Dish Installer pay?

iafirebuff

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Feb 10, 2006
4,394
8
Waterloo, Iowa
well, after my install, and the tech asking if I would lioke to come work for them I have a question -

What is the pay like for a Dish installer?

The company he works for has hourly where everything is provided including vehicle - they have full benefits and work 4 days on, 3 days off.

The other positions they have you provide your own vehicle, and he claims to be working 6-7 days per week (of course at 4.5 hours for an upgarde I can see why) :)

So my question, I like doing this sort of thing, and was wondering approx. what the pay is? THANKS!
 
I make about 72/15. 35 for a service change/trouble call. I don't know what dish pays their contractors. I only know what one of their contractors pays me. :hungry: . As a sub you are really gonna have to hump it if you want to make money. It pays my bills. Once you factor in all the drop materials(theres alot, Dish has some pretty specific installation requirements), gas, poles, concrete, truck maintenance...you will probably clear about as much as you would at a decent paying factory job.

Sub contract work is the only work I can comment on. I've never worked for a retailer or buy the hour.
 
72/15 - That is $72 for an install and $15 for???


Thanks for the info! I would need to make $30k to break even with what I make now. Thanks for your help!
 
The Dishstore pays $100 for a primary receiver, $25 for each addional receiver.

You supply your own truck, tools, workmans Comp and insurance. Telephone lines must be run as part of the install but we supply telephone wire and jacks.
 
Claude Greiner said:
The Dishstore pays $100 for a primary receiver, $25 for each addional receiver.

You supply your own truck, tools, workmans Comp and insurance. Telephone lines must be run as part of the install but we supply telephone wire and jacks.

For DNSC direct it's hourly they provide everything but your work boots. Insurance, Free TV, pay for education, etc.

Starts out at $13/hr 4 days on 3 days off. Lots of overtime.
 
I can't tell people how much I make per year because they don't believe me. But my pay is $80/$20, and $50 for service calls. But I'm in the upper echelon of the pay scale. And we need to have our completion ratio over 85% and our TC ration below 5% to maintain that pay scale, but that's not an issue with me. I've maintianed that for ... ever? Dishmovers are 75/15.

So for a four tuner new connects it's $140. Figure I do 3-4 of those a day... and you can do the math yourself.

When someone says 75/15 or 80/20, the first number is referring to the basic one tuner install with one dish. The second number is referring to the money paid for each additional tuner on the account. And the pay is higher if we have to use a SD or if we have to throw up 2 dishes (for 61.5 for example).

I do work 6 days a week (which is great, imho) but they are always pressuring me to work 7. And there is bonus pay for Sunday jobs. I make wicked sick money, because I'm wicked fast, and wicked efficient. I can't comprehend how by the hour work would hold a candle to subcontracting work. Maybe if your really really slow...

In order to maintain a full day of work, my whole office has to have good numbers. Which means you can't be working with a bunch of lazy bums or the work won't last long. Also, I live in a large city, so my routes are often fairly tight. Not alot of drive time, thank goodness. And I moved into an apartment right in the center of my work routes to cut down on drive time even further.
 
Last edited:
ZandarKoad said:
I do work 6 days a week (which is great, imho) but they are always pressuring me to work 7. And there is bonus pay for Sunday jobs. I make wicked sick money, because I'm wicked fast, and wicked efficient. I can't comprehend how by the hour work would hold a candle to subcontracting work. Maybe if your really really slow...

In order to maintain a full day of work, my whole office has to have good numbers. Which means you can't be working with a bunch of lazy bums or the work won't last long. Also, I live in a large city, so my routes are often fairly tight. Not alot of drive time, thank goodness. And I moved into an apartment right in the center of my work routes to cut down on drive time even further.

I love it when I roll onto a job and I see a dish mounted on a two story roof with sat lines going every which way when you could have simply just mounted the dish within 5' of where the utilities make point of entry and still have excellent LOS
for 15+ years.

Satellite installations are not difficult you just need to keep it simple, spend a few extra minutes educating the customer on how to use it. I seem to be rolling up on quite a few T/C's because the customer didn't know they were to put the TV2 on 73. Eeeh... I'll stop now. :rolleyes:
 
Year ago, I was work for a dish installation company, not subs, pay was 80/20, they pay for your materials cost by percentage from 20% to 25%, depending what you make on that week, if you has no insurance, they take 5%out from your check, you use get from 3 to 5 orders depending how heavy the workload are, and these mixed with services calls and installation, you average make $800 to $1500 per week after cost, older employee has little more orders for sure. One thing I do not like is, they tracking you almost every hour, you have to answer even you are climbling on the ladder. too much for me so I just worked for few months and head back to my own business.
 
