I’ve been with Dish Network for about 5 years now. I used to have local Cox Cable, but their prices got out of hand, and I made the switch in an effort to save money. I’m always looking for new offers to try and keep Dish Network honest on their fees.

I’ve been really happy with Dish Network overall. Their customer service is good, and I’ve usually been able to negotiate a reasonable deal. My best deal was when I was able to get the higher priced package for the cheapest package price. After two good years on that plan, I no longer could get it extended. A little over two years ago Dish ran an excellent offer of Cinemax for a penny per year if you signed up for automatic payment. I was luckily able to get the Cinemax offer for two years. Recently, Dish automatically gave all of their users 7 free Starz channels until Feb. 2012 since they are celebrating their 30th Anniversary. The movie lineup on Starz I already see if way better than those that were offered on Cinemax.

Recently someone posted an unadvertised deal on FatWallet that intrigued me, called the American Welcome Package. The package includes the following stations:

Channel Station
107 COMEDY CENTRAL (CMDY)
110 FOOD NETWORK (FOOD)
112 HOME & GARDEN TELEVISION (HGTV)
120 HISTORY (HIST)
127 OXYGEN (OXYGN)
128 WE: WOMEN’S ENTERTAINMENT (WE)
130 AMC (AMC)
134 ShopNBC (SHNBC)
137 QVC (QVC)
139 TURNER BROADCAST SYSTEM (TBS)
161 MUSIC TELEVISION 2 (MTV2)
166 COUNTRY MUSIC TELEVISION (CMT)
175 BOOMERANG (BOOM)
179 THE HUB (HUB )
183 LEARNING CHANNEL, THE (TLC)
185 HALLMARK CHANNEL (HLMRK)
203 BLOOMBERG TELEVISION (BITV)
209 MSNBC (MSNBC)
214 THE WEATHER CHANNEL (TWC)
222 HSN (HSN)
230 ICTV (ICTV)

The best part, it is only $14.95/month. Add in locals and DVR, and the user’s total was $20.95/month. Currently I pay over double that rate with the Top 120 package. I considered switching to the package above, but chose not to because we also watch the Travel Network and the Disney Channel for our son. It’s a lot to pay for those two extra stations considering all the other stations in the 120 package are worthless, but the little our son watches tv, the Disney Channel is worth the extra cost to us.

I’ll continue to watch for other future offerings that would make it worthwhile for us to switch. One thing to note though is that some of the offers want the customer to sign up for a new long term contract. While we are happy with Dish Network, I’m reluctant to sign any new contracts since we hopefully will be moving within the next 6 months. I am also intrigued to eventually go cable free in the future, like my sister has done. They watch everything over the internet, and use RedBox for movies. My wife has even offered that she will let us get rid of cable if we sign up for NetFlix. It’s all options we may consider after we make our move to a new home.