What's a "true professional"? Installers please critique...!

[dishcomm]

dishcom,

unless im reading wrong, you stated a 4 box , sd, no frills ,PREWIRED, takes 3-4 hours. now you are saying complete REWIRE.

may have slipped by....I don't take as long to do a prewired job obviously..But sometimes the prewire runs are not in the locations where cust want to place their tv's..
i have had instances where they will place them on the opposite wall. I have had instances where they will put the receiver in an interior corner and won't allow the ten to 15 feet of coax along the wall from the nearest outlet..They want a new run installed...
anyway, no that's 3-4 hrs for a hardwired system..
That's for a home with a crawlspace....slab homes take much longer..sorry to admit.
put it this way..a hardwire job on a two story slab built home(75% of new homes in this area are built on slabs) can literally double the install time...
Be thankful you work in an area where homes are built on basements.....

 

[dragon002]

i see your point.

yeah, im glad for having 95% basements.

also glad that comcrap and adelphia rewired 90% of the area with new RG6 2-3 years ago!! LOL

 

[dishcomm]

i see your point.

yeah, im glad for having 95% basements.

also glad that comcrap and adelphia rewired 90% of the area with new RG6 2-3 years ago!! LOL

interior wiring?...
Anyway, most of the new homes are thankfully prewired.Some of the cheaper production builders( Eastwood,Ryland and Ryan) run only two rg-6 ..One to the master and one to the liv room...they build their homes almost exclusively on slabs...half are one story so wiring those isn't that difficult if you know what you are doing.....actually anything within reason can be done properly if one has enough time..Fortunately we are given the appropriate workload to allow that...
Right now DNSC has drastically reduced our workload due to an increase in staffing..The local office here went from 25 techs to nearly 50..most of them are inexperienced .Hopefully they will become good techs and do the job properly..Judging form the work I have seen I am not enthusiastic......I could have gotten in there as an FSM.I had the job sewn up after the interview...But i had an old ticket on my record for an overdue inspection...i got the ticket dismissed by the DA but he summons still went into the computer and the state suspended my license without my knowledge..The County DA took care of the mistake but it still got on my record..DNSC human resources did not care..They wrote me a letter stating I "was not eligible for employment at this time"...I was so pissed off, I told the GM I would not take the job even if they rescinded their order...I made the right move.. A friend of mine was an FSM, the ONLY FSM for 20 techs and he quit because he was getting home at 10pm..They wanted him to work 7 days a week and he said stuff it...

 

[dragon002]

yes, even all interior wiring gotta love em.

 

[dishcomm]

yes, even all interior wiring gotta love em.

that's interesting..did any type of "exclusivity' agreement come with that. Or did the custs pay for the updated wiring?....

 

[dragon002]

the cablecos just started updating , why, i dont know.

 

[dishcomm]

the cablecos just started updating , why, i dont know.

I worked for a company in the late 80's that did not only audits(yes I was a "cable cop') but we were also doing a system rebuild..We replaced drops, gnd blocks ,taps etc...But the interior wiring we didn't touch..

 

[dragon002]

what they did, i heard, was if you got a digital box or addad a run, they would replace it all. in the city of pittsburgh, it was a total rebuild, inside and out.

 

[dishcomm]

what they did, i heard, was if you got a digital box or addad a run, they would replace it all. in the city of pittsburgh, it was a total rebuild, inside and out.

I worked for a DTV outfit in PGH in 1999 for a couple of weeks. The DTV HSP I was working forIn Charlotte,NC was asked to help out up there, so I volunteered to go Back then it was Bell Atlantic Video the predecessor to Verizon..The telco had a partenership with DTV and we were doing installs for BAV..Many of the homes had dual or siamese coax runs to rooms with convereter boxes.....the reason for the assistance I would gues was because DTV had just began sending LIL into the PGH market...This was the first use of the DTV multi sat dish.....

 

[dragon002]

yep, exactly correct. the a/b cable ststem is 95% gone.

 

[dishcomm]

yep, exactly correct. the a/b cable ststem is 95% gone.

what's an "a/b" cable system?

 

[dragon002]

that is what the TCI/At&T/Comcrap guys called the pittsburgh system. you described it as "siamesed" all the homes had A/B switches by the tvs.

