An open letter to a town that I love full of people that I care about.

This is a letter to a town that holds a special place in my heart. I have a lot of family still there. Growing up, I spent a lot of time near there on my family’s farm. Muleshoe is full of honest, God-fearing, hard-working people that are a shrinking part of this beautiful country. Even though I no longer live there, I feel compelled to speak my truth. There are people there that I care about and love. To see them being robbed of their hard-earned dollars in that small community is something that lights me up!

I moved to Muleshoe at a pretty formative time in life. My wife and I had a 14 month old back then and we were pretty tired most of the time. As you may or may not know, working on a farm, you can be pretty worn out at the end of a long day in the Texas heat and it’s nice to sit down and just have something to watch. She was going crazy without anything to keep her connected to civilization.

When I lived outside of Mulsehoe, TX, I didn’t have many options for getting good TV service. I moved there in 2016 and spent close to 18 months as a hired hand before moving on and changing careers to something that would better afford my growing family. My wife needed her sanity while I was out working, so our journey began. 

We searched around and landed on the idea that Dish Network Satellite Television might be a good idea. This has been one of the longest running rip-offs of my adult life and I’ll explain why. I’m still kicking myself for not reading all the fine print. DON’T BE FOOLED!

At the time that I signed up, I had no idea what we were in for. It seemed like a good deal. I’m still not sure most of it was legal. Little did I know…

The Meat and Taters

Why I’ll never use Dish Network again

TONS of HIDDEN FEES

I can’t stress this enough. What I thought (and was told by our local representative) was going to be around $125 – $135 per month before tax for internet and television service wound up being roughly DOUBLE. We wanted TV and Internet Service. There were so many arbitrary fees that none of it made sense. Don’t expect to contest that bill. I only thought it was cheaper with a ton of channels. Many of those channels didn’t even work most of the time.

LOCAL SUPPORT, NOT HAPPENING

Bottom line: It doesn’t exist! Period. If you have a problem, plan on spending 45 minutes on the phone at the very least. Even then, you’ll find you’ve been duped. My best advice, find a local company that is interested in helping you. Also, find one that doesn’t want your social security numbers. More on that later.

THUNDERSTORMS KILLED OUR SERVICE

EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. If we had a thunderhead rolling through, even if we didn’t get rain, guess what? No service. Super cloudy days. No Service. Our standing joke was that we might need to make the kid stand on the roof and hold a hanger to get us better reception. On top of that, there were always missing pieces of whatever we were watching. Always missing squares in the picture. Also, many of the channels we were paying for weren’t even there. Not that folks on the support line seemed to care. (See above)

INTERNET SERVICE WAS TERRIBLE

I remember paying for 25 Mbps speeds. It was the maximum I was allowed in our area. I always thought it seemed slow. A techy friend of mine was out there visiting and discovered I was getting 3 Mbps. Seriously, just 3? This was never fixed during the 17 months we lived there. Even though I would call once a week to talk to customer service about it.

DATA CAPS

They NEVER told us that the internet service would be capped. In other words, there was only so much data they were allotting us per month. This was the jaw-dropper. Here I was sending them a good-sized portion of my paycheck each month, I couldn’t ever get the speeds I wanted on my internet service. After that, those really slow internet speeds turn into even slower internet speeds. It was like waiting for a herd of turtles to stampede through molasses.

BOTTOMLESS CONTRACTS

When it came time for us to move on, leaving Dish Network Satellite Television behind was one of the sweeter parts of that. There’s always a catch though, isn’t there. This is where they get you. I called them to say I was moving, “OK sir, that will be $400 to cancel your contract”. After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I pulled out my contract and sure enough, buried in fine print, there it is.

That’s where they get you. You shouldn’t have to give your social security number to any utility provider. Ever. I guess it’s just not enough to pay out the nose for terrible television service.

The real bite came out after I paid my cancellation fee and they continued to bill me and drafted my payments. After fighting with them for 6 months and getting it stopped, I was told that they would issue a refund. I paid the outrageous fee to cancel. Why were they still taking my money? I never got a straight answer. They still owe me thousands on my refund and, frankly, I finally gave up trying. This has already wasted too much of my life.

YOU’RE BUYING FROM A RESELLER

Friends of friends told me he was a good guy. After doing research, I figured out that he was just collecting a monthly residual for ripping me off. As of today and over $6500 lost to Dish, I’m not a fan personally. I won’t name names, but it’s a small community. You can figure it out.

Please, let this letter serve as a warning. It’s been over a year since I’ve lived in the area, but I’m sure that others there have had similar experiences. There are still friends and family of mine that live there who probably have no idea. Surely there are alternatives by now.

Sincerely,

Bob M.

DISH Network is a registered trademark of DISH Network L.L.C. It’s still a rip-off, but at least they feel important.