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Sounds like there were three problems here.

1 - A series of bad equipment or perhaps an environmental issue (bad power, voltage on the ground). Since things did work in his environment previously, that suggests poor quality control on the hardware he was shipped. I dont think thats the customers fault.

2 - Cant get a tech out to perform service for a week? Maybe today but he doesnt show up? Nobody can say exactly when or make a commitment? You can certainly argue a lack of manpower to address the customers needs in a timely manner, but that has a lot more to do with how the service provider is staffing to handle their normal and reasonable out of band service load. Also not the customers fault. I think a customer has a right to at least get a firm commitment to be serviced, and more than a day or two isnt very reasonable. If thats not grokable, how about this: "I'm sorry directv, my electric and gas bills were higher than I expected and I dont have enough money in my checking account to pay my directv bill this month, since I already paid the other bills and yours came in last. Clearly you'll have no issue with my not making sure I had enough money saved and worked enough hours to pay all of my bills, no matter how much they might have turned out to be, right? Oh, and I also cant tell you exactly when I can pay. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the next day. I cant commit though. What? You dont like that? Come on! Its only tv and what do you expect, I'm doing the best I can!!!" Yeah, that'd fly like a lead balloon.

3 - Customer communication. The two most important things in dealing with a customer is that the customer feels they're important to the vendor and that there is enough communication and information to eliminate doubt or confusion. These are the two keys to any and all types of relationships, yet they're the least honored. When you tell a customer that has had serial equipment failure (which is your fault) that you cant send someone out for a week (because you're improperly staffed), you're telling them that they arent that important. When you mismanage your business such that you cant commit to sending someone out for at least several days and your only fallback is the old "Hey, its only tv!!" excuse, with the implication that there is something wrong with the customer if they cant be without it for a week while you tell them nothing, you create doubt. When you say you might show up and dont, you create confusion.

What does a customer do when they feel unimportant, confused and filled with doubt and a little resentment? Right...they arent going to be your customer anymore.

cfb said:

Sounds like there were three problems here.

1 - A series of bad equipment or perhaps an environmental issue (bad power, voltage on the ground). Since things did work in his environment previously, that suggests poor quality control on the hardware he was shipped. I dont think thats the customers fault.

2 - Cant get a tech out to perform service for a week? Maybe today but he doesnt show up? Nobody can say exactly when or make a commitment? You can certainly argue a lack of manpower to address the customers needs in a timely manner, but that has a lot more to do with how the service provider is staffing to handle their normal and reasonable out of band service load. Also not the customers fault. I think a customer has a right to at least get a firm commitment to be serviced, and more than a day or two isnt very reasonable. If thats not grokable, how about this: "I'm sorry directv, my electric and gas bills were higher than I expected and I dont have enough money in my checking account to pay my directv bill this month, since I already paid the other bills and yours came in last. Clearly you'll have no issue with my not making sure I had enough money saved and worked enough hours to pay all of my bills, no matter how much they might have turned out to be, right? Oh, and I also cant tell you exactly when I can pay. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the next day. I cant commit though. What? You dont like that? Come on! Its only tv and what do you expect, I'm doing the best I can!!!" Yeah, that'd fly like a lead balloon.

3 - Customer communication. The two most important things in dealing with a customer is that the customer feels they're important to the vendor and that there is enough communication and information to eliminate doubt or confusion. These are the two keys to any and all types of relationships, yet they're the least honored. When you tell a customer that has had serial equipment failure (which is your fault) that you cant send someone out for a week (because you're improperly staffed), you're telling them that they arent that important. When you mismanage your business such that you cant commit to sending someone out for at least several days and your only fallback is the old "Hey, its only tv!!" excuse, with the implication that there is something wrong with the customer if they cant be without it for a week while you tell them nothing, you create doubt. When you say you might show up and dont, you create confusion.

What does a customer do when they feel unimportant, confused and filled with doubt and a little resentment? Right...they arent going to be your customer anymore.

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ok...Gonna go right ot your number two..
I think a week out on service calls is too long. However, in this business there is not enough revenue inflow to keep people on staff, buy vehicles and absorb the overhead to have instant resonse to service calls all the time. That is especially true when business is slow. A compnay cannot afford to keep peole on staff when the work isn't there. All these firms can do is staff up and hope for the best. Customers must realize that if they want next day or same day service, the cost of their tv will have to go up dramatically. There's no free lunch. The money has to come from somewhere. I think your comment about the utility companies is out of bounds. One has nothing to do with the other. BTW pay tv is a luxury. Utilities are a necessity. Public utilities are under far greater scrutiny and government regulation. Pay tv is deregulated.

