DishNetwork/Echostar Paid for Priority Service Contract and Given an 18 Day Wait for Repairs Dallas Texas

Your DISH Home Protection Plan (which is the $5.99 you pay on your bill that you call a priority service plan) does not give you priority over anyone else when it comes to service - it only covers shipping (if one of your receivers breaks), most of the cost of a tech to come to your house ($99 service call becomes $29), and a few other goodies. You can't expect DISH Network to bump a confirmed appointment with another customer, DISH Home Protection Plan or not, down just because you don't want to wait that long. You also can't expect DISH to reimburse you when you decide to call another companies' tech - I know 18 days is a long time without TV, but seriously, that's not the fault of the company - the proximity of your local office might have something to do with it. If a tech has to take most of his time on a particular day for one call, and it's mostly spent driving, he's lost the opportunity to wrap up two or three other customers in the same amount of time, and there's more scheduling involved.

Anyway, next time work with the TSR on the phone to get TWOS (Time WithOut Service) credits. That way, you're not being charged for the time you're not watching TV, and the credits are fairly large - can't say for sure without looking at your account, but I know an 8 day outage with America's Top 200 (42.99/month) was a $18.93 credit.