No doubt you’ve heard of Dish Network, the Colorado-based satellite TV subscription service. It and a competitor — DirecTV — offer cable-television channels wirelessly. Many of their customers live beyond the reach of local cable TV systems.
It’s unclear how many subscribers Dish Network has in the Roanoke and New River valleys. Recently, I’ve become somewhat acquainted with two. One is Betty Turner of Glenvar. The other is Joyce Kasey of Roanoke.
Both want to quit their monthly Dish Network subscriptions. Both have been trying to contact the satellite service for more than a month, by every means they can divine. Those efforts got stymied at every turn.
Independently of each other, they turned to yours truly. Legitimately or not, I have a rep for being able to help aggrieved consumers in such situations.
People are also reading…
Tom Turner (Betty’s son) reached out first. His mom and dad, Ned Turner, recently moved from Christiansburg to Glenvar. One of the final pieces of that move was canceling their Dish Network subscription.
Hourslong waits on hold
Tom Turner wrote me a few emails about Betty’s attempts last weekend. Here’s the first:
“Longtime reader here. I could use your help. My mom and dad are downsizing their home and relocating. The problem is, we cannot contact Dish Network to cancel their TV/Internet service at their old home in Christiansburg.
“You cannot do this online … only over the phone,” Turner’s email went on. Dish Network’s “website has messages about some sort of online breach and customer service outages. My mom has been trying for a month. I tried today on 3 separate [calls].
“I was told that there was a 7 minute wait, then stayed on hold for an hour. Later in the day, I was offered a 94-minute wait and a 103-minute wait. I called this evening and was dropped after the wait warning.
All we want to do is cancel the service. Thanks for your attention!”
Then last week, I got a phone call from Joyce Kasey. She left a voicemail message, “If you need another complaint about the Dish Network, I can fill you in on the details.”
It sounded like she was aware about Turner’s complaint. But when I called and asked, Kasey wasn’t. She assumed thousands of Dish Network subscribers were unhappy for the same reason she was: An inability to get hold of the company. And she figured, rightly, that some were reaching out to me.
15 calls in one month
Kasey said she’d been trying to contact Dish for more than a month, and estimated she’d made 15 calls in that time. On the only occasion she reached a live person — after sending two hours on hold, the Dish rep “said they couldn’t hear me,” Kasey said.
She made those calls on her cellphone. And whenever she was warned she’d have to hold for a spell, Kasey did. She’d put her cellphone down then plugged it into its charger so the juice wouldn’t run out. One time. Kasey said, she left her phone on hold for five hours but was unable to connect.
“If no one can contact them, they should have a substitute number for customers to call,” Kasey told me.
Wednesday by email, I reached out to the company’s media desk, at news@dish.com. And I copied two different Dish Network customer service executives, too, names drawn from the company’s website.
The email outlined Turner’s and Kasey’s complaints, their Dish account numbers, addresses and more. It asked for a reply by the end of the day Thursday.
When I’d got none by Friday morning, I resent the email with a few additional details. And the second time, I added two additional Dish executives to the CC line, for a total of four execs copied. That one elicited no response, either.
However, on Thursday morning, Kasey received a call from Dish, and the rep who contacted her was able to get her account canceled. As of Friday afternoon, nobody had contacted Turner or me.
That’s unusual for large corporations, which generally respond to media quickly, to find out why they may be cropping up in the news. Naturally, companies want to protect their reputations, and usually they also want to get in front of upcoming articles.
Ransomware hackers strike
Then I started to do a little more digging into Dish.
I hit pay dirt on the website of the Better Business Bureau in Englewood, Colorado, which is where Dish Network is based. The website features 3,200 complaints about Dish Network in the past three years and more than 1,000 in the past 12 months.
Many are quite recent. A common theme was an inability to contact Dish Network.
BBB allows companies to respond in writing to complaints, and its website displays those responses, with personal information redacted.
A number of the company’s replies to the BBB suggest Dish Network is in the middle of a crisis.
One, dated March 21, tells the story. The company suffered a cyberattack in February. Other news accounts described it as a “ransomware” attack, in which hackers typically lock a corporation out if its own computer systems, then demand payments to restore critical services.
“On February 23, 2023, we experienced a cybersecurity incident that has affected some of our internal communications, customer call centers, and internet sites. We immediately activated our incident response and business continuity plans to contain, assess, and remediate the situation. Cybersecurity experts and outside advisors were retained to assist in the evaluation of the situation, and we notified appropriate law enforcement authorities.
“Because of this incident, some of our customers are having trouble reaching our service desks, accessing their accounts, and making payments. Please know we are working as quickly as we can to address these and any other service-related issues. DISH TV customers can now make a payment through a secure payment form on our website.
“We also continue to increase our call center capacity and social media response capabilities. We have more agents helping customers every day. . . . Working to restore all of our customer experiences is a top priority, but it will take a little time before things are fully restored.
“. . .We’re sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.”
That’s the most I expect to get out of Dish.
I also checked the company’s stock price. One year ago, that was just under $31 per share. Friday afternoon, Dish Network was trading for $8.60. The share price has tumbled 72% in the past 12 months. Percentage-wise, that’s more than Bitcoin has dropped year-over-year.
All of which suggests if you’re a Dish subscriber and you’re trying to get hold of the company, you may be out of luck, at least for a while.
Or perhaps you can reach them via the Better Business Bureau chapter in Englewood, Colorado. That outfit seems to be able to get Dish Network’s attention.
Big corporations and government agencies like Dish Network, the U.S. Marshals Service and Dole Food Co. have been hit.
Contact metro columnist Dan Casey at 981-3423 or dan.casey@roanoke.com. Follow him on Twitter:
"dish" - Google News
March 26, 2023 at 04:30PM
https://ift.tt/m7nFJlH
Cyberattack cripples satellite service's customer relations - Roanoke Times
"dish" - Google News
https://ift.tt/kgSbhr7
No comments:
Post a Comment