ZandarKoad said:
I can't tell people how much I make per year because they don't believe me. But my pay is $80/$20, and $50 for service calls. But I'm in the upper echelon of the pay scale. And we need to have our completion ratio over 85% and our TC ration below 5% to maintain that pay scale, but that's not an issue with me. I've maintianed that for ... ever? Dishmovers are 75/15.

So for a four tuner new connects it's $140. Figure I do 3-4 of those a day... and you can do the math yourself.

When someone says 75/15 or 80/20, the first number is referring to the basic one tuner install with one dish. The second number is referring to the money paid for each additional tuner on the account. And the pay is higher if we have to use a SD or if we have to throw up 2 dishes (for 61.5 for example).

I do work 6 days a week (which is great, imho) but they are always pressuring me to work 7. And there is bonus pay for Sunday jobs. I make wicked sick money, because I'm wicked fast, and wicked efficient. I can't comprehend how by the hour work would hold a candle to subcontracting work. Maybe if your really really slow...

In order to maintain a full day of work, my whole office has to have good numbers. Which means you can't be working with a bunch of lazy bums or the work won't last long. Also, I live in a large city, so my routes are often fairly tight. Not alot of drive time, thank goodness. And I moved into an apartment right in the center of my work routes to cut down on drive time even further.


Yeah, same with my office. We have to maintain good numbers, and we do. The problem is, they hire anybody who is willing to do it, and we end up doing alot of trouble calls. My routes are never tight. 200 miles a day is average for me. A 4 room pays me around 118, there are alot of trees where I'm at so I use alot of poles. ($$$$). I suppose in the grand scheme of things I'm still a newbie at this, but it's not always possible to mount the dish close to utilities. Being in the country, alot of folks dont even have land lines, and my cell wont work in alot of places. I HAVE to call in on every job, and call in before I leave so dispatch can do an onsight post call. I get hit for about 50$ if I am unable to do this, for any reason.

Installing sat systems is basically easy(they were designed to be installed by the customer), its all the other bs that makes it hard. I do not make wicked money,( a 4 room from scratch in a good sized house usually takes me about 3 hours). It's nothing to drive 2 hours just to get to my first job, and rarely are any of my jobs in the same town.

Before you say anything I can't move just yet. My girlfriend is still in college and she's got about 2 years left. I'm sure this business is great in the big cities, but I'm not that impressed with it here.

We don't get paid for second dishes since they are not standard anymore. The only time I would use 2 dishes for HD is if I just cant get a los for all the sats from a 1000. I'm usually threading the needle as it is, but that still does not justify a wing dish, according to my company.

I'm happy for you guys makin the big bucks, seems an unattainable dream from here.
 
Dish Network internal techs in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia start at $11.00 hr. and work 4 days a week. Everything is paid for except work boots. All the tools and supplies are given to them along with the use of a work van with a company gas card. I know for a fact, the techs here are making $30k on a 4 day week, but most work extra days for more overtime (time and a half) and they make 40k the first year. The second year is even more.
 
Roadwarrior said:
Yeah, same with my office. We have to maintain good numbers, and we do. The problem is, they hire anybody who is willing to do it, and we end up doing alot of trouble calls. My routes are never tight. 200 miles a day is average for me. A 4 room pays me around 118, there are alot of trees where I'm at so I use alot of poles. ($$$$). I suppose in the grand scheme of things I'm still a newbie at this, but it's not always possible to mount the dish close to utilities. Being in the country, alot of folks dont even have land lines, and my cell wont work in alot of places. I HAVE to call in on every job, and call in before I leave so dispatch can do an onsight post call. I get hit for about 50$ if I am unable to do this, for any reason.
We don't get paid for second dishes since they are not standard anymore. The only time I would use 2 dishes for HD is if I just cant get a los for all the sats from a 1000. I'm usually threading the needle as it is, but that still does not justify a wing dish, according to my company.

Yeah, we have to keep our office well informed as well, but that $50 deduct stuff is crap. We just recently implemented post calling, but it's not same day. Its one day later, the techs have to call all their previous day's jobs. Kinda sucks, but it really is a fantastic way to get those TCs before they materialize, so I'm all for it. Yeah 3 hours is about average for a four tuner new connect with no lines run to any locations, but only if your using Super Dishes. D500s and DPP should cut that down a bit... The gold mines are the cities man. Especially cities with high turnovers in the duplexes/apartments. You eventually reach a saturation point in the cities where every room in every house has a cable run to it already, and most of them have some sort of 18" dish mounted somewhere with a dual run to a ground block. Then it's just WHAM BAMM, in and OUT. Just check the mast to see if it's level, then peak, replace the ground block (if it's not 3GHz)... Saves tons of time and money. If you aren't afraid of the crime, the low-income areas of big cities are money makers too. High turn over, low customer standards, not many finished basements, etc. Makes work QUICK and EASY. :cool:
 

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