Having Worst Install Experience of My Life

[Claude Greiner]

Seems unfair to me. But you're dealing with people with zero in the way of technical knowledge.

That's like 99% of customers out there. This board is the exception to the rule.

 

[dishcomm]

Pretty much the same thing here. It's amazing people won't even try.

I just had a small apartment building I had to walk away from for this very same issue.

Every month I would get 1-2 unpaid service calls due to customers moving in and wanting us to hook up their tv.

I would get there and the receiver would be sitting on the floor disconnected and the customer would expect us to hook it up.

The last straw was the owner had us out to fix like 3 small stupid issues, thinking we got everything resolved, he calls me again the next day to reconnect another apartment where the old tenant moved out and a new tenant moved it.

I was like F this and I haven't been there in over 2 months.

Charged him $8000 to put in the system for 23 apartments, and must have paid out over $4000 to my techs to go back out for stupid service calls, and I think I lost $2500-$3000 on this job because of all the small service calls.

Never walked away from a customer before, but serviced it for the 2 years and that's enough.

At least you had a choice. Doing fulfillment work with Dish's idiotic metrics, there is no choice. If the customer F's something up, the blame goes to the tech. BTW, unlike you who paid your people to go out and fix stuff not their fault, dish has a "screw you" attitude toward the very people that ineffect, put them on the map....It comes as no surprise many good experienced people have left the business. Including yours truly...

 

[dishcomm]

It's called FS, it's similar to the same thing att runs. It's a routing system that was put in to effect about 2-3 years ago Directv wide. It's a joke, runs us techs all over the place crossing paths with other techs numerous times daily. Our routes are no longer promised, you have what's called soft booked, which is what the system routes you from the start of the day. You finish your 2 AM's early and a tech 30 miles away is behind the system gives you the that guys next job to meet time frame. Your soft booked route either falls off and gets filled in with other work from other techs (the whole systems shifts jobs from other techs and moves them around) or you do that job and then get sent back where you should've been for your pm work and start that time frame behind. It's a nightmare and one of the worst things I've ever seen.

Wow...So lets say the equipment for another guy's job rthat got sent to you is not on your truck. How the hell do they handle that?
Of is your truck inventory logged before you leave the shop?
In any event, how they manage this is a mystery.
Suppose someone is behind. The system selects YOU to pick up that guy's job. Would this not then set you behind schedule? Especially if the job is large and time consuming?....
I can see where once guys figure this thing out, they make sure their jobs finish right on the time frame button. For example you could finish you second AM early. But take your time and make sure you don't finish until lunch time.
Sort of like what UPS guys do. They see that they can finish their route early but to avoid having the number of stops on their route increased, they do not hurry.
Dish has a similar system in a way. Don't know about in house , but the contractor techs have tablets. They are required to log in at I think 6:30 am to view their route. They are required to keep their tablet powered up until 6 pm. This is in case there are jobs dropped in. so a guy could have his day wrapped up and be on the way home and suddenly he gets a job 50 miles away in another direction. What nonsense. And a clear violation of federal tax law. For proof go to irs.gov for SS-8....This is a sheet that one answers questions to determine if their status is that of an employee or a contractor.

 

[dishcomm]

It's been around longer than that ... we do the same thing.
I know how frustrating it can be.

I would milk every job to make sure it would take the entire amount of time it should.....I HATE surprises.
I could imagine my frustration with getting stuck with a 4-5 hour job I had shoved down my throat because someone else who had it, could not get to it on time. That would be the end for me.
I can see where the possibility exists that the system can be manipulated and abused.
For example. Suppose a guy has a heavy day. He sees one job on his "soft book" and he's like "ya know what? I just don't feel like killing myself today so I will go slow and hopefully they will take this job and stick someone else with it".
I would be extremely unhappy if I found out someone was doing this.
If there is one thing I find infuriating is when someone takes their problem and dumps it someone else's lap..That's grounds for a come to Jesus meeting.

 

[KungFu Panda]

It's been around longer than that ... we do the same thing.
I know how frustrating it can be.

You know it's bad when you got more drive time than on the job time.

 

[KungFu Panda]

I would milk every job to make sure it would take the entire amount of time it should.....I HATE surprises.
I could imagine my frustration with getting stuck with a 4-5 hour job I had shoved down my throat because someone else who had it, could not get to it on time. That would be the end for me.
I can see where the possibility exists that the system can be manipulated and abused.
For example. Suppose a guy has a heavy day. He sees one job on his "soft book" and he's like "ya know what? I just don't feel like killing myself today so I will go slow and hopefully they will take this job and stick someone else with it".
I would be extremely unhappy if I found out someone was doing this.
If there is one thing I find infuriating is when someone takes their problem and dumps it someone else's lap..That's grounds for a come to Jesus meeting.

It happens unfortunately. The biggest problem we have is on heavy days between 4-5pm guys will sit on their current job or just not dispatch until the load clear message comes out hoping someone else will pick up the last few jobs.

 

[twizt3dsist3r]

It's actually called fs scheduler... still every bit unfair to techs as described however.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

 

[Jimbo]

I would milk every job to make sure it would take the entire amount of time it should.....I HATE surprises.
I could imagine my frustration with getting stuck with a 4-5 hour job I had shoved down my throat because someone else who had it, could not get to it on time. That would be the end for me.
I can see where the possibility exists that the system can be manipulated and abused.
For example. Suppose a guy has a heavy day. He sees one job on his "soft book" and he's like "ya know what? I just don't feel like killing myself today so I will go slow and hopefully they will take this job and stick someone else with it".
I would be extremely unhappy if I found out someone was doing this.
If there is one thing I find infuriating is when someone takes their problem and dumps it someone else's lap..That's grounds for a come to Jesus meeting.

Now, on my side of the program it's rare for us to actually see our jobs ahead of time, being in repair, you never know what your getting into till you get there.

 

[Zashel]

Now, on my side of the program it's rare for us to actually see our jobs ahead of time, being in repair, you never know what your getting into till you get there.

like having to rewire the entire job and only having 55 min to do it? yea. those are fun jobs...

 

[Jimbo]

like having to rewire the entire job and only having 55 min to do it? yea. those are fun jobs...

And worse.

 

[dishcomm]

And worse.

How is it possible for the system to provide such a small amount of time to perform what is essentially a new connect?...
That is not logical

 

[Jimbo]

How is it possible for the system to provide such a small amount of time to perform what is essentially a new connect?...
That is not logical

Because its the ones that have never done the job that make the numbers up.
We use to be given X amount of time to do each task and they would take an avg.
You never really know how long it takes to rewire (for example) someones jack, or home (in a worse case scenario) it could be a quick and easy or a PITA.
You get the same amount of time regardless. They claim it all averages out.

For EX, we use to get 2.5 hrs to track down trouble in the outside plant, open up cable somewhere (yards) and fix it .... we now get a little less than an hour.

 

[Hutch1814]

It's called tech efficiency. They can make this "block" of a techs schedule anything they want. It's a weird system, it's done from 0.2 to 2.0 (if I remember) the higher the number the less time it takes. Example, I can be routed 4 4 box installs in an 8 hour day. Each job duration taking 1 hour and 55 minutes a piece. Travel time is included but the problem is where your route could change and go pick up another techs job because "he won't make it" when he clearly will. We techs can tell the system it is going to take shorter or longer to complete each job but most techs don't use it which I'm guilty because in all honesty it doesn't matter. If you close your job at 11 and there's a 4 box 45 minutes away for that time slot, you're getting it cause the system (or tracking office) knows you'll be there by the end of time frame.