How Much Money Extra For Dish Network For Additional Fees And Taxes?

When you sign up for telecommunications services — some combination of TV, broadband, and/or phone — y'all're told you'll pay something similar $49 or $99 a month… and nevertheless the price you lot actually pay can be as much equally 40% again on tiptop of that, thanks to a heap of sometimes confusing charges and fees. Which ones do you blame the government for, and which are made upwards past your cable company? One business at a time, we're using real customers' bills to interruption it down. Nosotros've covered Comcast, TWC, DirecTV, Charter, FiOS, and Uverse in our nib guide serial so far. At present, information technology's Dish's turn.

The beneath nib was provided to Consumerist past a real-life Dish customer who subscribes to a programming service tier that nominally costs $89.99 per month. The subscriber besides pays for some extra premium and movie options, which definitely increase the rate. Setting aside the premium content add together-ons, though, $28.57 — about 18% of their overall $157 bill — comes from some kind of additional surcharge or fee.

Dish bills are, well, pretty short. Since the company simply provides pay-TV service, and not cyberspace or vocalism, they're limited in scope. Dish also charges fewer fees overall than near of their competitors — a fact they tout far and wide equally a major marketing tactic on their website, where they compare their ain fee structure favorably against basically all the aforementioned providers (except Uverse) nosotros've looked at so far.

Only "short" doesn't necessarily mean "clear" or "absent of any weasel language," even with Dish. Let's interruption information technology downwardly:

dish_annotated
(Central: The RED numbers [1-10] are Dish-originating fees; BLUE numbers [11] are government fees)

Monthly Tv set

ane.) America's Top 250
This is the quoted price for the service bundle you subscribe to. In this case, information technology's the "America'due south Top 250" service tier, which includes almost every English-linguistic communication TV channel there is, including all of the premium networks that usually require an boosted fee.

Dish does all pricing based around their minimum package, which they annunciate as "$49.99 a month plus taxes," and the "America'southward Top 250" tier packet is described as a $25 / calendar month upgrade over that. Do the math, and that's $74.99 per month for the package, which includes basically all of the basic, standard, and extended cable channels you can remember of, from the major to the niche, including a bunch of sports — but not including the premium channels (HBO, Starz, etc).

On their website, DirecTV currently advertises this bundle like then:

Dish_Bundle

This is the price you expect to pay, and the one y'all sign up for.

2.) First Receiver (add'l $7 – $17)
Satellite service requires some kind of receiver. This is functionally your cable box, for which the FCC thinks you are paying also much. Dish makes a point of not charging for the offset, primary receiver subscribers have, but they notwithstanding put the $0 line particular on the bill so y'all can feel like you're saving coin.

iii.) Joey Receiver
…Dish does, nonetheless, charge for additional receivers, and this subscriber has i. The company has a kangaroo-themed naming scheme, and the "baby" receivers on 2nd and subsequent TVs in a client's dwelling house are called Joeys.

4.) DVR Service
Dish makes clear upward-front that they charge separately for their fancy-pants "Hopper" (again with the kangaroo theme) DVR service. New customers pay $10, according to Dish's website. However, of the Dish bills nosotros looked at, all but ane were paying $12 for their DVR service.

5.) HD Complimentary For Life (reg $ten)
Every bit part of the package this client subscribes to, they become a "discount" on receiving HD service, zeroing the $10 fee out.

Nevertheless, this is somewhat misleading: HD service is always free, co-ordinate to Dish's website, on all service tiers.

Add-Ons

6.) HBO
Who doesn't need their Game of Thrones and Sesame Street gear up, right? HBO is your classic premium channel. However Dish is currently offering their packet of 9 HBO networks for $15, rather than $19, to customers who sign up for information technology at present.

seven.) Dish Flick Pack
The Dish movie pack gives you, well, movie channels, and lots of 'em. This particular client has called to add this channel package to their subscription packet.

8.) Protection Program
Dish, like its satellite competitor DirecTV, has an optional Protection Programme — equipment insurance, basically — that subscribers can opt to pay for.

Basically the fee is a $96 annual bet against whether yous'll have expensive repair needs or non. The plan covers replacement equipment, replacement cables due to power surges, and reduces the fee for having a tech come out to provide service to $10.

Dish automatically includes six gratis months of the protection plan with all of its 2-year contract bundles — so nearly people are going to see their monthly neb suddenly jump past $8 on calendar month seven of their "guaranteed two-year" price plan.

Sometime Charges

9.) VOD Hotel Transylvania 2
10.) Holiday
It's the year 2016: you rent movies by pushing a button on your remote control, instead of heading downwards to the local Blockbuster, because there is no local Blockbuster. This subscriber'due south family enjoys movies of an evening, and paid for some content this month.

Not pictured: Other one-fourth dimension charges or one-fourth dimension credits, like installation fees, repair fees, refunds, negotiated discounts, or similar not-recurring charges.

Taxes

11.) Country / Local Taxation (Sales)
Tax? Tax. Taxes are inevitable. Rates vary wildly depending where you live just the vast bulk of jurisdictions in the U.S. impose some kind of communications and/or sales revenue enhancement on pay-Boob tube services.

Googling "[land name] communications tax" should be the fastest manner to find the pay-TV service tax rates in your state. Rates may likewise vary based on county or municipality.

Additionally, some states and jurisdictions impose standard sales taxes on pay-TV or telecommunications serivces; some impose them at a different rate than on other goods, and some may not impose them at all. You'll need to google "[state name] sales tax" to start working that one out.

Dish lumps basically all country and local revenue enhancement you might pay into a single line item, which is not helpful for agreement why the coin is coming out, and where information technology goes. We've looked at eight unlike detailed Dish bills from seven dissimilar states, and the "State and local tax" line on them read annihilation from $0 to $9, without whatsoever state / local breakdown or further explanation.

One of the eight bills did list "tax (telecommunications)" and "revenue enhancement (sales)" as 2 different line items, simply it was not the but state of the ones we received bills from that imposes telecommunication taxes — dissever from sales taxes — on satellite TV.

Additionally, on one of the bills we also saw Dish pause out a land surcharge but without giving information technology a clear name to help the consumer understand information technology, similar so:
dishtax1

This customer has some kind of state surcharge on their pecker, only the charge does not specify if it is a public admission fee, a rights-of-way fee, a franchise fee, or some other kind of tax. Nor does the bill specify if the charge is statewide or local. That makes it very hard for a consumer to suss out where this charge comes from, why, and what the police force backside it is. (Our research indicates it's a state revenue enhancement specifically on satellite goggle box services.)

Dish does maintain a list of state / regional taxes on their website, which is a good outset. However, the names given to line-items on customers' bills practise non match the names given on the website, nor is the list all-inclusive, every bit it leaves out several states that do also accuse a tax.

Not a Dish Network subscriber? Never fearfulness! Previous installments of this series accept included detailed breakdowns of bills from Comcast, Lease, Time Warner Cable, Verizon FiOS, AT&T Uverse, and DirecTV, for all your cable bill comprehension needs.