Installs Inc's subcontractor, Crave Electronics out of Fresno, CA, missed our first appointment. And, yes, I had taken the day off from work. They rescheduled for 7 days later. The next install date, they call at 10 pm the night before to tell me that can't be at my house between 12-5, but, they could be there at 10 a.m. This really screwed me up, I ended up having to take the day off again. The guy ends up showing up at 1 pm, with his wife and kids in the car. He gets up to my house and says, "nope, it's not going to work here". He starts trying to use "big" terminology with me, like the coordinates and etc.....He says I don't have a clear line to the voom satellite, which is almost directly east. Well, I live up on a hill and there is nothing, NOTHING, within 1000 feet of my house to the east. There is a hill, that is of equal height to my house, at about 1/2 mile away. I tell him that we should make an effort to investigate the ability to get the signal a little less subjectively. He says, "huh"? I say, don't you have guidelines and compasses and such? He, says, "dude, i've been installing satellites for 2 years, i know what i'm talking about". So, I get on the internet and i learn about how california is in a not-so-particularly wonderful area to get voom. But, the csr at voom assures me it will work. So, I have to literally BEG him to not leave. He gives me a bunch of talk about he doesn't get paid if he can't get a signal and it would just be wasting his time. I tell him i've invested to much time and money for him to walk away. All in all, it cost me 600 bucks of work wages to miss work for 2 days. So, instead of installing it in a permenant place, he drills it into my deck. And, bam, i get a 55 signal rating. He says it's the wrong satellite, and it's pinging from a different one. B/c this guy has yet to pull out a compass, I tell him it's time to check the programming. He makes ME call the install activation number, and yes, it works. He then drills a hole in my carpet 3 inches by 1/5 inches, and leaves all the boxes and plastic that he's thrown on the ground. I just installed that carpet 2 weeks ago. Oh, the pain.
Oh, that was after he tells me how he has no idea how to run the voom features. I asked about output resolutions, 1080 vs 720 etc....he has no clue. I would give the service of the install a 1 out of 10. I think voom is pretty cool though. Discovery looks incredible, but, of course the movie channels they have don't look hd to me. HBOHD looks good depending on the program. The world sports station looks spectacular. No cbs and no espn in hi def. Horrible install. Decent services, not worth the money though.
Has anyone tried to request a different installer?
Installer called this morning and arrived even earlier than he thought he could be here. I have a lot of trees around the house and he immediately wanted to put all the antennas at the peak of the roof. I can understand why as it was a sure bet that it would be a clear LOS. Anyway, after considerable discussion I convinced him that I wanted to try a lower point which will give me easy access during the winter if I need to remove snow etc. Dish went up easily and when connected to STB I got a power rating of 55 and quality of 40. There are no trees in the way, hopefully these readings are good enough. He wanted $200 to put up my 8bay instead of the Stealth with preamp. I went with the Stealth for now the OTA readings are power 46 and quality 85... keeping my fingers crossed. So are the satellite readings going to be ok or does it need more dish peaking or bigger dish? So far things seem to working fine. I think there is bad weather coming over the next 3-4 days so time will tell. Very pleased thus far.
