ChrisPC said:
From what I've heard, you can give back the hardware before the 2 years is up with little or no penalty. I guess they then lease it out to someone else.
That is only true if you own ALL of your receivers, and your commitment is for owned equipment. Once you switch over to lease, and your commitment is on leased equipment, you are not able to return the leased or owned equipment to waive the cancellation fee. When you lease, D* owns the receivers, and so when you cancel, you must return the equipment anyways.
dcwebman said:
Nobody mentioned that little line in there that said with our own equipment we are now going to get charged an extra $4.99 for our first receiver, unless we convert totally to lease.
The $4.99 mirroring fee will continue to be waived on the primary owned receiver, and on leased receivers, the $4.99 lease fee will be charged on the primary receiver, and then credited back. Since the lease fee is an equipment fee, then you will end up paying federal equipment taxes on that fee, but will not be paying the actual fee itself on the primary receiver.
hdtvtechno said:
from what i see from this, is the equiptrment will be with no upfront costs
Only the customer will pay the 5.99 lease fee
There will still be upgrade fees for receivers under the new lease program. If you want to add another receiver, there will be an upgrade fee of $49 for a standard receiver, and then you will pay the $4.99 lease fee each month. So there will still be some upfront fees, but with the advanced receivers, those upfront costs have been reduced. the DVR upgrade fee is going to be $99, the HD fee will be $99, and I cannot remember exactly what the HD-DVR upgrade fee will be, but it will be somewhere around $299, or $399. If you get a DVR, DVR service will now be required, and I cannot remember if it will be the same with HD or not.
For each leased receviever, there will be a commitment required for your account. 1 year for standard receivers, and 2 years for advanced. However, if you purchase your equipment there will not be any new commitment. The prices are higher for purchasing equipment, but since you own the equipment, and you were not given any discount on it, then you are not required to have a commitment.
As far as the protection plan goes, it will be $5.99/month on leased accounts, and it will cover everything except the receiver, since D* owns the receiver and is already covering the receiver. The protection plan pricing on owned accounts will remain the same $5.99/7.99 depending on whether or not you have advanced receivers.
