A month after a ransomware attack on Dish Network, many customers say they are still having technical issues — and face wait times of up to 15 hours when they call to ask for assistance.
The TV and wireless service provider’s problems began on Feb. 23, when a multiday outage disrupted Dish’s internal servers and customer service operations, preventing Dish users from making payments or accessing their accounts. The company confirmed in a Feb. 28 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the outage was the result of a cyberattack.
In addition to knocking out its customer service desk, apps and websites, Dish said “certain data was extracted from the corporation’s IT systems” during the breach. The company is investigating whether the data included customers’ personal information.
In a statement dated Wednesday on Dish.com, Dish said payment systems are back up and running and that call center capacity is increasing daily, warning that it would still “take a little time” before their systems were fully restored.
But many frustrated Dish customers say it’s still nearly impossible to reach customer service four weeks after the breach.
Susan and Chris McClendon of Mableton, Georgia, use Dish to watch TV in their motorhome and only turn on service when they take trips. The McClendons said Dish never informed them that there had been a ransomware attack and they had no idea anything had gone awry until they logged into their app last Friday and couldn’t reactivate service.
After spending six hours waiting to speak to customer service, with one brief conversation with a representative who transferred the call to another department, Susan McClendon gave up for the day and decided to call again first thing Saturday morning. That went even worse, she said.
“I got the message that says, ‘Our call volume is unusually high.’ It says, ‘Your wait time is 847 minutes,’” she said. “That’s over 14 hours.”
The couple finally managed to…
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