We do not work for Dish or Directv. We are authorized to sell, install and maintain the products. Does a salesman at a local AV store that sells Sony TV's work for Sony?
We pride ourselves on the fact that we don't telemarket or lie to our customers. My boss is blown away that anyone would (be dumb enough to) give their SS#, CC#, birth-date, address and phone # to someone that just called them on the phone... Unfortunately people do, and then they have a problem and come to our store, because when they called the telemarketers back no one would give them the time of day. We have to inform them that they bought it from our competition and are now asking us to support it and help them with their product (you can see steam come out of my bosses ears when this happens). They think we are all one happy team and we should help them out for free...
As I said earlier, we have some high profile customers. The University of "my state" medical center (one of the top 5-10 in the country), has our system. To them the fact that it is Dish running the infrastructure is irrelevant. They needed better TV, we bid on the job and won. We build what is essentially an "old school" cable system to run the Hospital, powered by Dish network receivers that are located in a large mechanical room on the roof.
The residential customer sees one of our billboards, or hears about us by word of mouth and calls us, or comes into the store. We show them what we have and they decide what they want. We can not control what other companies do, but we didn't flood their mail with junk mail or cold call them or knock on their door.
Your comment that we are "just doing our job" is silly and insulting. Again, if Sony did something very unethical, does that mean everyone who has ever sold Sony should be considered unethical also? Does it mean that the Sony TV's still weren't the best fit for the customers needs?