New on Dish menu: refunds

If the Detroit Tigers hadn’t had such a dismal season, I probably would have gone to battle with Dish Network earlier - on that summer evening I tried to turn on a Tigers game and got a talking head dishing out Dish’s version of why the satellite-TV company dropped FS1, the station that broadcasts Tigers games.

Then suddenly the Big Ten Network also disappeared from Dish’s menu.

On Wednesday (a rainy day) I braced myself for 15 minutes of dopey on-hold Muzak and made the call to Dish’s customer service line.

Dish Rep. Armand acknowledged that many Dish customers were “jumping ship.” He cast FS1 and Big Ten as the villains, arguing that if Dish paid them what they wanted they would have to raise subscription rates. Blah, blah, blah …

The bottom line was that Armand offered me one month free ($60.99), adding that he expected both channels to be back up within that period.

I accepted, but got Armand’s direct number and told him that if his prediction didn’t come true, he and I would have another chat.