D* installer part 2 Grrrr!

[dishcomm]

Yea it seems there is no communication. I tell the CSR to put they will need a pole and bury cables and they don't showup with either. I think the problem is even bigger locally. Local news here had video of a DirecTV installer sleeping in the garage of a large home where he was suppose to be doing an install. I believe they are pulling drunks out of the French Quarter and slapping a DirecTV patch on them.

This is why we get our w/o's the night before and precall our customers..That one call eliminates lots of headaches and lack of communication..

 

[dishcomm]

A real pro came out today. He spent about 30 minutes with his instruments trying to find a line of sight on the various sats. 61.5 is blocked and 129 he was if on it. He said it was doable but he didn't have the pole he needed. He said he would need a sturdier pole for the bigger dish. So he said he will come back out in the next few weeks and hook me up. As a customer I really appreciated it. If he decides eventually it is impossible I will not have a problem with it. He really tried hard. It is the guys that show up and take one look and take off I have a problem with. I don't blame them after learning they get paid by the job. The real problem lies with these two companies for not taking care of their workers and not giving them the incentive to do a hard job.

Sometimes I can get out of my truck and be able to tell right away a property will not allow a line of sight...Most times though if I think there is a glimmer of hope, I will leave no stone unturned....It's not that I don't make a dime if the job does not go in or anything like that..I am being paid for cusomer service.That person is expecting a satellite system..I will do what I must within reason to make that happen....but sometimes the job juts will not go..That happens..
I am not a miracle worker and will not do ANYTHING that compromises my safety. Life is too short and I have to be intact to make a living....I don't go on steep roofs. I don't recommend to the customers to cut trees..Even if they ask..I will not accept the liabilty if they cut the wrong one....I am not the customers hired help for the day....

 

[dishcomm]

Hey uboatcmdr. I don't have to take pictures. I would say 1 in every 8 homes had a tree in it after Katrina in this subdivision. A good storm passed through last night and more trees fell knocking out power in some areas and hitting homes. I know that a pine tree will fall if any strong tropical storm passes through. One person that had two trees hit his house during Katrina cut down three more that were threatening his house and some A-hole down the street reported him so he was fined 500 per tree. I want to thank everyone on this board for their advice and support. I hope the guy that came by today can do it and if not that is the end of my quest for an upgrade. At least until the next good storm comes through. Thank you again uboatcmdr.

That A-hole down the street would have to keep buying new tires fopr his car becuase they keep mysteriously going flat...Busy body bastard....I would pay the fine either..I would tell them to sue....That case might get heard in 5 years...

 

[igator99]

Sometimes I can get out of my truck and be able to tell right away a property will not allow a line of sight...Most times though if I think there is a glimmer of hope, I will leave no stone unturned....It's not that I don't make a dime if the job does not go in or anything like that..I am being paid for cusomer service.That person is expecting a satellite system..I will do what I must within reason to make that happen....but sometimes the job juts will not go..That happens..
I am not a miracle worker and will not do ANYTHING that compromises my safety. Life is too short and I have to be intact to make a living....I don't go on steep roofs. I don't recommend to the customers to cut trees..Even if they ask..I will not accept the liabilty if they cut the wrong one....I am not the customers hired help for the day....

No you sound like a good tech. Like the last guy that came out. He spent thrity minutes or more walking around looking but eventually said he thought it would be impossible. Okay I understand that no problem I thanked him and when I called to cancel the install I told the CSR what a professional job he did trying and his company is doing them a great service. It's the ones that pull up and take off in five minutes that made me mad.

 

[igator99]

Sometimes I can get out of my truck and be able to tell right away a property will not allow a line of sight...Most times though if I think there is a glimmer of hope, I will leave no stone unturned....It's not that I don't make a dime if the job does not go in or anything like that..I am being paid for cusomer service.That person is expecting a satellite system..I will do what I must within reason to make that happen....but sometimes the job juts will not go..That happens..
I am not a miracle worker and will not do ANYTHING that compromises my safety. Life is too short and I have to be intact to make a living....I don't go on steep roofs. I don't recommend to the customers to cut trees..Even if they ask..I will not accept the liabilty if they cut the wrong one....I am not the customers hired help for the day....

