Is Dish Broken?

[peano]

Cover Story: Is Dish Broken? - 2009-03-07 07:00:00 - Multichannel News


I'd say yes.

 

[MikeD-C05]

IF Charlie would go back to his roots he could have all the new subs. First of all he needs to get up to par on hd channels that DIRECTV has now. Then he could ;


Move all customer service home to AMERICANS that speak English as their first language.

Do away with all the made up bean counter fees like the 5.00 phone line fee, the hiked up price on all additional receiver or lease fees for 7.00 . Your competition only charges 4.99 a month.

Lower the price of your pay per views- you are the highest in the industry at 4.99 for live pay per views, 5.99 for hd , 5.99 for sd recorded pay per views on your hard drive and 6.99 for hd pay per views. TOO HIGH!

SIMPLIFY all programming packs and follow the competition and add hd to any programming pack -including family pack. Loose the silly metallic names and Turbo BLOW hd etc. Just copy what DIRECTV has done and add the tech fee to any programming pack to get hd.

REally want to attract new subs to get your sub base up? Loose the dvr fee PER RECEIVER. If you take the dvr advantage pack ALL dvrs are covered. This will make you sell more dvrs for Echostar and will give something of value to your subs.

Want to really get subs up? How about you INCLUDE all HD channels if you take AEP? Really want to get your average price that a customer subscribes to? INclude all hd channels in the AEP and include all additional receivers or lease fees for up to 2 extra receivers after the first ,or a total of 3 receivers on your account. Imagine the average revenue per sub if you did that? AEP would really attract subs and would be the best bet for all existing subs to subscribe to as well.

Imagine no dvr fees, no additional receiver or lease fees for up to 2 on your account after the first and HD included? DISH wouldn't be able to keep up with the amount of installs for new subs that would come to DISH. DISH would truly be the low cost, best priced VALUE for your money. AFter all back during the 500/721 series of dvrs DISH charged no dvr fees and they added a ton of new subs back then. It even forced DIRECTV to drop their dvr fee from 9.99 down to 4.99 back then. It was when Charlie got greedy and decided he wanted to make that extra money PER RECEIVER that he saw his sub base slow down .

Do nothing and keep charging higher prices for made up fees that no one else does and you will continue to hemmorage subs at a terrific rate till you will be headed to bankruptcy court.

 

[NotMe546]

I say charlie doesn't give a sh*t anymore.

 

[ab187]

Well said Mike

Dish really needs to get rid of the per receiver DVR fee, especially if you have DVRAdvantage. I would gladly pay to upgrade all my receivers to a DVR if Dish changed to the way Directv does it.

 

[8bitbytes]

Dish needs to fix:

1. HORRENDOUS customer service
2. INCREDIBLY complex and confusing programming structure
3. INCONSISTENT programming delivery
4. OBLIVIOUS corporate culture
5. LAME EXCUSES

They spent millions in marketing the all HD TURBO HD packages only now to be backpedaling on them and seemingly abandoning these packages and the high tech customers who prefer fewer channels but better quality. Voom seems to have taught them there are a vast majority of customers who just want their favorite tripe on the screen and don't give a crap about HD much less know what HD is.

 

[Toddwsu2005]

Successful marketing campaigns are done over a long time line. Meaning you pick a campaign and stick with it. How long has direct done the "upgrade" song, how long has Budweiser done the heres to you mister line. How long have we seen the gieco gecko. Pick a plan and stick to it.

They also got get it all sorted out for presentation and understanding. Pick a price scale that will meet the company's needs without having to have all these fees. DVRadvantage was a good start. However if you go beyond one receiver and don't have a phone or Ethernet line to connect to it then it gets rediculous.

Get rid of programming complaints, period. If you cant offer what others are then you are limiting your company! Dish should be spanking Direct but the lack of HD and Sports programing is a huge issue!

Be forward and direct with your consummers. I must admit when I read the conference call chat I thought it was made up by someone trying to be funny because of the respones charlie was giving.

Be more innovative, the whole sling box idea is fantastic but I would love to see them also inovate the remotes a little more too! Think of how cool it would be if there remote were more like a logitech harmony 1000.

I dont think Dish is going to die but clearly they have some issues to sort out.

 

[peano]

If they continue on their current path, they will die. I can understand making a few mistakes and correcting them, but Dish makes a mistake on something and then changes it but makes a bigger mistake.

At this point, Charlie is rich beyond his wildest dreams and has completely lost interest in the business and it shows.

 

[MikeD-C05]

If they continue on their current path, they will die. I can understand making a few mistakes and correcting them, but Dish makes a mistake on something and then changes it but makes a bigger mistake.

At this point, Charlie is rich beyond his wildest dreams and has completely lost interest in the business and it shows.

It does look like he as lost interest and let the accounting firms come up with all these ridiculous fees that are pushing subs to the competition. In these economic down times it makes no sense to keep on gouging your existing subs with these fees. Notice that Directv is promoting LOCK IN YOUR PRICE FOR A YEAR as a value for their new subs. This is great and gets straight to the point. DISH is offering 6 months for their lowest regular programming pack. DISH has the best damn receiver on the market and if he would drop the per receiver dvr fee and get more subs to take dvrs, the happiness and satisfaction rate would go up for every sub. Positive word of mouth helps build a company and adversely negative word of mouth destroys a company. Charlie needs to get his head out of his ass and take control .

 

[Laddyboy]

I think the Turbo all-HD packages are a great marketing tool if they continue to add the new HD to these packages as well. If not, then they have a problem. I don't see the confusion in the different packages that others do. What is confusing to subs is the fee structure. That's a load of bull excrement and when subs get dinged for things they weren't aware of or understand they get pissed off and leave, feeling bamboozled.

