OH MY I just had the WORST installer show up at my place.

[goaliebob99]

So I had Directv scheduled today for a dish mover, the installer was slated to show up between 8am and 12pm. CSR said he should be around 8am. Guy didnt show up untill 1150am. Showed him the job (I allready had a pole mount in and pointed. All he had to do was run the wire to the ground block, attache his wire to the existing wire that goes through the wall into the garage. From the garage he had to cut the wire put an end on it and hook it up to the SWM in port.

I showed him how att wired and told him to follow sute and told him that the wire went into the crawl and all he had to do was push the wire up where att's is and put on a dual wallplate. Also explained to him that ATT predrilled the holes using a 1 in pattle bit so he should have no problems pushing the wire up and to the wall plate wich is 1 foot up from where the hole under the crawl is. From there remove the existing wall plate and put in a dual. Attache uverse to the wall plate on both sides and crimp and attach his to the other port on the wall plate.

Also told him all i needed was direct berrial wire layed so I can berry it later from the pole mount to the ground block. This job is CAKE! Guy goes to his truck and comes back with coustomer service on the phone trying to say he has to do a full blown wall fish and is trying to charge me. Sorry guy, but thats not the case. I even mentioned to coustomer service that it seems like the guy is trying to get out of the job as its really simple, if I had the wire I would have done it myself. Come on now the dish is allready on the pole, pointed and holes and wall plates are allready in. Just have to bring the wire up.

The guy started steaming and started saying that I was saying that i thought he was trying to nickle and dime me, wich i never said. He then said im not going to work this job and started cussing up a storm. Called up directv and DIRECTSAT USA. They are sending someone out tommorow night. WOW this guy was out there, for such a simple job. All of the holes were pre drilled, and good to go for him. CRAZY! The amount of time the guy spent cussing ( he was like f this and fbomb that.) on his phone and smoking cigretts in his van he could of had the job done by the time he was finished. I really hope this guy gets fired as he really and I mean really is not the shining image of what a directv installer should be. I have never seen anyone so rude. Wow is all I can say!

 

[sundude90]

I am really sorry to hear about this.

What did Directv and DIRECTSAT USA tell you when you told them about this?

 

[vurbano]

You are better off doing it yourself. At least that has been my experience. And I have posted extensive pictures of why that is so.

 

[Rey]

You are better off doing it yourself. At least that has been my experience. And I have posted extensive pictures of why that is so.

i agree. i would've just done it myself. you never know what kind of installer is going to show up at your door.

 

[raoul5788]

I would report his attitude and language to the hsp and Directv customer service. There is no need for that no matter the circumstances.

 

[goaliebob99]

I did, Directsatusa is sending someone else tomorrow when I get off of work. Directsat usa is the only HSP in my area also. (anyone want to help me open a new HSP? ) I wansnt impressed with the attitude that I got from the installer. When I called Directv the CSR I talked to was nice. She added account notes and had a supervisor from the HSP call me. The supervisor called and I explained to him what the deal was. He even said that it doesnt sound that bad and the installer and I was obviously butting heads. ahh no, we werent butting heads, the installer was just being lazy and didnt want to do the job. The supervisor said that I would be installed tommorow, and they would send someone diffrent.

 

[KE4EST]

What an idiot....easy job and cussing it. I think he must have been high or something. I hope he gets fired too, I hate guys like that making the rest of us look bad. I would have loved to have rolled up at your house with most of the work done for me....easy money..

 

[goaliebob99]

What an idiot....easy job and cussing it. I think he must have been high or something. I hope he gets fired too, I hate guys like that making the rest of us look bad. I would have loved to have rolled up at your house with most of the work done for me....easy money..

Yea tell me about. IT. I would say it would have been about 45 min worth of work to an hour and a half at most. All he had to do was make sure I was pointed right, ran some wire in the grass, and run some wire from the garage through the hole that was allready there, into the crawl and up the holes that was drilled, put on a wall plate and DONE!. No need to ground, it was allready done. No need to put in a pole as it was allready done. No need to install SWM splitters and power adapters it was allready done! Thats well over half the work I did myself to give this guy an easyer day. If he would have played is cards right I would have fed him lunch and taken care of him. Instead he took a look at the job and started to down it and tried to get out of it. You cant tell me that I dont know how to play the game, especally when I played it myself. I knew by how he reacted when I was on phone with coustmer service he obvously was trying to get out of the job.

