DISH NETWORK

Description of Work: After waiting months for the DTVpal, having one order canceled because of unavailability and the price increase, I finally got two just days before my coupons expired. I immediately installed one on our bedroom TV. In less than two weeks, it had failed. When turned on, it would download schedule for a minute, give me about a minute of TV viewing, then the picture would lock up. It would stay this way for a while, then eventually "reboot", power off, back on, and repeat the process over and over. Aside from all the firmware bugs that have been reported on this unit, my unit is broken. A dozen emails, chats, and phone calls with Dish over the past TWO MONTHS, and they can't even figure out how to replace a failed box under their warranty. I have been lied to repeatedly by their "Executive Resolution Team". It seems their entire operation is set up to require an account number to do anything, which DTVpal users don't have. 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. As to my problem, 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!On 8/20 I called their 888-667-0633 customer "support" number from the instruction book. They transferred 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 never did. On 9/4 I again called dish, and after getting nowhere for a while, managed to get transferred to the ERT ("Executive Resolution Team"). Isaac Ferman seemed helpful, but rather ignorant. He told me the unit would not work unless activated, and that he had to set up an account for me before it would work. He couldn't explain why it had worked for about a week when I first got it without an account, or why my other unit worked without an account, but set up an account for me, which of course did nothing. He took all of my information, and promised I'd have a replacement shipped immediately, and that it would be in my hands a week later on 9/11.