Recently active topics in EchoStar Communications Corporation tagged with failed warranty not honored

***** Dish network / Echostar is a rip off and their warranty isn't worth the paper it's printed on! *****

Since it is the only converter with any hope of allowing me to continue to program my VCR / DVR, I waited for months for the DTVpal to ship, and ordered 2 using my coupons just before they expired middle of last month. The units arrived barely a week before my vacation. I immediately installed one on our bedroom TV, and it seemed to behave OK.

We were then out of town for just over a week. When I got back, the DTVpal was dead. It turns on, loads the schedule, then gives me maybe a minute of TV, then the picture freezes. Sometimes the sound continues, sometimes it stops shortly afterwards. Then it will "reboot", reload the schedule, and the whole cycle repeats.

I emailed Echostar support on 8/8, and they kept insisting that they couldn't help me without an account number. WTF? The whole idea of these boxes is that I don't have to pay the monthly fees for service and crappy support.

On 8/12 I found their tech support "chat" and spent 45 minutes online with "Alvaro", who confirmed that my box was broken, and that they would replace it. He took my name, address, and phone number, and said I'd get a confirmation call in 3 days that a replacement had been shipped.

NOTHING!

Yesterday I called their 888-667-0633 customer "support" number from the instruction book. They transfered me a couple times to a different number, and I again explained the problem, and they again realized the box was defective, but again, without an account number, they don't have a clue how to replace the thing. They were supposed to figure it out and get back to me, but it's now a day later and no response.

A couple days ago I unpacked the second unit, swapped it with the failed one, and so far it is working OK. We'll see if it lasts more than a couple weeks.

And no, something nasty didn't happen to the house power while I was gone. The TV is plugged into the same outlet, and it's fine. And I have a whole house data center grade surge suppressor installed off the main breaker box that has saved me many times in the two decades we've lived here.

I did confirm that there is no way to field upgrade the firmware on these boxes to fix all of the firmware bugs that they went ahead and shipped with this product that shouldn't be out of beta test at this point. So firmware upgraded will require replacing the entire unit at customer expense.

Does any one know the logistics of returning something that was purchased with one of the government coupons? They would have expired by now, so they can't just reactivate them like the first place did that I ordered the DTVpal, but then didn't get product and canceled all their back orders.