DISHNETWORK BEWARE OF FRAUDULENT CHECKS FOR PAYMENT!! Littleton/Palatine Colorado/IL

"Robert" - Excellent insight and suggestions.  I am still waiting to see if I have been able to resolve the issue since I voided the check and wrote one on my personal account.  HOWEVER, dishnetwork made sure I was sufficiently charged for LATE FEES.   NO MORE WORRIES.  I have canceled my account, after almost 20 years.  I am tired of having to jump through hoops as a customer of this company.   Thanks, again, for the suggestions and information!!! 

 I don't want to tell you to panic..but perhaps you should be at least very concerned.

First off if Dish wanted to get money out of your account, they don't have to go through that entire process.  All they would need to do is initiate an ACH transaction.  So first off them doing this is not only unneeded, it is way to convoluded for them to even try this.  Not only that, but you are current...so the only thing it would do is put a credit on your account.

So I bet you are asking yourself..then what is this.  Well there are several "On-Line" bill paying services, such as a very common one you are probably already aware of..your bank.    When you enter a on-line payment, if they can not send the payment electronically they will issue a check and it will be mailed..just like it had come from you.  Now, these payments are sent to the address you provide.  So at some point someone would have entered in a payment to Dish and instead of putting the address of Dish they would have put your address(criminals aren't always that smart). 

This is where the concern should come in.  It may be possible that someone has hacked your on-line account and used this as a test(as in checking to see if you would notice).  So at the very least you may want to change your passwords.  Again..it is a bit out there and the round about way to scam you, but I have heard of stranger.  It is also possible that someone accessed another on-line payment service to do this, again as a test to see if you would notice.    Either way you need to take that check(and envelope) and contact your bank.  If it is from them they will research it.  If it is not from them, you may want to consider having that account closed and opening up a new account.

Also, while you should be doing this anyways, you should go back through and review your bank statements in more detail to make sure that there are no other unexplained withdraws or checks being written.