Worst. Customer. Ever.

[ZandarKoad]

I've never been kicked out of a customer's home. Until yesterday that is.

I'm a subcontractor, and I'm training this guy. He's been working on his own for 4 days, and I know he can mount/peak in a dish 100% perfect. He's still having issues hooking up HD tvs, but that's to be expected. ESCPECIALLY when he's told a TV is HD, and it's NOT (more on that later).

He was at a job site, and called me requesting my assistance with a customer who was 'freaking out' every time he asked her a question. Keep in mind, he had not started the installation. He was gonig over the site survey. When I arrive, the lady customer is on the pone. She is clearly very emotionally disturbed. We spend a FULL HOUR detailing every step of the installation. I ask her on several occasions if she wants to cancell/reschedual the install if she's having a bad day. She says that if we don't do it today, we'll have to do it some other day, so might as well do it now.

Later my guy said when he entered the house after I left, the customer was EXTREMELY nice to him. He used the term 'erily kind'.

It was a pole mount, 70' from the house, and the guy I'm training buries the cable the entire way. No additional charge to the customer. Two tuner new connect: 811 and 311. I leave, to go do MY other jobs. When I return to check up on him, the customer is on the phone with dish trying to cancel. I try in vain for about 5 minutes to get the customer to tell me what is wrong, and what we can do to remedy the situation. She is ignoring me, on the verge of tears, on hold with Dish. Occasionally she'll spout something irrational... She mentioned the job took four hours when she was told it would take 20 minutes. I ask her what I can do to help, and she says that I can step out the front door and keep stepping.

So I do.

Turns out the entire job is DONE. The 311 is all hooked up, check switch ran, good signal strengths. It's waiting to be activated. The 811 has the feed ran to it, but he never got the chance to hook it up to the TV... WHICH WASNT HIGH DEFENITION. (The lady insisted that it was.) My guy couldn't finish hooking it up, because the lady wouldn't let him. So he never had a chance to run a check switch on it.

We were advised to walk away immediately, leaving all equipment there.

Later my supervisor calls the lady, and she starts with a seeming rational tone of voice. She's complaining about everything under the sun, and begins whining. Then she starts CRYING... shortly after that she'll talk like a small child. She repeated that cycle several times when talking to my supervisor.

CAN YOU SAY,
C
R
A
Z
Y
?

Has anyone else had any run-ins with a certifiable insane nutbag? AKA, BI-POLAR?

 

[Dish Dude]

i had one a trouble call a couple of years ago because this customer had voices tell him the dish needed to be moved, nothing was wrong with the system at all. when i left i said ALL OF YOU HAVE A NICE DAY. He than says to me, we all thank you

 

[Purogamer]

That is beyond bi-polar, that sounds like someone who ran out of medicine for more serious mental issues. Forget the boxes, i'm surprised you left your guy there alone with her. When someone is that mentally out of it, they could get violent as fast as they can get "uber nice".

 

[ZandarKoad]

Yeah, I told him if she gives him ANY more trouble, to cut his losses and to just walk off. The guy I was training was much older than I was, and has a first degree black belt in tae quon do. So I didn't really think much about his safetly. He did a great job over all, and through some miracle, we got the work order closed out later that night (my supervisor spent 3 hours on the phone with her). Some DNSC tech supervisors are going out there today, because she can be rational for a good 10-15 minutes. You can make a real powerful, rational complaint in that amount of time.

 

[SummitAdvantageRetailer]

Oh gosh. It sometimes helps if a sane person lived with that person but if they're alone or the couple is both insane, that's just impossible to work with.

 

[rowemance]

One time I was running late to a new install at 1:30 pm so I called the customer (A Lawyer) and told him I was on my way 10 min before the time I was supposed to be there. I got to the house 15 min after the schedule time and was told to get off his property, he didn't have time for this he had a meeting to go to and that he make $300.00 per hour and he wanted me to pay him for the 15 min I was late.

I look at him and started laughing in his face you really didn't think you were going back to work did you. We told you it would take 4 hrs to install (3 TV's Really BIG House) and someone had to be there the entire time. I guess by that rational I would have owed him $1200.00 for his time to do the install.

 

[jlhugh]

i had one a trouble call a couple of years ago because this customer had voices tell him the dish needed to be moved, nothing was wrong with the system at all. when i left i said ALL OF YOU HAVE A NICE DAY. He than says to me, we all thank you

Now that's funny.

 

[bweiteka]

Wow, that's one kooky customer, Zandar. Isn't the best part of our job the great customers we get to meet? I'm sure a good book could be written if we all throw in a few stories about our favorite customers and jobs. Most people I meet on the job are great. Some are not so great.

