Dish Turnoff, On Confusing

One just needs to work the system, to turn on I call from my cell phone which is attached to the account and get to a CS person to activate the account. That is always the easy part.
Not set to auto pay, as I do call to end service, we will use on long weekends why pay for a month and get three day service.
Call after use, state we have an RV account, and state we want to cancel service, that we own our equipment. Make sure the CANCEL and NOT pause. Pause has a $5.00 a month service charge, cancel is no charge.

When we need again we just call in and repeat the process and pay to get balance back to one months service.

From Dishformyrv web site:

No credit checks or long-term contracts, as well as no fee to start and stop your monthly service.

There is no commitment required, activation, disconnect or restart fees. When you are no longer using your service you can simply stop paying your monthly bill. However, if you are a current DISH subscriber and have a receiver added to your account, or you have a credit card on file for Pay-As-You-Go programming, please call DISH to remove from your account to avoid being billed for the next month.

5thwheeleroldman wrote:
I have dish in the RV and just turn it off or on when going on RV trips.

It seems when I call in to turn it off, the response is completely different each time. Sometimes, they say to just turn it off, no further monthly charges. Sometimes they say $5/mo maintenance fee with arguments about insurance, etc. This last time they said they could only put me on their lowest programming fee; $21.70/mo. I finally just told them to cancel my service and I would simply reapply before going on my next RV trip (probably 4 months from now).

It's like every time I call in to turn off the service, I'm talking to a completely different company. Any ideas?

yes. we're also on DISH. most of the cust. support people you will encounter are not aware of or have no experience with RV accounts. that accounts for the variety of answers you've received. there used to be a separate RV accounts phone number but that was discontinued a while back.

here's what we do. first, if you haven't done so create an online account with DISH. that will minimize your contact with DISH.

next, if you have your account set to auto-pay each month remove that option from your account. you can either pay your bill via your online account or by phone without human contact.

when you're ready to turn off your account simply stop paying your bill. you'll get email reminders but you can safely ignore them. when it's time to re-start you may have to call and speak to a CSR as your online acct access may be suspended due to inactivity. simply tell them you are in an RV and want to reactivate your account. that's it.

for residential accounts DISH allows customers to "suspend" their accounts for up to 8-months in each calendar year. as RV'ers we own our equipment and we are month-to-month, no 2yr contract.

I set this account up about 4 years ago and thought I had something like that. Reckon I should call up and ask them to reestablish me on that "Flex" plan?

If you have a Dish "Flex" Pay-As-You-Go account, all you need to do is not pay the next month's bill to stop the service. Then call in to restart it...