Nov 08
13
Cutting Costs: My Dish Network Bill
As evidenced by my last post on changing electric contracts, I’ve started looking at our monthly bills to see where we can cut costs and save some money. After effectively saving about $60 a month changing electric providers (after the one-time $69.99 early termination fee charged by my current provider), I set my sights on the satelite TV bill. We signed up with Dish Network prior to the start of football season last year, and at that point with all of the new customer promos and discounts we were paying about $30 a month. Since then all of the discounts expired and they raised the rate on our core package (and took away NFL Network from our tier, commie bastards!) , plus we decided that we needed to add the local channels, so now our bill is $47.99 a month before tax.
Looking at their website, I saw they were now offering an all-HD package that includes most of the channels we watch for $24.99 a month, with the local channels being $5.00 more. Seeing this would be $18.00 a month less than what I’m currently paying, I called to change my programming package only to be told that the all HD package was available to new, first-time customers only. In disbelief I asked to speak to a supervisor who indicated the same, and after checking the website more closely I see that is indeed in the terms of the offer. Although I’m still under contract until February, I told him that I was looking to cut costs which is why I wanted the all-HD package to lead him into a discussion on how we could bring the bill down. He of course at first tried to explore the idea of downgrading service which died quickly when I told him the main channels we watch are ESPN and ESPN2. I then asked the question that since my current package was the minimum that met my needs was there any way to reduce the price on that package. After a couple of minutes he came back offering to apply a discount of $5 per month for 10 months to my bill with no contract extension or change in programming. Seeing that I couldn’t really go anywhere until February anyway, I happily said yes and was on my way. Total time to save $50 was 14 minutes including hold time, plus about half an hour to review the all-HD package that I ended up not being eligible to get anyway.
One interesting thing the supervisor noted was that they were planning to have all of their channels available in HD by February 2009, at which time they plan to begin offering HD-only packages to existing customers. He couldn’t say whether they will have the same price points on the all-HD packages they are currently offering, but it may be a possibility to switch packages at that point.
If anyone is interested in signing up for Dish Network just send me an email and I can provide you with a referral offer for free activation, a $30 bill credit, and HBO and Starz free for 3 months. The only catch is it requires a programming commitment of 2 years and a qualifying programming purchase of $37.99 a month.