Is it standard procedure for an installer to activate new service before the install?

[SoonerDude]

My dad had an installer show up Monday night (after dark) and he was unable to finish the installation, as a matter of fact, he hardly got anything done because he said he needed to bring a post to mount it to the next morning because there was no clear shot from the house. Anyway, before he left, he went ahead and called Dish to activate the receiver, the receiver hasn't even been connected the the TV yet.

The next morning (yesterday), the installer called and said that he had a couple of other installs he needed to do ahead of his and that he'd be back sometime in the late evening. He finally calls my dad around 8:00pm last night and said he was really exhausted and had a rough day. Asked if he could come out the the next morning (today) and my dad said okay, but if he doesn't show up, he's going to call and ask for a different installer.

I haven't talked to my dad yet today, I'm at work. About to call him on my lunch break to see if he showed up. Just wondering if this is normal practice, seems to me if he activated the receiver on Monday, my dad is getting charged for service starting Monday. :rant:

 

[papalittle]

The receivers need to be all hooked up for the activation to take place. sounds like he did not want to get dinged for not having the system installed by the time the paper work states. If a new installer comes out he will need to have the receiver that the first installer activated and then he may have to explain why a hit needs to be sent to the receiver again. not fun.

 

[SoonerDude]

Just called my Dad. Said the guy finally got it completed this morning. My dad said the guy seemed a little on the loony side. Was telling Desert Storm stories that seemed a little far fetched and told my dad he saw some lady get killed yesterday and that was why he had the "rough day" and didn't make it out last night. Said the lady was hit by a car right in front of him and that a Senator was responsible for it or somesuch. Sounds like a loon to me.

 

[Stargazer]

At least the loon got it put in "finally". When a receiver is active on an account but not installed yet, Dish has to be contacted to send down a "hit" do the receiver to authorize it since it was not connected to a satellite signal to receive the authorization hit.

 

[SoonerDude]

Yeah, glad he finally took care of him. Not sure why my dad wouldn't have been his first customer the next morning though. I think that bothered my dad more than anything.

 

[Stargazer]

They might have already had other people scheduled that morning and didn't want to have to call all those that were scheduled to shift that many installs around or figured since it was already activated and started that it could wait a little longer.

 

[Claude Greiner]

I know that I used to pre-activate accounts prior to the install when I had a suspician that the customer was a previous customer, or there was some other issue activating the account such as a credit check or payment.

I had a few times where we did the entire install, only to find out that Dish would refuse to activate it because the customer owed a prior ballance.

When you suspect that may happen, we used to activate prior to doing the install when we verified we had a line of site and would be able to activate the account in a few hours.

Could also have to do with pay roll for the installer. If they had it done on a certain day then the job would go on the weeks check, instead of the next check.