"Jeff Dieterle" wrote in message
...

[snip]

What is the phone audit all about anyway, are you saying you get a call
from DTV wanting s/n's from your receivers?

Yes -- we have four receivers (Living Room, 2 Bedrooms, hobby room), and
about two months after installation we got a call auditing our use of the
receivers, asking for a couple of code numbers out of the software for each
receiver. This required going to each room, turning on the system and
getting setup info on the screen. Being careful and not sure who was
actually calling, I wouldn't answer their questions and asked for their
phone number. Then I called Dish TV (my provider) but their customer
service wasn't aware of what was happening (so I didn't return the auditer's
phone call). Two days later my satellite service was shut off, even though
I was paid up. I called CS again, they transferred me to the audit company,
and we went through our system receiver by receiver. They told me at the
time that they would shut down any receivers that couldn't be audited and
would start charging a monthly fee to have them reinstated. Within an hour
of the end of the audit satellite service was restored.

The audit was not particularly friendly (I won't go into details, but they
appeared to be starting from the position that I was cheating on them by
having receivers spread out in several houses.) There have been a few times
when I have seriously considered terminating the Dish TV service, and this
was one of those time. If I hadn't had a lot of my money already tied up by
purchasing the Dish receivers, I probably would have moved to Direct TV at
that time. I did make a formal complaint to Dish TV Customer Service about
this procedure, and it hasn't happened to me since.

It may be that if you only have two receivers you're a less visible
target -- certainly someone with four receivers is in the top few % of their
business and anyone trying to get away with having receivers in multiple
houses is likely to have four or more receivers, so we were an obvious
target --