 

[Van]

My mover last week was 45 mins walking the lot and the roof with the guy trying to find a line of site for a satellite that apparently sits on the horizon and after going round for round with the guy and him turning down the roof which I didnt have a problem with and finally settling with a location at the far back corner of the lot on a pole only to realize that another location I had picked would have worked. When he drilled the poe it was at a right angle and four inches to the left of the cox cable line that was to be hooked to a dual plate. Today I walked out onto the patio and tripped over the ground wire that he came back to lay down and went face first into the neighbors wall, this wouldn't have happened if he had actually tacked the wire to the house so I will be calling directv tomorrow.

Forgot to add that when he did his first site check he was standing next to the heat pump and it was running and throwing a wide magnetic field which had his compass needle pointing to the 61.5 orbital as opposed to the 101.

 

[Claude Greiner]

Technically a wall Fish is not part of the installation, reguardless if the plate is already there and if all the technician has to do is re-pull the wire. A Wall Fish is considered a wall Fish, reguardless if its already half way done before hand.

Its just like as if you went to a car wash and paid for a full wash with the interior and exterior and you had already vacummed out the front of the car. The car wash place is still going to charge you full price, eventhough the interior was only half done.

Yes this is something the installer can technically charge for.

But I do agree with your point. What really pisses me off about alot of these installers is that everything is one sided in their favor.

A perfect example is the time when one of my technicians tried charging me extra to do a Job for one of my customers. Tried to justify it to me saying he had to spend an extra 3 hours on the Job and run an extra 100 feet of cable.

A said to him, what about the Job you did the day before where the customer had Directv and all you had to do was swap the Dish, didn't use any new wire and was out of the customers home in 45 minutes. Do I get to pay you less money for that Job, since afterall you billed me for a complete install as if you had to run all new wire.

The point is that he didn't say anything to me after that, and dropped the issue.

The point im getting at is that its ok for the installer that you installed the pole and did half of his work for him, and now that you ask him to do something considered to be extra he is getting all pissy with you now wanting to charge extra.

The other issue was probably that he didn't like that you where telling him what to do, where as most Jobs the installer makes the determination where to run the wires and where he is going to mount the Dish. To be honest with you, I don't like it either when I get to a customers house and they already have the entire install planned out for me and have everything already figured out for me as to where im going to install the Dish and exactly how im going to run all the wire.

Now granted I probably would not have said anything on your installation if I was the installer, but it does irritate me and most installers when they go to do a Job they are under the impression that the customer is trying to create more work than is necessary

 

[goaliebob99]

Claude, I agree with you but the only issue that I have is that the installer isn't the one living at the house and has to deal with how the wire is layed out. The customer does. There has to be some sort of flexibility there. If the coustomer has the install layed out and it makes the coustomer happy, then the installer should respect those wish's as thats what the coustomer wants. I could understand if the installer had did a complete install then the coustomer wanted the change. But the system wasnt even in yet for the most part as the wireing wasnt layed. All the installer heard was fall fish and then wanted to charge.

 

[efbrune]

Cluade,

As of now, D* tells the customer what receiver they will get and D* tells the customer what type of dish they get. Now you are telling the customer how and where the wires are going to be run. And, you want to charge extra for it. Where does it end? Next you will be telling the customer what TV to buy and what programs they can watch and at what time they can watch them.

I guess the customer does not have any rights any more! Oh, and remember the customer is just a stupid idiot.

 

[kinghill]

Cluade,

As of now, D* tells the customer what receiver they will get and D* tells the customer what type of dish they get. Now you are telling the customer how and where the wires are going to be run. And, you want to charge extra for it. Where does it end? Next you will be telling the customer what TV to buy and what programs they can watch and at what time they can watch them.

I guess the customer does not have any rights any more! Oh, and remember the customer is just a stupid idiot.

Seems pretty standard. Any installer I've had always has a set way to do things and get it done in the quickest manner possible. If you want something different than what they set out to do you have to tell them at least a few times for them to understand or acknowledge what you want done.

For example with my D* installation last week I had to tell the installers 4 times to use the existing component cables for the DVR->TV connection. He kept saying "just use AV1". It's like they were on autopilot.

 

[Van]

Funny but I ordered the receivers I wanted with my original install, guess if you rletting D tell you what you will get then that's your decision to be told what your going to get and how its going to go. If you're paying for a service then your the customer and you do have rights when it comes to things like the install and the equipment within reason. For the most part when it came to the install I would talk with most customers to get their input on if they felt ok with my installation plan for their home and the ones that I didn't give this option to were the ones who had it all laid out when I got there and it was obviously not going to work such as the engineer who was convinced that all satellites were located due south.