Help me help my mom. She's thinking of switching from the local cable company to DirectTV or Dish. What have your experiences been? I've only ever had cable, so I'm no help. She has access to some deals through My Points where she gets points and a Visa GC if she switches to one of those two providers, but they have mandatory contract periods (like 12 or 18 months), so she wants to make sure it's a good decision.

Also, is it possible to get internet access through DTV or Dish? She gets TV and internet through the cable company right now.

Thanks.

We had nothing but problems when we had direct TV. among other problems, when there were storms or heavy cloud cover it would go out. I know other people that have satellite and while they did hot have all the same customer service and installation issues we had, theirs goes out in bad weather as well.

Cable is a bit more expensive and does not have the same line up, however I would rather pay a bit more and get a bit less as long as my service works 24/7/365.

We loved Dish Network when we had it. We were advised by our property manager to switch to cable though when we moved into our new place because we have woods right behind our house and there's no good place to put the dish (can't attach it to the house or anything). We hate our cable company and are considering taking our chances with the woods and all. :p We rarely lost signal unless a storm was really bad. Our cable goes out all the dang time.

Unfortunately, they don't do internet - neither does DirecTV that I'm aware of. Satellite internet isn't really a great option unless you have NO alternative, though. If she's looking to ditch the cable company altogether, she'd be better off looking into DSL provided by her phone company.

We have had cable and direct tv. The plus with cable IMO is that I get a discount because I get my internet and phone service with them. We only had direct tv when we lived in the boonies and cable wasn't available.

Geography plays a big part in how well the satellite companies will do for you. We have had absolutely no problems with our DirecTV in over four years - it rarely goes out, except when it's really, REALLY raining, and that for only short periods. When we had Comcast, we had outages constantly, which led to very frustrating calls with their alleged customer service department. At least when the satellite goes out, you can go look at the dish, and if you get wet, you know what's wrong. :)
Hughesnet is the directv satellite internet, but it's really expensive. Cable or DSL would be much cheaper.

we have dish asnd love it

Directv...I've heard a lot of nightmare stories about Dish from past customers, they drop channels with no warning, raise prices with no warning, have poor customer service....we have had Directv for 6 years and love it.

Stay away from Dish Network. They're crooks.

My mom had an awful experience with them recently. My grandmother had moved in with her and set up an account with DN, but since she had just moved, was in the middle of settling things with her bank. My mom agreed to put the first month's payment and installation charges on her credit card until my grandmother got her finances straightened out. My grandmother had the service for a little over a year and paid each monthly bill from her own checking account after that first payment.

When my grandmother moved out of my mother's house, it slipped her mind to have the service shut off and missed one month's payment because she was shifting gears into living on her own for the first time in a year. When they didn't receive payment from my grandmother, they promptly took the payment from my mom's credit card without her knowledge or consent. They didn't even send my grandmother a bill.

When my mother tried to have the service shut off, at first they refused to shut it off because it was in my grandmother's name. When my mom argued that regardless of whose name the service was in, they had charged HER for the bill and she wanted the service shut off, they reluctantly agreed and then turned right around and charged my mother's credit card AGAIN for breech of service contract (early termination fee) and equipment not returned. The account was never in my mom's name and she never signed any contract. To hold her financially or legally responsible for upholding a contract she never entered into is just plain illegal. Again, they never even sent my grandmother a bill. They just charged my mom's card because they had it on file and wanted quick payment of a large sum of money - which to me is akin to robbery.

She is still going rounds with them and with her credit card holder.

From what I've heard and read, this is pretty common practice for DN.

We had directv and then switched to dish. The customer service folks treated us better when we had issues. Also, we got Sirius with Dish. Your mom probably doesn't care about that, but we LOVED it. We now have cable (b/c we moved) and I am not so impressed. Good luck! :)

We were happy with Dish when we had it. We had it almost 3 years. We canceled Dish to save money and wanted dd to watch less TV. We didn't have any trouble moving or canceling our service.

We got it originally because the local cable company wouldn't give us service (rural at the time) and we had no TV reception at all without something. When we moved to town we continued with the Dish service. We had had a hard time communicating with the cable company (putting us off about availability, not returning calls) before so weren't willing to give them a chance. They also had less available channels for the same cost.

We get our internet through our phone company.