 

[dishcomm]

that is what the TCI/At&T/Comcrap guys called the pittsburgh system. you described it as "siamesed" all the homes had A/B switches by the tvs.

ah ha! mystery uncovered...thanks

 

[dishguy15022]

I don't know who trained you ..A word of advice...ALL SYSTEMS MUST BE GROUNDED....NO exceptions..It is a DN spec violation to not ground a system..Their QC sheet has a point system that gauges severity of violations ..Ungrounded systems are an automatic failure...Word to the wise....

I am a DNSC Tech. I am little different though. I am a remote tech which means I have the van at home, get my work emailed, have equipment at home. Kinda like a contactor, but not. I get paid from the time I leave home to the time I get home plus maybe an hour for paperwork or inventory count. I work sun, mon, tue and wed. usually 10 hour days with an occasional sat for over time. I have been with the company for over 4 years. I make $18.00 an hour. Last year with my overtime I made over $40,000 probably closer to $45,000. I like being a tech and have turned down a position for FSM because it would be a big pay cut for me. They are salaried.

Don't get my wrong I ground when I can. I have never failed a job because of grounding. I don't make runs around the house. If it's less than 10 feet away I usually ground to it. I try to place the dish near a ground, but it means I'm going to have to wrap the house in cable then I place the dish in a spot that easier for me and looks good for the customer. I tell the customers about when i don't ground. If the customer does not have visible ground, there's nothing I can do about that. We are not allowed to install ground rods (I asked about that one at the office). I do have a little tester I plug into the outlets to test the outlet then if there is a problem I talk to the customer about it.

 

[dragon002]

Don't get my wrong I ground when I can. I have never failed a job because of grounding. I don't make runs around the house. If it's less than 10 feet away I usually ground to it. I try to place the dish near a ground, but it means I'm going to have to wrap the house in cable then I place the dish in a spot that easier for me and looks good for the customer. I tell the customers about when i don't ground. If the customer does not have visible ground, there's nothing I can do about that. We are not allowed to install ground rods (I asked about that one at the office). I do have a little tester I plug into the outlets to test the outlet then if there is a problem I talk to the customer about it.

couldnt have said it better myself.

 

[dishcomm]

I don't know who trained you ..A word of advice...ALL SYSTEMS MUST BE GROUNDED....NO exceptions..It is a DN spec violation to not ground a system..Their QC sheet has a point system that gauges severity of violations ..Ungrounded systems are an automatic failure...Word to the wise....

I am a DNSC Tech. I am little different though. I am a remote tech which means I have the van at home, get my work emailed, have equipment at home. Kinda like a contactor, but not. I get paid from the time I leave home to the time I get home plus maybe an hour for paperwork or inventory count. I work sun, mon, tue and wed. usually 10 hour days with an occasional sat for over time. I have been with the company for over 4 years. I make $18.00 an hour. Last year with my overtime I made over $40,000 probably closer to $45,000. I like being a tech and have turned down a position for FSM because it would be a big pay cut for me. They are salaried.

Don't get my wrong I ground when I can. I have never failed a job because of grounding. I don't make runs around the house. If it's less than 10 feet away I usually ground to it. I try to place the dish near a ground, but it means I'm going to have to wrap the house in cable then I place the dish in a spot that easier for me and looks good for the customer. I tell the customers about when i don't ground. If the customer does not have visible ground, there's nothing I can do about that. We are not allowed to install ground rods (I asked about that one at the office). I do have a little tester I plug into the outlets to test the outlet then if there is a problem I talk to the customer about it.