Hired Help? Dear lord I never treated anyone of them like that. You should never put yourself in danger. There is much more to life than TV. I don't blame you on steep roofs or roofs in general how much do they pay you guys for such an install?

 

[dishcomm]

What? Really? Your ranch house must really be in the boonies. I can see if it isn't economically in the companies intrest to spend thousands to get power to one or two homes. Katrina ripped telephone poles for over 300 miles around here yet I haven't heard of one person having to replace a pole or having to pay to have a line brought to their home. I really never heard of such a thing. What I was trying to say that I'm not the lone ranger when it comes to trees. Wouldn't it serve DirecTV to have some national or local tree company contracted for a flat fee to top trees or even cut them down to put the service at the customers home? Of course the customer would be expected to pay more but not near what it would cost them to do it on their own. I talked about tech certification which I think the industry really needs. I've seen no less than seven techs this Summer and they ranged from clueless to really seasonsed vets. Also for installers there needs to be standards in both pay and the job being done. If your car will not start and you take it to a mechanic he doesn't get paid a flat 100 fee for fixing your car. He has standards as far as how much labor he charges plus costs. There is no standards as far as the job a tech performs. I could go around calling myself a tech and slapping dishes to the side of a house and tunning it using a reciever and TV. If the job was to difficult I would just tell the customer it is impossible and go on to the next job. Techs need a pay scale. An easy job where a house is already wired and where there is a clean line of sight should pay less then one where the poor guy has to run wires and fight trees. They should get paid much more. As far as I can tell they get paid the same.

When I upgraded from dialup to DSL I hardly knew Bell was out here. The only thing that clued me in was the sound of a ditch witch digging the ditch. Is that type of equipment available to the techs? I have seen everything from professional looking company trucks (which can be misleading) to guys in a beat up pickup trucks with dishes and recievers in the cargo area. You can make me into a bad guy but think about it for a second. A guy considering sat called the industry in a post some place on this board as being shaddy. For John Q. Public it is a little shaddy. I don't blame the techs, local companies but I do blame DirecTV and Dish for not providing true standards, certification and providing their people the tools to get a job done nor the incentives. They are making billions (Don't tell me they haven't made a profit yet) with little or no investment in getting the service to customers.

Yep we get paid the same whether the home is pre wired or not..Here's the rub..Once we connect the system the tech becomes responsible for the entire job..wiring and all...that's why we are paid the way we are...I don't agree with it....If an electrician comes to your home to hang a ceiling fan he will charge the cust accordingly....However if he has to run wire,install switch you'll be charged for that too.....
The satellite business is treated differently from all other trades...We really should be compensated by the customer for all the work we do..Especially us contractors..We pay for the material we use, we own the vehicles we use for work...I'm not saying I lose money. Only an idiot would go to work to lose money...However there are instances where a job requires a tremendous amount of work for which we are not paid extra for....Such as pulling extraordinary amounts of cable etc.....Dish network actually has a length of cable in their manual,,I believe it 150 feet..Theoretically the customer is supposed be billed for cable that exceeds that length....Also in the manual it's very clear that pole mounts, wall fishes, attic and crawlspace entries are "non-standard" and can be charged accordingly.....Dish has since changed that policy and those items are no longer chargeable on DNSC jobs.....Retailers however can charge whatever the market will absorb......

Custom jobs like yours however are an exception....When a large amount of cable is needed or the design of the home is not conducive to allowing normal or standard methods of installation additional charges may apply.....
What you pay in programming fees is immaterial....The tech does not get any of that revenue....I understand your concern as a consumer and you are curious as to why a tech would charge $100 for a pole mount that takes an hour...Answer is if the pole mount takes two hours the rate is the same...We simply charge flat rates....Most of what we do as extra work is charged at a flat rate....

