Advantages of buying your own equipment?

[pitterpat]

What are the pros and cons of buying your own Dish equipment, mainly receivers.

Thanks in advance,
Pat

 

[3HaloODST]

Pros : Activate/deactivate receivers any time you want.

Cons : Usually costs more upfront. Same monthly fees as leased receivers.

Sent from my iPhone 4S using Forum Runner

 

[boba]

No real advantage to owning monthly costs are the same but you have to pay full purchase price up front, you can't get discounted programming and I think you pay for installation.

 

[thomasjk]

No 24 month commitment if you own your own.

 

[Keystone7]

I just ordered my second receiver (Vip211K). I lease only one and will have two of my own. I am beyond my two years and enjoy it! The one I just ordered off the web cost me $84.00 with free shipping! That was brand new, by the way! Yes, I do pay the $7.00 to turn mine on per month, but I own them! I can always sell them later if I change service. Just keep the box and dust them off. If you want to make one of them a DVR ($40.00), that should be a one time cost. So they tell me. Just remember that they are yours and if they quit working, you are out the money unless you have a warranty! Just my thoughts.

 

[Rangers484]

Financially, there is no real benefit that I can detect. If DISH gave a discount on programming or there was no fee for each receiver/DVR you could eventually recoup the up front costs. The idea that you will be able to sell them down the road is ignoring the fact that they may be obsolete technology when you are ready to sell. The closest comparison these days is cell phones. Hardly anyone buys the phone outright because the subsidy for the 2 year contract is too appealing to pass up. How much is an iPhone 1-4 worth these days?

 

[dwarren2]

If you are thinking of a Hopper/Joey system, there is no benefit. AFAIK, they are installing them at no cost. As long as your not one of those that want to jump back in forth between D* and E*, I don't see any advantage. If you are getting the dvr and plan to use an ehd, You do not want to deactivate an account. The ehd is tied to the account number. Close the account and all the recordings stored on the ehd are history.
I've been with Dish for about 18 years. Except for back in the early days when you had to buy and install your own equipm,ent, I've always leased.

 

[Claude Greiner]

If your doing a 211 and installing it yourself, the receivers are cheap enough where its not worth taking the committment.

IF you need the Dish changed out, or any wiring, its probably better doing the committment

 

[dare2be]

One real financial benefit to owning a receiver is if it is used in a room that only gets occasional or seasonal use (say, a guest room that only gets used twice a year), you can activate and deactivate the receiver when needed and only pay the monthly receiver fee while it is in use.

 

[dishcomm]

What are the pros and cons of buying your own Dish equipment, mainly receivers.

Thanks in advance,
Pat

I have owned my equipment since I became a customer in 1998. No contract. No worries. I call it "leverage"...

 

[Skip06]

If you own, you don't have the hassle of sending a receiver back and paying $25 if you leave Dish.

 

[Scherrman]

If you own, you don't have the hassle of sending a receiver back and paying $25 if you leave Dish.

To me this theory doesn't make a lot of sense. I can understand if you do not like contracts or think you won't keep the service 2 years. The time and money you spend on the equipment and installing it should offset any kind of savings you're getting from shipping a receiver back.

Like others have stated:

Pros: No contract, can deactivate/activate when you want, great for satellite enthusiast who like to install themselves
Cons: Still have the monthly fee so you don't save any money, have to purchase the equipment, have to install or pay someone to install it(for the non DIY guys)

 

[dwarren2]

To the OP. You need to tell us what receiver(s) you are thinking about. Is it/they going to be primary viewing units. As you can see from various comments, there are times when purchasing may be an advantage, but they are few. If it/they are going to be primary units and you want HD in multiple rooms and the ability to watch what's recorded from any tv in the house, leasing a Hopper(s) is the way to go.

 

[MikeD-C05]

I have owned ALL my receivers on my 3 DISH accounts in my name , for close to 17 years come January . The main reason I started was that was the way you did it when you first got DISH. Now I have kept it up because I have been a "mover" on all 3 accounts for 11 years or more. My parent's account and my account are on Houston,Tx locals and my Aunt has Fort Smith, Arkansas locals. I have installed all 3 of their sat dishes and maintain them. I also upgrade them to newer receivers as needed by trading them in to www.dishdepot.com for credit towards the newest receiver. Mark at dishdepot offers no TAX on his receivers and NO shipping either- if you don't live in Florida. I like being able to own them and take them off my account as I want. I also like NOT being in contract with DISH . I often will call up every 6 months and ask what I am eligible for in way of freebies and low priced premiums. I do this on all my accounts.

Some people like to lease cars and appliances etc. I like to Own my stuff. I hate rent to own. But to each his own.