How about the incredibly obese woman in a nightgown, whom, while picking her nose, informs you that you can not go into her basement to run cable because her deceased husband warned her of "cesspools that you could fall into and die" down there. And you can't go into her sons room even though she wants a tv hooked up in there.

Or the guy that screams at you, then Dish, because you won't wall fish 5 walls for free, on a single 322 install!

My favorite was about a month ago. A customer had 2 dogs in the backyard, one big and one little, playing with 3 kids in diapers. Customer says "watch out for the little dog, she'll bite your ankles," and kindly picks up the little dog.
As we are walking around the yard discussing where to put the dish and run cable, the big dog comes up behind me and chomps down on my ass! After falling down, dog jaws still clamped on my ass, I manage to scramble free, take off running and leap over the fence. So I'm standing on the other side of the fence, the seat of my shorts are GONE, lying in the back yard at the feet of the dog who looks mighty proud of himself, my boxers shredded, bloody ass hanging out! Customer says "HUH! Sorry 'bout that, he's never done that before." My reply, "HUH! I don't THINK I had a sandwich in my pocket! See ya, I'm done here." And the kicker was the customer's reply: "Uhh, so what you're not going to install my dish now?" Yeah, right!

I luv my job. Someone should write a compendium of installer stories. Probably wouldn't make any money off it but it sure would be great to read.

 

[Van]

Oh where to begin with 5 years of this, there was the lady who overdosed on methadone and cheap wine while I was fixing her system, I come in she's draped across the bed looking %200 dead.

There was the 19 year old who broke down crying because he spent his last penny to get dish after directv stopped doing ppv of wwe and I wasnt going to install his system in a house with animal waste covering every single inch of each floor in the house.

Oh then there was the dog breader that bred dogs outside of his house and inside, will never forget when he opened the patio door in the dead of winter and a wall of amonia and urine odor crashed out all over me, I held my breath for the minute or so I was inside the home walking along the path made by the garden fence he put up for you to navigate through each room of the house. Imagine looking on either side and seeing things like a 10 year old xmas tree that had lost all its needles, stacks of boxs and newpapers reaching up to the 8ft cieling and drapes that were never opened. What was most unerving was this pale looking girl sitting on a couch in pajama's looking like something out of a ghost story.

The hillbilly home out in the woods that could have easily been the real life inspiration for deliverance.


So many strange, odd, eccentric, disturbed, angry, and psychotic people and so little space and time to put them all here.

 

[Van]

Almost forgot the guy who had a starband installed by a sub contractor who a week later closed up shop, guys dish is pointed into a grove of tree's and no other place to put it. So the guy has been on and off the phone for weeks with another local guy who tells him to cut down tree's and the guy has done this and moved the pole and dish as the local guy told him but still cant get signal. While Im there he lets me use his phone to call my office and Im explaining to my supervisor that one of them need to come out to handle the situation. As Im explaining this he's in the house yelling at someone to clean up for the last damned time as he put it and I look up to see him yelling this at a dog in the living room plain as day. I head up to the door and hand him the phone explaining that I had a supervisor and a quality technician on the way out to better asess the situation, at this point he begins talking about how he was wanting to put the pole and dish 30ft up ontop of a tree that he had topped in his front yard and then tells me very clearly that the next dish guy that comes out and tells him he has to move his dish he is going to shoot them dead. I was already in my van when he said this and I slammed it in reverse and radioed my manager, needless to say he will never see another installer at his home again.

 

[Dish Dude]

I don't have really another crazy one, but kind of disgusting. I was on an install on an old farmstead with a rather big lady, i would say about 300. i go and do the install outside come in download the receivers, go out to get the paperwork come in and she is buck naked on the couch staring at me. i kindly said maam i need you to sign some paperwork, she did and i walked out. at least she was kind enough not to make any more advances after I did not take to her first one. Now why oh why couldn't she have been a 23 year old college student? Bad luck i guess

 

[riffjim4069]

Too funny Dish Dude!

 

[JPointerWI]

I had one a few months ago. 2 guys, sharing a house. While I'm talking to the one, trying to figure out how to run cable and not piss off the landlord, the roomates girlfriend walks in. I go outside, put up the dish, and come back in to see the roomate and his girlfriend totally naked, having sex in the middle of the kitchen. I step back outside "to get something from the van" and come back a few min later. Now both guys, and the girl are having a 3 way, in the living room where the receiver is going. They tell me, "dont mind us, just hook it up". I went to the basement, ran the cable and tried to kill as much time as I could, when I hear another girl come in upstairs, and start screaming at all 3 of them. I walked out, on the way I left a note on the kitchen table to please call to reschedule. They never did.

Oh yeah, they were all 300+ lbs. I'm going to need therapy.

