# 921 Hard Drive Failure, No Response from Dish



## Big D (Aug 19, 2002)

My 921's hard drive failed Tuesday afternoon, wife was watching it and it just went. Sounds like a thrashing machine, so she unplugged it till I got home. Plugging it in gets the classic crashed HD sounds, it will not even start to reboot. Called Dish, got transferred to advanced tech for 921, she informed me that they no longer just RMA 921s, her supervisor has to email someone and that person will call me back. 

That was Tuesday at 6pm Pacific, we got no call by 4 pm Wed, so I had the wife call back. She got the run around, they said they have us on the call list, they are making the calls, just do not know how long it will take to get to us. And no, they will not say how many are on this "to call list" or why we can not get a replacement unit sent our way. They also refuse to escalate, we just have to wait our turn.

It is now the 3rd day into this, still no call and all I want is to have a replacement unit sent, I have the extended warranty, so what is the problem.

Anyone know how I can get Dish to provide me customer service?


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

...thought you people knew the drill by now...if you want to talk to the 921 support team, you really need to go through me to make sure it happens. Email (NOT PM!) me your contact information, the description of the problem (what you posted above would be fine), your receiver CAID and smartcard ID number (if you can still access them from your sysinfo page). I'll send that to the 921 team leader, and you will get a callback from them. Usually within 24 hours, unless you send it to me on Saturday, in which you won't get a callback until Tuesday at the earliest.


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## UT_Texan (Dec 9, 2004)

Big D, shame on you for trying call the mfr to address a problem with their product!!  :nono2:


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## Big D (Aug 19, 2002)

Silly me, actually expecting customer service!

I finally called them again Thurs afternoon when we had not received a call via Mark's intervention as yet and of course got a run around. The 921 group said they never received either the Tue or Wed emails from their tech people with our problem, so they did not know to call us. Seems the system is just plain broke. Once we had the 921 specialist on the phone, they were able to put their highly trained 921 ears to the task of listening to my crashed hard drive and declared it indeed crashed big time and set up an RMA. So it only took Dish 3 days to recognize that a hard drive that could be heard trashing from the next room needed to be replaced.

The next insult was they said the earliest they could send the replacement would be April the 29th, 8 days later. Of course I blew up at that and got them to agree it will go out probably Monday, after all it is expensive to ship faster than that we were told! 

BTW, no apologies for the call back screw-ups, no we're sorry you lost all you recordings, no sorry you are going to be without your capability to watch/record your programs for over a week, just a terse good-bye, we need to go make someone else's day miserable now.


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## Guest (Apr 22, 2005)

This whole thing (921 program) has a bad taste to it. I'm glad you finally made some progress at satisfaction.

I would hope the long turn-around time is due to not having a supply of extra 921's around. I can view that in a few negative ways. I'll let you imagine what they are.

I think the 921 team's days are nothing but misery. Sometimes I feel like pulling a Kathy Bates and sledging my 921.


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## bytre (Sep 10, 2003)

When mine failed, it took a week (and multiple calls to Dish) to get the call back. Awful experience.


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## welchwarlock (Jan 5, 2005)

If you design a consumer electronics device, and include a hard drive inside, you should make the hard drive replacable by the end user. 

For a satellite receiver (especially one that has no capability to spin down the drive, and runs 24/7), they should have the device on a tray that is easily replaced. 

Hard drives have a useful operating life of 3-5 years before they wear out, plus the occaisional failure that occurs before the wear out.

It is insane that the entire receiver should be shipped back and forth to repair what is essentially a consumable component. (my treo 300 phone suffers the same poor design decision...the battery was not user replacable....insane!)

Dish better develop a strategy to replace hard drives more efficiently within the next 2 years, when these players start seeing more wear out failures. Since they are charging their customers a "DVR" fee for equipment their customers own, they are assuming responsibility for ensuring the DVR capability continues to work, which is the replacement of the consumable DVR component...

Robert Cook


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## Big D (Aug 19, 2002)

Just to close this one out, I received my replacement unit, got it activated without issue, got the L213 download right away and had a complete 9 day guide and all channels up and running within an hour. Recorded several programs and all is working fine. This unit even sounds less noisy. New unit is a HEED versus a HECD

My first unit lasted 17 months, hope this one does as well.


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## jergenf (Mar 31, 2005)

Big D said:


> Just to close this one out, I received my replacement unit, got it activated without issue, got the L213 download right away and had a complete 9 day guide and all channels up and running within an hour. Recorded several programs and all is working fine. This unit even sounds less noisy. New unit is a HEED versus a HECD
> 
> My first unit lasted 17 months, hope this one does as well.


Were they able to transfer your recorded programs to the new drive?
Did it cost you anything for this repair?


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## Big D (Aug 19, 2002)

No, there is no transfer service offered, even if the HD was able to be accessed. In my case the drive was toast, only a very expensive dissection by DriveSavers would be able to get data off it.

I have the original $1.99 a month extended warranty so I did not pay anything for the swap, including no shipping cost.


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## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

I'm pleased to say that with Mark's intervention, it appears that a new (well, presumably refurbished) 921 is in fact on its way to my home, in response to my 921's hard drive failure. One loses any stored programming and does have to re-do the setup, but this is a small price to pay for a unit which is once again functional.

Mine wasn't under warranty, so it wasn't free, but Dish is actually quite reasonable about the fees to have the unit replaced.


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## garyhesq (Nov 5, 2004)

If it was not under warranty is there a reason why you didn't get a 942 instead?


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## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

Dish isn't offering to just replace one with the other, i.e. this isn't an option which is provided to customers. Last I checked, a 942 was something like $700, and Dish isn't doing trade-ups. Hence, the price to fix the 921 (well, swap it out with a fully working 921) was substantially less than the cost to replace it with a 942 (which presumably would be the full MSRP of a 942).


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## jdamp (Feb 3, 2004)

My 921's hard drive is on the way out too. Every 15 to 20 minutes it will make a horrid clunk sound and the video will freeze up for a few seconds and then start playing again.


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## JM Anthony (Nov 16, 2003)

bytre said:


> When mine failed, it took a week (and multiple calls to Dish) to get the call back. Awful experience.


As I reported in an earlier thread, my experience last month was just the opposite. E* busted their butts to take care of my toasted 921 including overnighting a replacement. Short of Charlie handling the follow up work (toasted SW64 switch), they did just about everything they could.


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## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

Yup. I have to say that Dish was actually quite nice and reasonable about the whole affair (although perhaps it was Mark that made it possible!). I received my replacement 921 the next business day after it shipped out. Hooked it up, activated it, and I was off and running.

Almost makes me wish I had acted sooner to get it swapped out, but by waiting as long as I did, it does provide a better guarantee that Dish will successfully replicate the issue during their testing of the failed unit (since the hard drive was getting worse with time...). I definitely didn't want to replace a unit that was just "a little flakey".


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

If you call on your own, it'll be hit or miss how you'll get treated. But, the team that I send you to really does go out of their way to take care of you. The response to the experience that I get from both sides has been overwhelmingly positive.


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## nuts4scuba (Jan 11, 2003)

jdamp said:


> My 921's hard drive is on the way out too. Every 15 to 20 minutes it will make a horrid clunk sound and the video will freeze up for a few seconds and then start playing again.


If you think your 921 is going to go down you might consider getting Dish's warranty. I believe it cost $5.99 a month.


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