I agree that the communication between tech and customer must be priority number one. Too often, I have heard that complaint from customers. "The last guy never showed up". Or " the last guy was three hours late and never called". Each is inexcusable. If were king of the satellite world for a day I would institute a rule that states " no call, no shows are grounds for instant termination of employment". There is nothing more frustrating that being made to wait with no idea how long and no communication from the perosn one is waiting on.

There is no excuse to not set an appointment and honor that appointment with conditions. And there are few. ONe major condition that must be understood is that world is an imperfect place. Things go wrong all the time.
For example a tech could show up at a job that takes hm thre or four times the amount of time . The rest of his customers must wait. Why? because everyone else in that shop is most likely slammed as well. And staffing is a simplification.
Workloads are ususally inconsistent. So staffing issues are probelmatic. A compnay cannot keep more people in their employ than they need to fulfill the workload for an average day. So when there is the occasional insane day, techs are loaded up and told "good luck." It's a crazy system. And a catch 22. Everyone would like to be staffed to capacity all the time. The cost of labor prohibits this.

I think there are two main gripes among pay tv customers. One is the call center people either are foreign and are difficult to understand or the CSR's do not have enough technical knowledge to assist the customer on the phine. The second is the lack of communication between field personnel and customer.
Eliminate these and I believe we would never see a thred like this.

dishcomm said:

BTW pay tv is a luxury. Utilities are a necessity.

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Rule #4: When the service provider thinks he can define the needs of his customers, he's going to lose a portion of them that dont agree with his assessment.

Cable tv is considered by almost everyone to be a "utility" and frankly I could do without trash pickup, natural gas and even electricity for a period of time and probably be less annoyed than if the tv was out. Water, maybe not. Yeah, I have a generator.

Satellite tv is just cable tv beamed from space to a trash can lid on my house.

In the meanwhile, if you're staffed too low to get to a customer with a persistent problem within 2 days, someone needs to work a little overtime and go over there in the evening.

I also fully realize that this system of directv paying contractors and independent 3rd parties to do installations and repair work is fundamentally not particularly viable and will induce these sorts of problems. The quality level and consistency from contractor to contractor is going to range wildly and you're going to put your business with that customer at risk on the basis of what some guy decides he will or wont do, or who thinks he can determine how important something is to his customers based on how he feels about it. You have a guy who stands to gain $50 by fulfilling a call vs almost no downside to ignoring it, vs directv who stands to lose $5-10k worth of monthly service from a customer over 5-10 years.

Directv does it this way because its cheaper and easier than trying to maintain their own network of service people, and because they can foist overtime and overhead costs onto someone else. That results in the contractors and directv both having problems with each other and the customer ending up in the middle. I'd suspect that a macroscopic analysis says that all of this crap ends up costing directv more overall than either running it themselves or paying more to the contractors.

Basically directv is putting itself at the mercy of their highest and lowest common denominator service crews. Because customers of both will visit this 'internet' thing and tell everyone about both. That'll result in many customers expecting the services of the former while fearing that they'll receive the latter.

Consistency of service is another crucial aspect of business. Its why McDonalds can make relatively crappy food and still be one of the largest restaurants in the world. Its because a big mac in taipei, omaha and dublin all taste pretty much exactly the same. You know what to expect and you get it. People like that.

I know I'm often critical of directv, but I think they warrant it. They have problems with customers canceling service before they can recoup their install/equipment costs so they implement a lease/ETF structure that Costco and Bestbuy employees cant adequately explain and which results in an "F" rating from the BBB. They hire a brazillion contractors to be the only face the customer probably ever sees to do all the work and the customer receives a high degree of variability in service levels and customer experiences, the worst of which probably result in the reason for those high cancellation situations. Then to try and patchwork over it, they'll inconsistently hand out credits to people who call in to complain, hoping to retain the business.

cfb said:

Rule #4: When the service provider thinks he can define the needs of his customers, he's going to lose a portion of them that dont agree with his assessment.

Cable tv is considered by almost everyone to be a "utility" and frankly I could do without trash pickup, natural gas and even electricity for a period of time and probably be less annoyed than if the tv was out. Water, maybe not. Yeah, I have a generator.

Satellite tv is just cable tv beamed from space to a trash can lid on my house.

In the meanwhile, if you're staffed too low to get to a customer with a persistent problem within 2 days, someone needs to work a little overtime and go over there in the evening.