We've been having an on-going nightmare with Direct TV. Our receiver box has been screwing up for over 2 months, and they can't fix it, we've had two techs just not show up, one came and refused to do the work because there was snow on the ground. :eyesroll Um, it's CO, there is snow on the ground half the year. We've called support at least 20 times now, just the other day, they finally agreed to send us a new box.

I think all companies have issues. One thing to look into, we get our Direct TV through a bundle package with our phone company, the phone, TV, and the internet are all at a discounted rate through Qwest.

We love our DirecTV and have internet through that dish as well. We have had some problems with service going out during storms...about 5 minutes before a storm arrives we lose signal. The longest outage was about an hour, but usually it's just a few minutes.

Our area has no non-cable/non-satellite service (due to geography) and cable doesn't exist for much of the rural areas here so it's a good thing our DirecTV people are good sine they're basically the only option!

Does your local BBB have any comments? It sounds from this thread like individual local providers vary a lot!

Geography plays a big part in how well the satellite companies will do for you. We have had absolutely no problems with our DirecTV in over four years - it rarely goes out, except when it's really, REALLY raining, and that for only short periods. When we had Comcast, we had outages constantly, which led to very frustrating calls with their alleged customer service department. At least when the satellite goes out, you can go look at the dish, and if you get wet, you know what's wrong. :)
Hughesnet is the directv satellite internet, but it's really expensive. Cable or DSL would be much cheaper.

Ditto. This has been our experience to a T.

We've had DirecTV for almost 5 years with no problems--and great reception compared with cable. We, however, don't have a fancy TV or HDTV so I can't speak to that aspect of the service.
Recently when we got our TIVO out of storage I had to call their helpdesk to help me resolve reconnecting. The person on the line was very patient and a US citizen. This is an American-based company that provides jobs for people in the US. In this age of rampant offshoring I find this fact alone very comforting and one more reason while I will stay with DirecTV.

we hate our direct tv... it goes out whenever there is more than moderate rain/wind. we never had so many problems with cable, but that's just our experience. our dvr box has had trouble twice, but i have to say that their customer service really is great. which, is definitely important.

i think the big thing for us, we just don't get the features we liked from cable, like movies on demand. pay per view is such a pain, even though we have dvr.
i think direct tv offers great sports programming, but we don't watch sports so it's lost on us. they made us sign a 2 year commitment, which also stinks. at the end of the contract, in a couple of months, we're going back to cable if we decide to keep cable at all...

Stay away from Dish Network. They're crooks.

My mom had an awful experience with them recently. My grandmother had moved in with her and set up an account with DN, but since she had just moved, was in the middle of settling things with her bank. My mom agreed to put the first month's payment and installation charges on her credit card until my grandmother got her finances straightened out. My grandmother had the service for a little over a year and paid each monthly bill from her own checking account after that first payment.

When my grandmother moved out of my mother's house, it slipped her mind to have the service shut off and missed one month's payment because she was shifting gears into living on her own for the first time in a year. When they didn't receive payment from my grandmother, they promptly took the payment from my mom's credit card without her knowledge or consent. They didn't even send my grandmother a bill.

When my mother tried to have the service shut off, at first they refused to shut it off because it was in my grandmother's name. When my mom argued that regardless of whose name the service was in, they had charged HER for the bill and she wanted the service shut off, they reluctantly agreed and then turned right around and charged my mother's credit card AGAIN for breech of service contract (early termination fee) and equipment not returned. The account was never in my mom's name and she never signed any contract. To hold her financially or legally responsible for upholding a contract she never entered into is just plain illegal. Again, they never even sent my grandmother a bill. They just charged my mom's card because they had it on file and wanted quick payment of a large sum of money - which to me is akin to robbery.

She is still going rounds with them and with her credit card holder.

From what I've heard and read, this is pretty common practice for DN.

My mom had almost the same experience, except that it was my sister and her DH that lived with my mom. My mom also hated the internet service so much that she went back to using dial-up for her computer (no cable available at her house). Her satellite is always going out if it's the least bit windy or rainy. I'd never go with them personally.

we have direct tv and it is no better or worse then cable. Yes in a heavy ice/rain/snow it goes fuzzy but thats rare, maybe 2-3xs a year. I LOVE their version of the tivo option and would never give it up. My friend has dish and around here at least her channel choices are much more limited then what we can get. She is trying to switch. cable around here would involve paying to have lines installed up to our house. But when I looked into it the cost was similar to direct tv but I get more channel choices with direct tv. a lot will depend on what is available with cable locally.