Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Dish Networks: Consumer griping

We're planning to upgrade our TV setup at home. We have Dish Networks satellite, mainly because I wanted Japanese programming and no one else seems to have it.

So I tried calling the number to do this. It gave me four or five choices, and none of these choices was for upgrading equipment.

So I pressed 0 for an operator.

If you're a company that sells things to consumers, your phone system should never tell a customer that the option they selected is invalid. Pressing 0 means I want to speak to a person. Not offering me that option means you don't value me as a customer. I'm trying to upgrade my equipment, and upgrade the programming as well. This means I'll be going from paying you about $300 a year to maybe $500 or $1000 a year. Or, I could switch to cable and pay you nothing.

With that in mind, doesn't it make sense to have a person answer the phone when I want to speak to someone? I'll talk to someone in India. I don't care. But don't stick me with a computer that tells me my choice is invalid.

And by the way, if you call the Redlich Law Firm (888-733-5299), you will get to speak to a person, 24/7/365. And if that person can't reach me, I'll get a text message on my cell phone and I'll call you as soon as I can. I started the firm with that approach because of past problems like I'm having now with Dish.

Sadly, it's not like cable's customer service is much better.

And how come these companies can't make their websites work better. I can't even login to Dish with Apple's main browser. How much would it cost these companies to make their websites cutting edge? $100K would buy a lot, but these companies should be throwing down $1 million or more. Looks to me like they spent maybe $20K.

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