 

[Scherrman]

I have owned ALL my receivers on my 3 DISH accounts in my name , for close to 17 years come January . The main reason I started was that was the way you did it when you first got DISH. Now I have kept it up because I have been a "mover" on all 3 accounts for 11 years or more. My parent's account and my account are on Houston,Tx locals and my Aunt has Fort Smith, Arkansas locals. I have installed all 3 of their sat dishes and maintain them. I also upgrade them to newer receivers as needed by trading them in to www.dishdepot.com for credit towards the newest receiver. Mark at dishdepot offers no TAX on his receivers and NO shipping either- if you don't live in Florida. I like being able to own them and take them off my account as I want. I also like NOT being in contract with DISH . I often will call up every 6 months and ask what I am eligible for in way of freebies and low priced premiums. I do this on all my accounts.

Some people like to lease cars and appliances etc. I like to Own my stuff. I hate rent to own. But to each his own.

I hate rent to own as well but I consider this to be a little different. With rent to own you are actually paying a lot more money over time to own it. With satellite equipment I am saving money by leasing it since you still have to pay the same monthly fees regardless of owning it.

I know that some people prefer owning there stuff and I get that, it's a personal preference.

 

[Skip06]

To me this theory doesn't make a lot of sense. I can understand if you do not like contracts or think you won't keep the service 2 years. The time and money you spend on the equipment and installing it should offset any kind of savings you're getting from shipping a receiver back.

Guess you've missed the stories on here of people getting charged full price for receivers they've shipped back. Seems it took months to get straightened out. I have a 222, at the time it was cheaper for me to buy it then to pay Dish for someone to hook it up. Hooking up a couple of wires wasn't a problem for me. Now I don't have to worry if I decide to leave Dish, (been with them this century). So I came out ahead at the start, and don't have to spend time packing it up and driving to a UPS drop off or any expense at the end.
I fully understand people that had VCR's blinking 12, or aren't physically able to mount a dish or do an install, leasing and having Dish do the work is the only way to go for them. As I'm getting close to that point, if I ever upgrade, I may have to lease.

 

[dwarren2]

I fault you logic. The only people who have to lug a leased receiver back to Ups/Fed Ex is those who have canceled Dish or in most cases are returning a defective receiver. In the 18 years I've been with Dish I only had to take faulty receivers to a shipping service after Dish has sent me a replacement. And again, the cost of buying a receiver varies widley depending on what you want.

 

[Skip06]

I fault you logic. The only people who have to lug a leased receiver back to Ups/Fed Ex is those who have canceled Dish

I fault your reading comprehension, if you canceled Dish is what I was referring to.

 

[BBCInc]

I leased exactly once -- when I went HD and needed a new dish (1000.2 WA). Up until then I had owned and installed a single tuner/LNB receiver (3700?), a DVR 508, a Dish 500, a DVR 721. All my purchased receivers have been bought through Mark at Dish Depot.

Then Dish obsoleted the 721 and sent me DVR 522 to replace it (and read me a long spiel on the phone saying the replacement was a lease which turned out not to be the case). The first 522 I received had a faulty tuner 2, not sure how that made it out of QC. The second had scrambled sound after about 5-10 minutes on the same program. The third worked as far as I could tell, but I was already turned off to the quality of refurbs from Dish.

By early 2009 when my SD TV went TU for the second time in 6 months, I decided to go HD. Dish offered a free install. The installer, a contractor, did a great job installing the new 1000.2 (two RG6 coax from the dish to a grounding block), and running a single RG6 cable for the new DVR 722 (was going to give me a 622 until I requested the 722). When he went to leave he asked me what I wanted to do with the 522 since it showed as owned on his worksheet. Hmm, news to me. I think he gave me $10 trade-in for it and took it with him.

So the 722 was leased and all was well, until... It started acting wonky (freezes, reboots, etc. all known symptoms of a hard drive failing) about 4 years later, I decided to upgrade to a Hopper system. I probably could have fixed the 722 with only a compatible drive swap but couldn't (technically) because it was leased. Or I could have tried to get a functional refurbed 722 but didn't want to chance another possibly faulty Dish refurb.

Looking at my system and using information from Satelliteguys, I found all I had to do to hook a Hopper up was replace the existing ground block with a Solo Node, connect the 2 existing coaxes from the dish to the node, and connect the existing coax that used to go to the 722 to the node Host port.

So I ordered a Hopper with Sling with Solo Node in March of this year from Dish Depot ($199) and did the install (really just replacement) myself. I also bought a Joey in case I ever wanted to add a viewing room to the system in the future but so far haven't activated it.

Sorry for being so long winded, but the point I'm trying to make is that if you are the least bit handy, owning is probably the preferred way to have a Dish system (at least it is for me) since you can do fixes much more efficiently than through the Dish repair cycle. Add to that the other advantages people before me have listed. One last caveat -- once past the infant mortality period, the hard drive is the most likely component to fail on these units. If you decide to go this route, be sure to stockpile a replacement hard drive before it becomes unavailable for purchase. The HD used in my HWS is a Seagate ST2000VM003.

 

[JM42]

I can't really agree that self-repairs are a valid reason for owning at all. I've had two units die over the years (HDs). Dish swapped both out 100% free (and I have never had the service plan). Never had a unit down more than 48 hours.

Ordering the parts myself may have saved a day in shipping time and 15 minutes on the phone, but would have been much more expensive.