPS. I gave them the first tracking number, and asked if she could find the second box that I sent on that UPS Truck. She found 25 packages received by Dish at that location that day, and said my package could be any one of them, BUT SHE COULDN'T TELL WHICH ONE IT WAS because the Dish labels don't specify that information. The labels are created by Dish (mine was created on 6/4/12), and they are set up to return to Dish (mine returned on 6/21/12). The point is, once they print a label to return their equipment, they have no way of knowing if it's your equipment or my equipment... the label is made to just go in a loop and end up right back where it started.

She said that any tracking numbers were only saved back to July 3rd, meaning if Dish had called me a week or two ago, they might still be able to pull those tracking numbers. Now I was pissed off. This seemed like fraud to me... dish calling saying I owed $600+ dollars, then admitting they made multiple mistakes, only to NOT admit the one mistake that I couldn't track...

Well what they didn't know was that I had an ace in the hole. As I said, my wife shipped this from her place of work. They keep track of all of this information. Since I had the date (and shipping number) of one box, it wasn't hard to find the other box and confirm that it was shipped. With this information in hand, I called Dish back again.

This time I told them that I had wasted over two hours of my afternoon cleaning up their mistake. I told the executive supervisor (the 7th person from Dish I had talked to that day) that I had the tracking number in my hand, but that I wasn't going to give it to her. I told her, "I dare you to charge me." Because it seemed fishy to me that they would call me up, saying I owed them money, only to find out that they had made one mistake after another. How was Dish not accountable for ANY of these mistakes? What if I didn't have access to this shipping number? Would I have just been out the money?

She asked, "if you have the number, why don't you just give it to me?" I replied, "because of the principle of the matter." To me, it seemed wrong to try to bully somebody into paying money. I wasn't a returning customer, so they didn't care. They were asking for information that was impossible to provide, and then telling me that if I didn't provide it, basically, "tough luck, buddy."

I wondered how many other Dish customers had an experience like this. She kept asking for the number, and I finally asked her, "do you ever play poker?" She said, "what does that have to do with this?" I said, "because I'm betting that I have this number in my hand, and you're betting I don't. I dare you to make that bet." She said giving her the number was the only choice I had. I told her, "No, I have two choices. I could not give you the number, and then you could charge me, and I could sue you for fraud. Because I've already proven that you made two mistakes that I was going to be charged for. This number in my hand proves the third. I bet a lot of other people out there have had a similar experience. That sounds like a class action lawsuit."

Then she said, "sir, I have no way of tracking that number down..." And that is when I said, "you just incriminated yourself. You can't find it, UPS can't find it, but if I can't find it, then I have to pay?" Finally frustrated, we ended the conversation.

If there is a good lawyer out there, this isn't even about the money now. You can keep all the money we get out of these blood suckers, but I'd love to see Dish Network pay for treating people this way. This has to be fraud. If there are other people out there that have had this experience, there has to be a way to fight back, right?