 

[Fitzie]

If Charlie has lost interest in DishNetwork, maybe he will stop coming to the Charlie Chat and they can rename it the Dishnet Quarterly Programming Progress and Issues Update. Or just drop it.

I find the Turbo packages confusing because they should mean one thing only, in my opinion: better picture quality. They don't. And the packaging confuses me, even though it doesn't really affect me. I just tell the CSR what I want and he/she tells me what package I have, what the cost is, and whether another package might be better considering what I've ordered.

 

[Fitzie]

By the way, I recognize this thread is just anothe Dish attack thread. But I wanted to post anyway. To help Charlie E. out in case he reads this forum.

 

[cjwct]

Scott's article captured what is happening perfectly:

I learned long time ago that in retail, decisions are usually made 6-12 months ahead of time and yes, that includes printing up all the advertising. Not Charlie or anyone else could have seen that people would not grasp HD and understand what it is. I think everyone is in trouble because no one with their new LCD'S are seeing HD being advantageous to what they have now compared to what they had on their old televisions. To help everyone, HBO and Showtime should do a free preview weekend in which they simultaneously air SD and HD movies, explain how to view the HD and let people go back and forth and see what happens.

 

[TRSmudge]

I thought it was interesting the analysts up'd his number of sub loss in 2009 to 392,000. Meanwhile Direct is adding bigtime.

Why can't Charlie see any of this? Or possibly he just doesn't care?

I agree with others that Dish Cust service is horrible, and the packages are the most confusing ever. I can't imagine where Dish would be if they didn't have decent equipment?

 

[Fitzie]

On another note, the Multichannel News report said that Ergen was reducing his "free cash flow" estimate from $1.2 billion to $1.0 billion for the year. Considering the fact Toyota estimated a decline of about 40% in sales for the year (IIRC) that's not bad at all. I think the stock price reduction is a function of the economy more than anything. At least Dish doesn't have hundreds of billilons in bad loans sitting out there as some bailout companies (does Citicorp ring a bell?) do, and their stock price hasn't fallen to less than $2. And who will ultimately pay for the darn trillion(s) in bail out funds? Working middle class americans. Obama has said he's going to sock it to the rich, and that's well and good, but most of the posters on this forum who are trying to make a living will get socked too.

While the marketing may have been a little confusing, as Charlie says, I also noted from the article that Jamaes DeFranco is in charge of marketing. I doubt he'll lose his job. Certainly, if Dish ends up needing more money, they would be a good candidate for a bailout, and $5 billion to $15 billion should get them over the hump nicely. Especially if there's a forgiveness provision to where Charlie doesn't have to pay it back.

 

[Bob Haller]

The DVR fee per box is the worst, it discourages and penalizes Es best stickest subs.

they should go to a one time fee per account, or a monthly fee per account.

with money tight and the future looking grim I may drop E altogether, primarly over the fees

I dont think charlie has truly cared for many years, when he passed management over to the beancounters.

want to really compete?

Drop the extra receiver fee and DVR fee ifd all receivers are continiously connected to a phone line.

yeah and move customer support back to americans. no shortage of workers these days just look at the unemployment lines

 

[8bitbytes]

Certainly, if Dish ends up needing more money, they would be a good candidate for a bailout, and $5 billion to $15 billion should get them over the hump nicely. Especially if there's a forgiveness provision to where Charlie doesn't have to pay it back.

The "bailouts" are payoffs. Dish has no huge labor union with hostage voters and Dish also did not sacrifice their financial institution taking on bogus loans so that a political party could stage a fabricated economic crisis.

That said, E* posted a profit and has millions of barely educated consumers who have no idea that any of this conversation is going on. Dish will not need any help and will survive despite the stupidity that is rampant in the corporate offices.

 

[NotMe546]

The "bailouts" are payoffs. Dish has no huge labor union with hostage voters and Dish also did not sacrifice their financial institution taking on bogus loans so that a political party could stage a fabricated economic crisis.

So I guess it's all just made up. How many made up people are out of work.

 

[CPanther95]

I think they're beyond the point of eliminating fees - they need every bit of revenue they can muster to stay afloat as long as possible. That's something they should have done when D* was more vulnerable.

I'd wager they drop well in excess of 500,000 subs this year and will be prime for a sale - but I'm not sure anyone can right this ship in time to avoid a crisis.

 

[VinceT3]

I know quite a few people who have had enough of dish and are going to jump ship.. me and my wife have been talking about switching to directv in the next couple of months..

their DVR may be better (when it works).. they have a habit of sending out broken software.. dropping channels.. not adding channels.. raising prices at their highest tiers (everything pack) without offering much of anything for it..

it may be time to finally ditch dish..

 

[8bitbytes]

So I guess it's all just made up. How many made up people are out of work.

Not what I said... Nice try. People really are out of work and many more will be headed that way.

However, that doesn't mean that congressmen and their wallstreet friends and Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae buddies didn't cook this all up. The lame steam media makes it sound like all these folks are republicans but that's false. Rahm Emmanuel was head of Freddie Mac for awhile and he is the one who recently said never fail to turn a crisis into an opportunity. There are many more people who are driving the current market system into the ground just like Rahm. It's a bloodless revolution in order to capture the power and money that is the US. Better study up on Venezuela because that's the direction these ideologs are taking us.

Of course, most young people could care less as long as they have they XBox/PS3 and their satellite tv.


Dish has plenty of money and plenty of ignorant customers. They jumped on the HD bandwagon but discovered it was still too early. There's plenty of profit left in SD.