Not happy, being forced to leave Dish.

[dishcomm]

I knew something like this was going to happen.

For some reason techs don't like doing pole mounts or burying cable.

All they do is pawn it off to another tech, or for another day.

I have been doing this for 17 years. When I run into this situation, it's called going to Home Depot, getting a pole, bag of cement and maybe buying a post hole digger and getting the job installed, closed, finished, done and over with.

You know how many post hole diggers I have at my store because I was an hour away from the office and just wanted to close out a job? There must be a dozen that I have bought over the years.

My techs do the same dam thing to customers and it just pisses the hell out of me.

It's not just a 'dish' issue, same issue with Directv, Exede, and Hughesnet.

Even comcast installers have a problem understanding the simple concept of burying the cable after the job is complete.

Wait a minute.. YOUR techs were following those same rules the in house and fulfillment guys did? The "must get locate before installing pole mount and burying cable"? THat's ridiculous....
In most properties, it is pretty easy to avoid buried utilities.
All one has to do is look to the dmark, telco interface and cable( if applicable) and then draw a reasonably straight line to the pedestals. Power and gas are buried pretty deep and of little danger of getting hit.
Now for front easement utilities, it may get a little dicey but if one is not sure, they should just make the effort to look for a more suitable placement.
I used to be a locator. On old guy showed me a neat trick to locate utilities by using a couple of those marker flags.

 

[Hall]

In our front yard, between our home and our neighbor to the north, are pedestals for electric and cable. The demarc points for both are on the north side of the house as well. My dish is located on the south side. The tech still wouldn't dig a hole for a pole-mounted dish without having the utilities marked.

 

[ChadT41]

I know it is a company policy, mostly because most city and state regulations require it before any ground can be broken for commercial use

 

[TechWriter]

Because you would be changing your service address in Dish system(and not telling them that is what you are doing), you would be EA only and no longer need the 110/119. So all you would need would be that 1000.2EA Dish and a fake address in the other DMAs that you listed earlier. My favorite when I was taking calls (I loved RV'ers creativity) was 1234 Main St, or 123 Fake St. It made things entertaining for me.

After reading this multi-page DISH install fumble, is it any wonder why RVers do this?

BTW, besides a 1000.4 w/both arcs, the DISH Zip Code locals lookup (http://www.mydish.com/upgrades/local) and The List (http://www.satelliteguys.us/thelist/index.php?page=dishnetworkmarkets&sub=true) are an RVers best friend . . . oh, and a copy of Good Sam's Campground Guide for those real fake Service Addresses.

 

[GreeneDish]

In Virginia, it is the law that ALL digging (commercial and residential) requires marking first. My neighbor recently got fines $750 by the state for cutting his own phone line while planting a bush. This was in addition to whatever CenturyLink charged him for repairing the line. I really do not blame Dish for the first delay in planting the pole as they were just following the rules. As it turns out, I am actually glad they put me off so long as the tech they sent out did more than just put in the new dish. He actually took the time to check my whole system as I was having problems getting the replacement Hopper Dish sent me to download it's software. Turns out that the replacement Hopper was bad but when the replacement for the replacement would not work, he tested the lines and found out that my cables had been partially cut at the pole and were not providing a correct signal. He ended up replacing all my cable from the dish to the house in addition to the cable between the two dishes. So, even though it took a while I now have a good LOS to all my satellites, good cable to bring that into the house, and correctly working giving me all the channels I am paying for. All this makes me happy as I really did not want to leave Dish. While not perfect, and what/who is?, Dish has been a great TV provider.

 

[Hall]

The installer that did the first installation (of the receivers and the temporary mount) did admit that "it depends where you live". We live in a neighborhood and he implied that if one of his managers "drove by" and saw him digging, he'd be in trouble vs if we were out in the country, he would dig (why wouldn't a manager drive by there as well though ?). I really didn't care and was quite surprised how stable the dish was for a week screwed to a small sheet of plywood with a couple cinder blocks weighing it down.

 

[Elkview]

Always get utilities located. I've seen dig ins because people didn't know that 18" had been dozed off the pipes when building the house. I've seen people build on top of gas lines. Just be safe.