Install questions

[dishcomm]

Directv tech came out today and replaced the LNB, the reception on 3 of my tv's is pretty good, the fourth not so good. He's talking about replacing the home cable, I don't want to do this, I had this house built and tried to run all the cables in the walls before they were sheetrocked, if he runs a new cable from the dish to the genie he would have to run it up an outside wall and then come thru the attic and I have foam insulation so I don't want to be poking holes in the foam, this is not a good option for me. I don't have the technical knowdge that a tech does but I have a fair amount of common sense. I've been playing with the connections and want to know if it's possible that I have a bad splitter (SWM 4 way with green lable), I can swap the connections into the splitter and it seems like the tv hooked up to the output on the far right of the splitter will always be the tv with the bad reception.

Ok...Because you do not wish any cabling to be done, you are now throwing up a roadblock to getting reliable service.
Why did you not consult with the tech regarding the potential issue with the splitter BEFORE he left?
As a former tech of over a dozen years, this is the kind of stuff that really aggravated me to the point of distraction.
On every service call I left no stone unturned. Yet, on occasion it is possible to miss something. So before I wrapped up the job, I would have the customer flip through channels and check other tv's.
As far as I was concerned the job is not finished until it finished. Now, the part that REALLY got me was when a customer noticed something and let it go without telling me, then called three days later to complain about the problem.

 

[dishcomm]

Ok guys I need your feed back on this test I did. I took the splitter out of the system by running the home wire from the sat to the power inserter and checked the signal strenght on the genie, on all sats, transponders and tuners I am getting good signal strenght across the board, I put the splitter back into the system and the sat signal by tuner is all over the board. Do you guys agree with me that this sounds like a splitter problem?

Not quite..You changed the conditions. Reconnect the splitter, Then Connect each cable to a different port. Checking signal strength with each change in position.

 

[harley1340]

Ok...Because you do not wish any cabling to be done, you are now throwing up a roadblock to getting reliable service.
Why did you not consult with the tech regarding the potential issue with the splitter BEFORE he left?
As a former tech of over a dozen years, this is the kind of stuff that really aggravated me to the point of distraction.
On every service call I left no stone unturned. Yet, on occasion it is possible to miss something. So before I wrapped up the job, I would have the customer flip through channels and check other tv's.
As far as I was concerned the job is not finished until it finished. Now, the part that REALLY got me was when a customer noticed something and let it go without telling me, then called three days later to complain about the problem.

As far as the tech is concerned I haven't given him any indication I was saying "no" to putting a new line in so I haven't thrown any road blocks up yet, he told me if the new lnb's didn't solve the problem he would come on his "day off" to run a new cable, I'm going to make 100% sure that it's not some other problem before I let him run new cable. I did not discover the problem with the splitter untill after he left and if I had I'm almost certain my comments would have been ignored just like the other comments I have made to date. This installer is just going by what his meter tells him, my observations don't mean squat to him. Hell, he even looked at the signal strength on the genie meter and I was standing next to him telling him to try the other tuners, from the screen he was on all he had to do was push a couple of buttons on the remote to access the other tuners and he just ignored me, so do you think he would have listened to me when I told him I "think" it's a splitter issue. Bottom line, communication on this install has been horrible and impossible, I wouldn't even have touched the splitter if I wasn't having issues. A lesser informed customer would think the service I have right now is "ok" simply because the tech's meter says the signal is good and can get a good picture on a couple of tv's and wouldn't know the difference, but there is no way I can have a reliable signal at the same time to the four televisions I have hooked up and record a live program with my 5 tuner Genie. As far as waiting three days to "complain", I have been busy setting up a new house and did not notice the problems untill after the tech had left, but what REALLY gets ME is when I notice a problem and report it, it's just sluffed off as intermittent.