Is my neighbor getting free DISH from hooking on to mine?

Question

We just had new neighbors move in our apartment complex the other day & the guy knocked on my door to ask which satellite was ours (there are 2 - 1 dish, 1 directv). I told him which was ours & he told me he was going to be hooking up his dish & that we may lose our signal for a few moments while he was doing it. I told him ok & thought nothing of it until I realized that when you have DISH, they hook it up for you for FREE when you move. I know they would use the exsisting satellite to hook his up, but I find it suspicious that he was doing it himself. THEN, after losing my signal & not getting it back, he told me that his "splitter" that he was using to hook his up was not good & he was going to get a new one. I did get my signal back finally, but I am very curious to know if he is trying to hook into ours & get free dish. I dont understand why they wouldnt just have DISH network come out and do it? What should i do? Am I being scammed? He said he used to work for Dish network.

Answer 1

A satellite disc can run 4  or more boxes with the correct lnb he will still have his own card for his box, he probably just did not want to put up another dish

Answer 2

if the signal isnt too bad then forget all about it. i stopped using dish network because it sucked *** by the way, the d**n tree grew up somehow and its blocked the signal

Answer 3

Okay, #1 check to see if any wires are going towards his apartment. If not there you have it. Just call up dish network if you do and explain your situation to them.

Answer 4

An apartment set up is very different from a regular home set up. First off the dish can be shared by up to 8 receivers (on some systems most are 4) per dish antenna. Second it isn't the antenna LNB that decodes the programming it is the dish receiver. The dish is just a glorified antenna and  does nothing for DECODING the signal only the receiver can do that.

More than likely he didn't want to wait for the dish guys as this can take a few days, in most cases. But it would not be a splitter it more than likely would be a electronic switch and not a static splitter as the receivers would see a bad connecting without impedance matching. It is not unusually to use one dish for several TV's, but I will agree that is it unusual that he was performing the work himself.

I would contact Dish with you concerns in a week if you don't see a dish guy, stealing pay signal is a federal crime and is just wrong.

Answer 5

Your new neighbor seemed comfortable enough with asking you if he could do it.  Go to his apartment and see if he has a decoder.  He must, but give him a visit and look around.  Bring a beer or something and have a general chat with him about lots of things.  See what his opinions and values seem to be.  If he used to work for DishNetwork, he could have the ability to steal the programming from them.  But as other have pointed out, this really has nothing to do with using your dish.  He could easily have put up his own as there is no way for DishNetwork to know if a dish is active or not, being paid for or not.  He's not stealing the programming you've paid for.  If he is stealing, he's doing that with his own decoder.