DIRECTV vs. DISH Network

TV service itself is good. Picture is great. HOWEVER...be absolutely, positively sure that your current life WILLNOT change unexpectedly when you sign their 2-year contract. I became engaged after being a customer for 7 months and moved in with my fiance. We couldn’t transfer my contract there because he already had Directv service (I had signed him up with the “sign up a new customer and both receive $100 credit deal”). I put my house up for sale and it sold just a little over a year into my Directv contract. They refused to let me out of my contract even though I no longer owned the house where it was installed and obviously no longer lived there! Basically I was required to pay for service that I was no longer receiving. That is THEFT! I finally ended up hiring a lawyer who, after 3 months of trying, finally got them to agree to termination. I will stop watching tv before becoming a Directv customer again and I will recommend to anyone and everyone, DO NOTGETINVOLVEDWITH DIRECTV!

Service is generally good. Pricing is deceptive, billing will creep upward. At the end of your service, you will have to return the equipment to one of three locations at a cost of $15. This was never revealed during the entire service term. Outages in areas with heavy cloud cover and stormy weather are fairly common. Heavy rain will result in loss of service. In all, the programing is fairly good, but don’t believe the hundreds and hundreds of channel hype. Many are duplicate channels with just a different number designator, or those useless music and sales channels. It’s cheaper than Direct or cable, BUT know what you’re getting into.

Price is better than DirecTV but customer service is mediocre at best. Canceled the service and will not be back.

Well, a drop of rain w/NO wind and the satellite is down for 30 min.This happens everytime.Least amt. of time down is 10 min. Oddly, sound is different on various channels ( HUH)...???
Let’s all have a vote on understanding the long SHEET of charges & credits so that somehow it is more expensive than what you agreed to…
Get this..you get charged $ 5.00 month to protect their equipment?? If you cancel to save $ 5.oo – they charge YOU $ 10.00 ( are you kidding?)..
Customer service via phone is almost nonsensical but email customer service excellent.. After a year your charges jump $ 10 – $20.00 .. I find addt’l no line charges all the time.. Taxes just changed from Dec. to January.. Watch the bills closely – they will screw you and the long list of charges & credits makes it nigh impossible to comprehend. My monthly bill w/ all their promos was supposed to be $ 21.00 for the first year.. First bill was $ 42.00.. The explanation made absolutely no sense… I am switching to Dish & hope to God….that it works…

I have had Dish Network since Jan 2000. I will not go back to cable. My neighbors had Diretv for approximately 75 days and had it removed. They had numerous problems with Diretv both in programing and service. I totally love my Dish Network. Only had one problem since 2000 and it was corrected almost immediately. Great Work Dish Network.

Pros: features, programming choice, pricing.
Cons:
Very poor customer service.
Cumbersome customer interface.

One wouldn’t know before actually having the service, but these are the things that I DO NOT like about the service:
-Customer service feels like I’m calling a sweat shop. Representatives are driven by the organization to “move on to the next call”, and it SHOWS. Twice now, I have been promised that someone will get back to me and it never happens. This is infuriating, especially because I have spent HOURS of my time dealing with issues that prompted the promise of a call back. Arggghhhh!

-To continue the point above, I tried Chat online, which was effective. Again though, the rep disconnected me from the chat as soon as she felt I was all set. This is like a restaurant pushing your bill through and seating someone at your table while you’re still there. I still had related outstanding issues and was again infuriated. Arggghhhh!

-Be VERYWARY and careful if they offer you “vouchers” when you sign up. I thought it would be a great perk when I was offered 5 vouchers with sign up. These vouchers are virtually useless; they are not integrated with the VOD and MOV you see on the guide. You have to redeem through the website and they have to perform some sort of magic to make the move play for you. I had 20 of these vouchers and for the hassle, I attempted to use two of them. I was successful with one after calling customer service, but the other one was a total FAIL. The family had completed lost interest in watching the movie so I stopped during the troubleshooting process.

-You can’t program all your shows through the mobile app. I’ve been told that it has to do with licensing issues related to streaming and they are still trying to figure out how to have it NOT effect the viewing guide and ability to program on the go.

-My receiver was having issue so the (1st tier) rep decided to replace it. The replacement was a refurb and proved to be defective. Dish said it would cost me $15 to get it replaced! The refurb they sent me was not useable; it would CONSTANTLY crash; several times a week it would just loop and crash all night long. Can’t believe they wanted to charge me for a bunk machine they sent me. They finally “waived” the fee, but the “new” one is also a refurb. Plug & Pray….

The service is like a developing country; they have “all this stuff” which is really great and the pricing is the most fair of the major services, but the whole package from the customer point of view feels disjointed and is not elegant at all. This service is going through growing pains and may be really great when it finally grows up.

This is a one star service, but I gave an additional star for all the “stuff” they have, and will hopefully refine.

Great network very rarely do I not have signal.

Love my dish, couldn’t be happier. We have had dish for 10 years now and have no complaints about dish. Cheaper than direct and quick to help if we have a problem. We have a dual tuner and can record two shows and watch a prerecorded show all at the same time. Only gripe is the new DVR rewind and skip function aren’t as accurate as they used to be. I understand that being because of copyright issues with tivo.

My parents had Dish, and my wife and I have DirecTV, so I have used both in the last several years. I was “thinking” about switching to Dish after watching some commercials, but I did a little research first. These are my findings:

With DirecTV, we currently have the “Choice Xtra” package, which runs $66 a month (in our 2nd year, got half off for the 1st year). It includes all the channels that myself, my wife, and my 3 year old son enjoy watching. Four of those channels are H2, Military, Nat Geo Wild and Science. To get those 4 channels with Dish, you HAVE to buy the “250” package which is $70 per month after the 1st year.

With DirecTV’s HD DVR (the box was free with our subscription) we can record 100 hours of HD or 400 hours of SD programming. With Dish you only get 55 hours of HD, unless you buy an external hard drive and connect it. FYI:1 hour of HD = 6 GB of space.

All of this data comes straight from both of the companies’ websites. You can research it for yourself.

Yes Dish has more satellites than DirecTV which may/may not give you more reliable reception. Dish also has the Blockbuster Movie Pass, but if you have Netflix/Hulu+ it’s a toss up as to what you stream from.

DirecTV has the lower price and better HD DVR service, hands down. The proof is in the numbers! I’ll be staying with DirecTV.

Well, had the Dish Network and got suckered into DirecTV. DirecTV is better on overall price without the sports package but don’t think you will be able to pause live tv like Dish has. Once you have it you will always want it. As soon as my DirecTV contract is up were going back to Dish.