I also fully realize that this system of directv paying contractors and independent 3rd parties to do installations and repair work is fundamentally not particularly viable and will induce these sorts of problems. The quality level and consistency from contractor to contractor is going to range wildly and you're going to put your business with that customer at risk on the basis of what some guy decides he will or wont do, or who thinks he can determine how important something is to his customers based on how he feels about it. You have a guy who stands to gain $50 by fulfilling a call vs almost no downside to ignoring it, vs directv who stands to lose $5-10k worth of monthly service from a customer over 5-10 years.

Directv does it this way because its cheaper and easier than trying to maintain their own network of service people, and because they can foist overtime and overhead costs onto someone else. That results in the contractors and directv both having problems with each other and the customer ending up in the middle. I'd suspect that a macroscopic analysis says that all of this crap ends up costing directv more overall than either running it themselves or paying more to the contractors.

Basically directv is putting itself at the mercy of their highest and lowest common denominator service crews. Because customers of both will visit this 'internet' thing and tell everyone about both. That'll result in many customers expecting the services of the former while fearing that they'll receive the latter.

Consistency of service is another crucial aspect of business. Its why McDonalds can make relatively crappy food and still be one of the largest restaurants in the world. Its because a big mac in taipei, omaha and dublin all taste pretty much exactly the same. You know what to expect and you get it. People like that.

I know I'm often critical of directv, but I think they warrant it. They have problems with customers canceling service before they can recoup their install/equipment costs so they implement a lease/ETF structure that Costco and Bestbuy employees cant adequately explain and which results in an "F" rating from the BBB. They hire a brazillion contractors to be the only face the customer probably ever sees to do all the work and the customer receives a high degree of variability in service levels and customer experiences, the worst of which probably result in the reason for those high cancellation situations. Then to try and patchwork over it, they'll inconsistently hand out credits to people who call in to complain, hoping to retain the business.

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Perception is immaterial. Cable Tv is not a utility nor is it a necessity. It is a luxury, plain and simple. Example...When economic times are tough people cut back. One of the first things to go is pay tv. How you can say you could stand being without power ( yeah you are the less than 0.5% of homeowners that do)or trash pickup before tv is a mystery. That is certainly a mixed set of priorities. So if you could not shower or cook for three days and your food spoiled as long as you had tv ,you'd be fine?..Please....Reminds of the satellite customer who has three small children with no phone service because they didn't pay the bill, but pays $100 per month for tv. That is a person deserves to not have children.
Every business defines the needs of their customers. That is where the idea for the business comes from. As the business evolves, it's owners adjust, but the core remains the same. The marketplace( customers) takes care of the rest.
Now, in our world of fast food instant gratification and one stop shopping, large conglomerates have expanded into other arenas. Some with great results(WalMart) some with terrible results(Exxon,when they got into office systems)
In any event, you are having problems wiht D* customer service.
I cna tell you you should keep try6ing to get a resolution. Use a calm and polite demeanor and you'll get far better results than if you are demnading and come across as being more important than any other customer.
Trust me when I tell you this......Customers of mine who were pleasant and respectful got far better service than those without those courtesies.

dishcomm said:

In any event, you are having problems wiht D* customer service.
I cna tell you you should keep try6ing to get a resolution. Use a calm and polite demeanor and you'll get far better results than if you are demnading and come across as being more important than any other customer.
Trust me when I tell you this......Customers of mine who were pleasant and respectful got far better service than those without those courtesies.

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Yep, I had to learn over the years that I'm not the only one having a bad day. Most problems seem to involve some kind of tact to get it resolved. Most CSRs are willing to trade something for inconvenience or to upgrade. Just have to patiently play their game to make it work for me. This usually does call for repeat calls to resolve issues.

Bottom line is that when multiple receivers have failed in the same location, they cannot replace it with another, they have to send a tech. As Stonecold had said, time with no service could be credited for a long tech wait. But as the OP stated, another same model replacement is unacceptable for him.

Statistically, these deal breakers happen and subs part company. I do believe that a credit could be negotiated for an upgrade but different grasses can appear greener. I wish the OP luck.

You've made up your mind with Verizon's Fios & you're one of the lucky ones to have that amazing product in your market. I can't remember how they setup the crappy Motorola Receiver; One main "whole house" receiver with smaller receivers for each TV or if that one receiver pipes out the signal with RF outputs to each TV. I'm assuming you're going to package the whole thing with a land line phone, TV, Internet & Cell; once again a lucky situation. I recently jumped ship on Verizon & packaged my iPhone with ATT for land line phone, Internet & cell but was disappointed that the packaging discount wasn't that significant in my opinion. They offered (or at least said) I could move my DTV service over too as part of the bundle but I didn't follow up to see how that would work. It seems like ATT would be cannibalizing an existing customer with DTV & I don't want to lose my "seniority" with DTV as a 15+ year customer. I'd want to keep my original DTV customer number as they have always treated me like gold if I call for anything; if switched to ATT & I become a "new customer" I fear I'd lose my relationship with DTV. On the other hand, if it's part of the agreement between DTV & ATT & I get a nice discount & everything on one bill I would make the move. I just need to do the research unless someone here knows the answer already.

