Surewest vs. dish

Having lived in or around Sacramento almost my entire life, I’ve had experiences with practically every utility company and phone/tv/broadband provider in the area. Until recently we had dish for tv, and AT&T for phone and DSL. We were cruising along nicely, paying a bit more than we should, but we were happy. Then my wife decided to take a class at Sac State that was televised. Unfortunately, those televised classes are only available on cable (Comcast or Surewest).

We called Comcast first and were not impressed. This experience started with my wife trying to sign up via their web site. For some reason, that doesn’t make much sense to either of us, they require a social security number. Not wanting to provide that information over the Internet, even though they claim it’s secure, I was drafted to give them a call and see if I could get it straightened out. The representative had the attitude that they could live without our business and that I should just trust them that they’re the best around. The rates quoted me were higher than Dish, for less and we’d have to pay more for a second DVR. I loved the part that, if there was a problem, they’d come out and fix it for free! I had to explain several times that the other companies would, and have, as well.

For weeks we had been getting fliers in our mailbox from Surewest promoting their bundles. We looked into it and found that we could save quite a bit of money and retain most, if not all, of what we currently had. So we scheduled an installation and I took time off work, expecting it to be an hour or two. Oh Nooooo. I was surely mistaken! Apparently they have to attach a box to the outside of the house, run new cables, replace phone and cable jacks, and then setup and install the equipment. When it was all said and done, but not quite done, it had taken about six hours! And the best part… they didn’t have our phone ported over from AT&T and they didn’t bring a router, so we had no phone and no Internet. After being on the phone for about two hours, I finally got them to send out someone with a wireless router and got credited for time without phone and the minutes I used on my cell phone on hold. We didn’t have phone service for around a week.

I wish we still had dish. When I called and canceled dish, I found that we could basically have the same bundle for $10 less per month! And we’d have a quality DVR that we loved. And we could have a DVR in two rooms. And we wouldn’t be frustrated by the whole experience. I’ve had a bad experience with Surewest in the past and vowed never to use them again, but I lost that fight. So, now, we’re stuck with one DVR in the living room that randomly and frequently freezes, is a pain in the ass to use, does not record properly, and is just a piece of junk.

Mark my words. We will be back with dish once our contract expires with Surewest. If my wife needs to take anymore classes, we can find someone else to record it for us. It’s that bad.