I'm getting tired of dealers not honering the Club Dish cards!

[Bob Saylor]

:mad: For the third time in six weeks a dealer tried to talk a customer out of using the Club Dish card I gave them. Honestly, I know they don't pay these guys enough but they didn't get this sale, I did!

They use all kinds of excuses and the customer doesn't know any better. The last one said that he couldn't honor the card because he had just finished the install and it was too late to use it. What he failed to realize is that the customer had presented him with the card just before winter last year and he put off the install until last week.

This time I called Dish and gave them the customers name. They said to have the customer call them and they would credit me with the sale. That's what I did.

This is very unehthical of the dealer. It's like a salesman selling a customer on a product and then when the customer decides to buy, another salesman takes the commission for the sale. I'm about ready to quit using the cards.

[CivilizedAnarchy]

Maybe they didn't want to use the cards since with a card the
activation fee is supposed to be waived and Dealers lose that $50.

Sucks.

Lata, C.J.

[junki]

So its $50 bucks. You get a lot more then money when you honor a Club Dish Card, you get a customer and more co-op. I honor them when ever they are presented, heck I have had people drop them off at my office and have used them on customer call ins to obtain and keep a customer from calling some other retailer.

[CivilizedAnarchy]

Oh yeah I know all about that.
And we do honor the club dish cards, I've heard some
complaining about the loss of activation and thought I would
mention it as a possible reason for the dealer's actions.
We (meaning the company) make very nice residuals on our customers.
Too bad dish changed their policy on it though.
It used to be as long as the customer stayed connected, you
would get a residual. Now they limit it to Five years.
Our Co-Op is huge too, not sure of actual figure, but it's huge.

Top 75 BABY!

Lata, C.J.

[amit5roy5]

I think you should have your friends should order dish network from dish network directly.

[HTguy]

There's no excuse for taking a Club Dish referral card and refusing to honor it. This particular retailer doesn't sound like a good professional anyway if he put off the installation so long. Maybe he even forgot he got the card in the first place.

There are thousands of good dealers who hold themselves out to be Club Dish retailers. There are also some who are "soured" on Club Dish, not just because they're "out" the $50 but because they are losing the bulk of the referrals from their own good customers.

Building a customer base with referrals is the basis of any specialty business. DISH Network has turned Club Dish into a way of getting the bulk of the referrals into direct sales and thus a means of competing unfairly with their own independents.

So don't be too surprised if you run accross a few who don't do Club Dish.

All you have to do is ask up front & see what kind of "vibe" you get. And tell whoever you give your card to expect that the card to be honored if accepted with reasonably prompt results. If it looks like they're getting stalled they should just take the card back & go elsewhere.

[music_beans]

Sounds like a lot of dealers are clubbing Club Dish. :D

[dummyproof]

Our retailer not only honors them, but he even showed us how to get the cards. Then he came by on his own time to pick them up from us to use on future customers. About 3 months after our install the credits showed up on our bill. This was perfect timing for us because our 3 month incentive was ending.

It was part of his initial sales tool, he told us that he was sure he could turn in at least 2 cards, saving us $10 @ month for a year. On top of the other incentives, it was obvious who we were going with!

BTW... he installed our dish the next day! He even came by a few days later to see if all was well! I wish ya'll could have an installer like ours.

[amit5roy5]

me too. *sigh*

Our retailer not only honors them, but he even showed us how to get the cards. Then he came by on his own time to pick them up from us to use on future customers. About 3 months after our install the credits showed up on our bill. This was perfect timing for us because our 3 month incentive was ending.

It was part of his initial sales tool, he told us that he was sure he could turn in at least 2 cards, saving us $10 @ month for a year. On top of the other incentives, it was obvious who we were going with!

BTW... he installed our dish the next day! He even came by a few days later to see if all was well! I wish ya'll could have an installer like ours.

[HTguy]

Our retailer not only honors them, but he even showed us how to get the cards. Then he came by on his own time to pick them up from us to use on future customers...DISH Network retailers are contractually forbidden to do this. Not that it stops every one, of course.

The whole point of the Club Dish referral is for an existing customer to pass them on directly to friends, family, neighbors, etc. Dealers are prohibited from collecting cards in advance and using them to "close" a non-referral sale.

If your guy gets cought doing this his area rep will probably come by, point his finger at him and say, "Bad boy! Bad!"

Seriously, he probably won't be cut off completely but he won't be credited allowed to do Club Dish anymore. And if he persists he won't be a DISH retailer anymore, either.

And, by the way E* does audit these things periodically to see how they're working out. An indy retailer who does "too many" CD sales will stick out. So you might want to advise him to "cool it" a bit.

[dummyproof]

I see the point... but we had just moved in and saw the installer at the neighbors, we had an appointment for cable install the next week. The part of the deal that made us decide to cancel cable was definitely that chance of saving an extra $10 a month in the first year. I just don't see us dropping Dish when the credits stop, so Charlie is still making out nicely by this dealer stealing us away from cable.

Charlie should make a few exceptions to his rules when it's used in cases like this. We are in a new sub-division and if this installer used that sales tool to sell Dish over cable around here, then Charlie should of made out quite nicely, as this is a decent sized sub-division.

[jgoggan]

I think you should have your friends should order dish network from dish network directly.

Yes, except with the new Club Dish plan, the new customers have to pay $25 for shipping for some plans if they go direct to Dish instead of through their local retailer...

I use to give Club Dish cards to friends and tell them to call Dish -- now I tell them to try a local retailer if they have one that seems decent. I don't know if Dish did this to try to encourage people to use their local retailers or not...

- John...