Yes, I've had DTV for many moons. About once a year, whatever promotions I had go away, my bill skyrockets, then I have to call them and argue it out for a while, then get new promotions offered when I call to cancel. I always have Dish's incentives handy at that time as reference and consideration and the last 2 years I've called and talked to Dish to ask a few more questions seriously considering the switch. I've been doing this dance with discounts applied and expired for years now. I know people that change providers literally every time the discounts expire at one. I don't really want to re-learn channel numbers, etc, so haven't gone that far yet and am otherwise happy with the service.
Last Saturday I came within a gnat's behind of actually switching like I often threaten to do. Wife spoke to 2 reps and 2 managers and they could only offer to take off $10 per month when our bill just went up $60 due to previous promotions expiring. She was a bit harsh with them, but understandably so. There are so many other options these days that the hassle just isn't worth it anymore.
Anyway, after talking to Dish when my wife got off the phone with DTV, they said they could have new equipment installed that same day (which blew me away because it was already afternoon on a Saturday). I called DTV back to verify that I was going to cancel and the lady they transferred me to asked me why I wanted to cancel and I told her I didn't really want to, but they can't get my bill back to a non-absurd number so I was going to switch to Dish where it wasn't absurd. She immediately dropped my bill $60 bucks a month (back to my normal bill and same price as I was going to pay for Dish). I didn't have to drop any channels or rearrange my package either. Just straight deduction to last one year, no contract, and threw in a month of a movie channel for free, so I didn't switch. It was all my wife tried to do in the first place.
I told her thanks, but in the future that she needs to speak to mgmt. about not continually jacking bills up so I have to call back in a year and do this again. So frustrating. One year, I'll actually switch just based on the principle of it. Maybe next year is the year.
Haven't been in any contract for quite a few years now and like it that way. If I fell on hard times I could cancel any time if necessary.
When I called to canceled, they passed me off to the department to try to retain me. The lady cut the bill a couple of times but the price was not low enough. She asked how low would it have to go. I told her that the channels I used to watch now had nothing of value on them, I was forced to buy channels I did not want to watch and did not watch, and that the service was worth about $20 a month. We were paying almost $100 with no movie channels. :shocked: We do not watch sports but to get the channels we wanted to watch we had to pay off the ESPN Syndicate which was a big portion of the bill. 