That's fine...
I don't know what the deal is in your area but we were told that if a tech does not ground a system, they will have to fix it at their expense or get charged back for the ENTIRE job....From what the past and present regional mgrs from Dish have told us, grounding is the number one issue that Dish looks at...
Personally I believe an ungrounded system to be incomplete..I consider not grounding a system to be a shortcut taken by many techs to make the job convenient for themselves..Sorry but that's my opinion.... Dish puts a lot of pressure on us to make numbers but they also are a pain in the ass about quality...you can't quality work and be in a hurry.We get penalized for getting trouble calls even if it so much as a cust inquiry over their inability to operate their remote control...So if Cust is a mental midget, it's our fault..Most of us are speedy enough to get 4 jobs or more in a day..But we have to spend so much time covering our asses with grounding issues, letters of permission, customers who haven't a clue as to what they are getting..Each time a cust picks up the phone and calls dish, it counts against us and they pull work away. here's another issue, we are supposed to pre call every cust the night before. If the cust isn't home, we leave a message. If the cust misses their appointment, is renter and can't get a letter of permission it counts against US as an incomplete job....It's a friggin battle..I have to go back on a job tomorrow because the cust THINKS a tree may produce leaves and block LOS...He also whined about a cover on an old interface box that I put my GND bock in..He thinks that if the GND block gets wet he will lose signal. This is what is in the notes.This is the crap we have to deal with..I can't to see the look on this idiot's face when I tell him the parts in question are designed to be out in the elements.
I have been at this for 8 years..I am getting to the point where I just want to tell them to shove it..
This once was a fun job. But somebody or somebodys along the way screwed the whole thing up and now it's just another way to get a paycheck....

 

[dishguy15022]

our office basically told us that if your close enough to ground the system, ground. 97% of my jobs are grounded. I basically go through almost the same thing. I understand. We get nailed on a new install if there is a troubled call within 12 days. the guys from the office pre-call. I don't. I am a remote tech. I have the van at home, they email me my work, i got equipment at home. I leave from home to go to the jobs. If the job drops out the night before, it doesn't count against us. If the customer isn't home, reschedules that day or has cancelled and I show up at the house it counts against me. There is a big push at the end of the year to get the jobs done. So we get told, basically, Get-R-Done, quantity. Then at the beginning of the year, that's when they get picky on the quality of the work.

 

[dishguy15022]

It's the bad techs that make our job harder, whether contractor or DNS. I hate going to a service call and while I am there having to fix another tech's work, I have when they hop onto 59, not tacking the cable down, using low frequency barrels or ground blocks.

The call center doesn't make the job any easier. Especially when they don't tell the customer about the phone line fee or they say we will install them a phone jacks. I am not the telephone man. I am only able to run to the nearest jack with the length of phone cord in the receiver box.

 

[dishcomm]

our office basically told us that if your close enough to ground the system, ground. 97% of my jobs are grounded. I basically go through almost the same thing. I understand. We get nailed on a new install if there is a troubled call within 12 days. the guys from the office pre-call. I don't. I am a remote tech. I have the van at home, they email me my work, i got equipment at home. I leave from home to go to the jobs. If the job drops out the night before, it doesn't count against us. If the customer isn't home, reschedules that day or has cancelled and I show up at the house it counts against me. There is a big push at the end of the year to get the jobs done. So we get told, basically, Get-R-Done, quantity. Then at the beginning of the year, that's when they get picky on the quality of the work.

If you get your jobs emailed to you, why don't you pre call?..I find it easier to to work that way...If a cust cancels or can't be home, I have them call DN to get the job off our grid..we are under the 12 day thing too...But here's the thing...We get sh*t jobs thrown our way..DNS FSM's get the w/o's 4 days out...they look through the ones that have been rescheduled/ second opinion NLOS's NLOP's and those pesky apartment jobs...The apartment jobs are culled out by the office dispatch and the FSM's go to the jobs to site survey them to see if they can go..If so, they keep them .If there's a chance they won't go or can't go, they farm those out...We have figured out the routine pretty well and if we get a late request to do jobs in certain areas we reject them..9 out 10 times we're right..they are usually apartment jobs or tree out's...Very sneaky...Here's another rthing..I think I told you about the trouble call deal...Even if it's cust caused or bad EQ, we still get hit...The regional MGR says "get your numbers up"..That's fine ,we'd love to..But this crap I just mentioned we have no way of controlling..The deck is stacked against the contractors.....in fact my employer is thinking of going outside the sat business because Dish has become unreliable....we have guys that have been with the company longer than my 2.5 years and they are ready to leave....It's bad......I think DN will eventually cut out the contractors..But DN will regret that...

 

[Van]

Its not just hard on the subs end, things are hard for dns techs as well. Theres alot of pressure to perform both from the office we work at and from the head office as well and the regional office. Thankfully the elimination of the superdish will drasticly reduce installation times for my office so now we can save 40 - 90 mins on each job with building them and doing pole mounts and trenching lines but still this will mean probably the addition of atleast one more job on each route we have.