Update *long again*
After a week of agonizing over my decision to switch, I finally pulled the plug on DishNetwork today. I was sick to death of having them tell me they'd give me whatever they thought I wanted to hear and then call back and they hadn't given me the credit or whatever price they promised. After the "high up" lady last time promised me $48 a month for 10 months, when I quit today the lady said I was currently paying $78 a month. I withstood the urge to explode. She offered me a couple months for free and to knock it down to $48, but after all of the bs they'd fed me I'm convinced they would have just kept making crazy offers and then not holding up to them. Now trust me, I think Mediacom sucks too, but I was more than happy to go back to my internet, digital cable with HD, starz, showtime, tmc, on demand, and the sports pack for a total of $80 a month. After it was all set up and I'd quit Dishnetwork and taken back Mediacom, I went over to plug my cable box back in and the commy from Dish had cut all my cable stuff outside. If I could have gotten satisfaction within 15-20 minutes calling back in I would have reemed somebody out, but I decided to channel my negative energy towards hooking the stubs in myself. It took some serious drill work, but in the end I was back to having cable by this afternoon. After dealing with all sides involved for the last couple weeks, I would definitely say there are disadvantages on both sides. I think it takes forever to get through to either of them (slight edge to Dish here), it takes forever to get somebody to get out to your place to actually do something (although Mediacom gets there a lot faster). It's a pain in the butt to turn equipment back in (driving over to Mediacom's office vs. making 5 calls back and forth between Dish and the installer and finally waiting a week for a box to mail it in). In the end though, I think I'll take the lesser of two evils and go with the product that is actually going to give you what you ask for at the price they quote you. True the picture quality isn't as good on regular channels, but you do get the Mediacom channel for a lot of ISU games and I get it a heck of a lot cheaper with my internet. Hopefully someday there will be a better quality alternative!
