I got the Russian Packages on Dish Network for my wife back in December. It has been a series of continuous headaches ever since.
First, because all I wanted was the Russian channels and nothing else, I was forced to spend around $300 to purchase my equipment. If I were getting one of the Russian packages, I could have gotten away with it cheaper, but to get both packages, I needed to get a "superdish". Apparently, the packages travel on different satellites.
Installation was ok, but the way they hooked it up into the back of my TV made my cable TV look crappy. I ended up rewiring the back of my entertainment center and now have acceptable picture for everything.
As far as the entertainment goes, Marina is less than thrilled with it. The movies are either so old or so out of the mainstream no TV station in Ukraine would carry most of these shows. There are occasional shows or concerts that are interesting, but that is far from the norm.
I've also had the "pleasure" of experiencing Dish Network's customer support. During business hours, you'll catch a US rep. After hours, you get the pleasure of trying to figure out what your rep from India is saying. Every time I call them, I find one more irritation. Below is a small log of my various headaches.
1) I had my service disconnected for not paying a bill, despite the fact they had already cashed my check. They reconnected me, but tried to charge me a reconnect fee. I had to talk to a supervisor to make them drop it.
2) They tried to force me to sign up for their basic channels, saying I could only get Russian packages, if I had the basic service. Of course, this is not what I was told when I purchased the equipment, and again when I talked with the Dish Network agent who was setting up my channels during the installation. I once again had to talk to a supervisor to get only what I wanted.
3) They tried to charge me a $5 a month rental fee on the equipment I had already bought. It took me about 15 minutes of arguing with them, to get them to drop the fee.
4) When I went to drop one of the Russian packages, keeping the other one, they tried to add a "local channels" option on my package for an additional $5 a month. I had to specifically object to this and demand that it be removed.
My wife and I are looking at an option at
www.overseatv.com, where we can get 8 Ukrainian channels over broadband for $29.95 a month. This is the same we pay right now for just 2 Russian channels via Dish Network. The channels are also what Marina watches when she's in Ukraine, so she knows that they will be interesting for her. If we do this, we'll cancel Dish Network and keep an eye on our dish, in case they try to "reclaim" our dish for themselves...