 

[bcshields]

I had one customer who bought a 921 and insisted that it needed two lines ran to it instead of one (dishproplus) because the manual said so. The whole time I'm arguing with this old man, he's wearing nothing but boxer shorts in his recliner, with one hand down below out of sight. He wants the one wire wall-fished, I lent my flex bit to another tech the day before and forgot to get it back so I couldn't run the second unnecessary line, and I'm discussing options with him for at least 30 minutes.. the whole time with his hand down his pants.

He finally gets pissed, I leave, job undone because he HAD to have two lines. 4 days later another tech shows up, runs the line for his 921, 3 months later I go back on a service call.. his daughter was there, turns out the guy was terminally ill and died a week after the install.

Nothing funny, just weird and strange.


I have heard some stories though... one mentally distraught woman who threatened suicide if her dish wasn't installed before the husband got home... a tech being chased off the property with a shotgun being fired at him for trying to "swindle" him for custom labor charges...

 

[kschorz]

CAN YOU SAY,
C
R
A
Z
Y
?

Has anyone else had any run-ins with a certifiable insane nutbag? AKA, BI-POLAR?

Yea, once but after she passed me the bong a few times it didn't really matter any more.

 

[miguelaqui]

I had one a few months ago. 2 guys, sharing a house. While I'm talking to the one, trying to figure out how to run cable and not piss off the landlord, the roomates girlfriend walks in. I go outside, put up the dish, and come back in to see the roomate and his girlfriend totally naked, having sex in the middle of the kitchen. I step back outside "to get something from the van" and come back a few min later. Now both guys, and the girl are having a 3 way, in the living room where the receiver is going. They tell me, "dont mind us, just hook it up". I went to the basement, ran the cable and tried to kill as much time as I could, when I hear another girl come in upstairs, and start screaming at all 3 of them. I walked out, on the way I left a note on the kitchen table to please call to reschedule. They never did..

Are you sure that you were not on one of those Playboy prank shows?

 

[cvahalik]

These stories are too funny I could read them all day

 

[TheDishNetworkInstaller]

Worst one I've ever had was a house filled with trash in every room. And there were little kids living in this place. All the windows had the darkest curtains you could get and from the layers of dust and cob webs had never been opened.

Needless to say I did not do the install and Child Protective Services removed the children from the house, put the 80 yr old mother in law in a home and condemned the house because of all the rodents and animal waste in the place.

 

[Jared Twomey]

i used to install out in the boonies in southern missouri so i have all kinds of crazy old guys with guns, and just plain dirty nasty house installs... but the one job that really stands out in my mind was a guy that has JUST gotten out of prison, but was on house arrest...
he had the ankle braclet and everything... when i first got there he was real aggressive and kept demanding that the dish go on the back of the house, even though because of the trees that wouldn't work.. I finally convinced him of that, but the rest of the install he kept following me around telling me his prison stories, and he also made sure to tell me that the reason he was in prison was because he had killed a man that had came on his property to hunt... i guess he somehow convinced the court that it was self defense of sorts ... anyway, he kept gettin all pissed off when i would have to drill a hole or anything... i went up on the ladder to line up the dish, and he started up the ladder right behind me... i finally couldn't take him following me and finally turned around and said "get off my ladder, if you want this thing done, get off my back... if i needed help, i'd have someone else here to help me. Go inside, when i'm done i'll be in". he went inside and i never saw him again until i went in to have the paperwork signed and receivers activated, and when he was signing the paperwork, he was really nice about everything...
i think he may have been bi-polar, there was two definate personalities displayed

 

[jmd102354]

i used to install out in the boonies in southern missouri so i have all kinds of crazy old guys with guns, and just plain dirty nasty house installs... but the one job that really stands out in my mind was a guy that has JUST gotten out of prison, but was on house arrest...
he had the ankle braclet and everything... when i first got there he was real aggressive and kept demanding that the dish go on the back of the house, even though because of the trees that wouldn't work.. I finally convinced him of that, but the rest of the install he kept following me around telling me his prison stories, and he also made sure to tell me that the reason he was in prison was because he had killed a man that had came on his property to hunt... i guess he somehow convinced the court that it was self defense of sorts ... anyway, he kept gettin all pissed off when i would have to drill a hole or anything... i went up on the ladder to line up the dish, and he started up the ladder right behind me... i finally couldn't take him following me and finally turned around and said "get off my ladder, if you want this thing done, get off my back... if i needed help, i'd have someone else here to help me. Go inside, when i'm done i'll be in". he went inside and i never saw him again until i went in to have the paperwork signed and receivers activated, and when he was signing the paperwork, he was really nice about everything...
i think he may have been bi-polar, there was two definate personalities displayed

Naw, he was just a punk. When you yell at a punk they retreat into their shell.