Peter L.

You get what you pay for with satellite service. Dish is a joke compared with DirecTV. DTV has the same negatives of all the cable/sat providers: 2 year contract, extra charge for HD, extra charge for using a DVR (beyond the cost of the DVR itself), prices go up a bit almost every year.

However, when compared to the alternatives, DTV provides a better customer experience. Almost every channel is HD -- which puts them ahead of Dish and Cable networks right there. Also, their least expensive channel package is actually fairly comprehensive (local channels, almost all of the basic cable channels) and offers far more channels (and more channels you may actually watch) than the lowest-priced packages from Dish or any Cable company. So you have to look at DirecTV's higher prices with that in mind. You get a lot more. And their promotional deals for new customers are not nearly as deceptive as Dish's.

Also, once you have been a customer for awhile they will give you freebies to let you feel as if they appreciate your loyalty. I like that they at least pretend to care about you, since this is a dying tradition in many businesses today (Amazon being one major exception).

Dish makes a lot of claims on their TV commercials, but many of them are smoke and mirrors. Do not be taken in by the large, red, "Only $29.95/mo!" in their ads. This is only a promotion, and they are sneaky about hiding the truth of the price you WILL be paying once they've locked you into their two-year contract. To add insult to injury, their channel packages are incredibly sparse unless you pay a lot extra for the higher tiers. And way too many are not in HD -- even in 2015! DirecTV charges more for their lowest package, but that lowest package offers more channels, and more in HD, than all but Dish's most expensive packages. There is no comparison, especially if you use a multi-channel DVR (Dish is far more restrictive of what and when you can record, particularly in Prime Time, than DirecTV which is pretty much unrestricted). They cannot compete on quality of service, so they try to compete on price -- which invariably means cutting corners. But they are at least providing price competition in the cable/sat marketplace. That is pretty much their only useful function anymore (unless you have no other option to get TV for some reason).

Amazon, especially with Prime Membership, is far and away the best overall online store. The selection is unmatched, and the prices are almost always the best you can find, or very close to it. Prime is worth it for the free 2nd-busines-day shipping. I do not use other Prime services like music or Amazon Video or anything else. If Amazon raises the price of Prime Membership significantly, then I would have to decline, particularly if their justification is all the added Prime features that I do not use. Otherwise, I cannot rate this store lower than any other I've come across, ever.

Where else can you get all that Netflix provides for 8 bucks a month? Sure, their streaming library pales in comparison to their DVD library, but this is because TV and film publishers are changing far more for streaming rights than they do for their DVDs. And the only reason for that is they have various conflicts of interest with Netflix -- they would like Netflix to go away so the cable companies can have even more control over what you can watch than they already do. Sticking with Netflix is not only a bit of a protest against the Media Oligarchies, but more practically, it supports quality, actual ORIGINAL programming that those same Media Oligarchs have zero control over.

This software has caused me no ends of trouble on my Windows 7 machines, just like iTunes used to crash my old XP machines years ago. Nothing much has changed. It is still a bloated, ugly, resource-hogging excuse to give Apple a direct line to your wallet. ITunes is the #1 reason why I still buy CDs.

All you need to do is look at the completely useless boilerplate that "Mark" copy-pastes to EVERY bad review, regardless of the content. Clearly, this "Mark" person/robot isn't even reading these complaints -- only the ratings -- as "Mark's" one-and-only ever-repeating response doesn't even apply to many issues raised here. The fact that "Mark" thinks this is an acceptable form of dealing with customers who are complaining about Bonanza's LACK of customer support should tell you everything you need to know. Their concerns about Bonanza's truly laughable customer support are not only real, but manifested here for all to see. If the "Mark" robot posts the same blurb about the BBB on this review as "Mark" has on all other low-rated reviews, then you can rest assured that no one at Bonanza.com is listening or gives a crap.

To "Mark": if you are a real person, prove it by replying to the specific issue in this post (that Bonanza doesn't even read their customer's concerns, let alone provide any kind of support). If you are not a real person, then show it by posting the same weak line about the Better Business Bureau as has been posted already to every bad review here. Make sure there is no variation in any way to your usual response if you want us to believe that you are just an algorithm.