Best of luck with FIOS; the only negatives have already been mentioned.....loss of some sports packages & one of the worst receivers I have ever seen.

dishcomm said:

Perception is immaterial. Cable Tv is not a utility nor is it a necessity. It is a luxury, plain and simple.

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Project your opinion (and read that last word again) onto your customers and directv loses customers. You wont. Because they really arent your customers. But like I said, this is a problem of directv's manufacture, because they have to hire people that arent really interested in their customers or their long term revenue stream. To simplifly, these people arent your customers, nor representative of your revenue stream, future profits, and very indirectly your business success.

But be assured, since the 1990's, pay television is far from an unnecessary luxury. It might be to you and to those you know, but to people who pay to have a dish bolted to their house and to have hundreds of dollars worth of equipment put in their house and thousands paid per year, its a utility. At this time I pay considerably more for directv than I do for natural gas delivery or trash pickup at my house and a disruption of service from the latter two is considerably less disruptive than turning on the tv and having no signal. But I'm sure you have some judgmental comments about that as well.

I'm certain at a 110% level that I wont change your mind, but I'm also certain at a 250% level that you'll be out of business in a few years if you maintain your mindset. Good day.

Trust me when I tell you this......Customers of mine who were pleasant and respectful got far better service than those without those courtesies.

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Yes, I'm completely certain that in instances where your business isnt directly related to immediate continued profit, that kissing your ass gets better results. You've quite succinctly proved why the directv model is inadequate and why they have poor customer service results. Slipped from 1st to 4th place in customer service and an "F" rating with the BBB because they deliver shoddy service and act in a manner that isnt trustful in a business environment. Now take a bow.

While everyone should be pleasant on both the customer and service ends of the spectrum, the OP simply wanted timely service and good customer communication to go with his crappy low quality equipment problems, and he got neither of those.

In that event, he was most assuredly correct in telling directv, their 3rd party contractors who think their customers needs arent important, and the same 3rd parties who want their butts kissed to do a good job to go take a big flying hike up the road.

Once again, I'm not picking a fight with you directly, just pointing out that your approach pretty much assures that you'll work a lot of long stressful weeks before going out of business because you dont know how to service a customer. I'm mostly picking a fight with directv for hiring folks like you who think you get to decide what is and isnt important to their customers and who give only their good quality service to the customers who kiss your ass. But to be fair, you probably arent being paid enough or given enough business reason to bother doing a good job or giving a hoot.

I guess if this was a great economy with lots of money pouring over the gunwales, your approach might work to some degree. Newsflash: its not, it hasnt been for some time, and it wont be for a while yet.

But do go on as you have. After all, it must be working great for you, right? Because it seems you think the product you're servicing isnt that important, that your customers have to be nice to you before you'll be willing to do a good job, but you cant afford to keep enough service techs on board to fix a customer whose been screwed, blued and tattooed in less than a week. Check back in with us in a year or two and let us know how that worked out for you, m'kay?

Update to my service appt.

The appointment was scheduled for the 0800-1200 block. I got a call on yesterday confirming the appointment. The service tech, a young lady named Rachel, showed up at about 0900. Very professional. She got right to work checking out the box, listening to my observations and running her tests. She told me that the R15 had been given numerous of her customers problems and also that DTV was allowing refurbs to be given out to customers. She informed me by checking out my broken R15 that it was a refurb. She replaced it with an R16. She apologized for all my troubles and was out of my home in less than an hour. Everything is working fine,

It is a shame that the customer service division and management at DTV is not like the service technicians. If they were, then DTV would not be losing a customer in about 2 weeks.

s2emgill said:

Update to my service appt.

The appointment was scheduled for the 0800-1200 block. I got a call on yesterday confirming the appointment. The service tech, a young lady named Rachel, showed up at about 0900. Very professional. She got right to work checking out the box, listening to my observations and running her tests. She told me that the R15 had been given numerous of her customers problems and also that DTV was allowing refurbs to be given out to customers. She informed me by checking out my broken R15 that it was a refurb. She replaced it with an R16. She apologized for all my troubles and was out of my home in less than an hour. Everything is working fine,

It is a shame that the customer service division and management at DTV is not like the service technicians. If they were, then DTV would not be losing a customer in about 2 weeks.

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The R-16 was a refurb.