 

[stevo/65]

Do you do driveway and sidewalk bores?....We don't touch them...no one is buying the EQ to do that kind of work. Especially if the customer balks at paying for the extra work..

I have done some driveway/sidewalk bores recently.
I no longer work DNS/HSP contracts "they both suck here"I work retail going behind both DNS/HSP installs.
Customers always calling us to fix their installs....due to the fact they ignore their customers after they do half ass job. " Too Busy "
So customer pays us to do it right or
they just CHURN..then again not our problem

Laters stevo

Now you guys know what i look like
Ps. If you guys want..... PM me and i will post you my myspace link
never mind...here it is http://www.myspace.com/1_crazymexican
_______________

 

[dishcomm]

I have done some driveway/sidewalk bores recently.
I no longer work DNS/HSP contracts "they both suck here"I work retail going behind both DNS/HSP installs.
Customers always calling us to fix their installs....due to the fact they ignore their customers after they do half ass job. " Too Busy "
So customer pays us to do it right or
they just CHURN..then again not our problem

Laters stevo

Now you guys know what i look like
Ps. If you guys want..... PM me and i will post you my myspace link
_______________

Actually the DNS contract work sucks everywhere..Dish wants to much for free..But it the majority of our workload..I wish the retailer/DNS contractor I work for would hire more sales people..We could sell enough to keep everbody busy and tell DNS to stick it......
I go behind DNS installs too..That's the little game DNS polays with the contractors...DNS sends us service calls on work their techs did so they don't have to own the job...The install manager has caught on to their act and has been rejecting those jobs

 

[igator99]

Yep we get paid the same whether the home is pre wired or not..Here's the rub..Once we connect the system the tech becomes responsible for the entire job..wiring and all...that's why we are paid the way we are...I don't agree with it....If an electrician comes to your home to hang a ceiling fan he will charge the cust accordingly....However if he has to run wire,install switch you'll be charged for that too.....
The satellite business is treated differently from all other trades...We really should be compensated by the customer for all the work we do..Especially us contractors..We pay for the material we use, we own the vehicles we use for work...I'm not saying I lose money. Only an idiot would go to work to lose money...However there are instances where a job requires a tremendous amount of work for which we are not paid extra for....Such as pulling extraordinary amounts of cable etc.....Dish network actually has a length of cable in their manual,,I believe it 150 feet..Theoretically the customer is supposed be billed for cable that exceeds that length....Also in the manual it's very clear that pole mounts, wall fishes, attic and crawlspace entries are "non-standard" and can be charged accordingly.....Dish has since changed that policy and those items are no longer chargeable on DNSC jobs.....Retailers however can charge whatever the market will absorb......

Custom jobs like yours however are an exception....When a large amount of cable is needed or the design of the home is not conducive to allowing normal or standard methods of installation additional charges may apply.....
What you pay in programming fees is immaterial....The tech does not get any of that revenue....I understand your concern as a consumer and you are curious as to why a tech would charge $100 for a pole mount that takes an hour...Answer is if the pole mount takes two hours the rate is the same...We simply charge flat rates....Most of what we do as extra work is charged at a flat rate....

I guess Dish and DirecTV will keep under paying you guys as long as they can. They will never be able to compete with cable until they change their policies. I could call cable today ( I will not until I'm forced to by the trees ) and they would give me a date and I know it will be installed. A guy in a bucket truck and and a limb clipper or chain saw could insure I'm a direcTV customer for another eight years. I don't even want to guess how much it would cost me to do it on my own.
You are probably talking thousands of dollars. My HOA has rules about cutting trees down but nothing about trimming trees. I know people that work for Bell and they are paid very well. D* and E* are getting by as cheap as they can and until that changes even with better picture quality and more channels they will never catch up with cable.