Have to say that may MANY personal experiences here in the Los Angeles area that EVERY Dish company installer has been courteous, professional (wearing hard hats and good ladder), been very pleasant human beings, willing to please the customer, easy to chat with, done it right the first time, NEVER perplexed by complex multi-room/DVR/home distribution installs, VERY knowledgeable of system and latest info like found on this board, and have HAPPILY and EAGERLY CLEANED UP contractor MESS install.
I think it might depend upon what area one lives in. Here in LA all but ONE of the contractors I have ever dealt with were, disingenuous, misleading, LIARS, CHEATS, tried to force out MORE CASH in their pockets for what is included in install, and performed an INFERIOR install and Dish Co had to come out and fix. The latest contractor installed a 722K and kept the remotes for himself telling my aunt that her old 722 remotes work fine with the 722K as CAUGHT the tech keeping the new remotes in the box. Of course this meant she would not be able to use the System Wizard for back-up of settings, timers etc. She had to have Dish send her the proper remotes. And a contractor wanted to take my brother's DPP44 and mount a second dish and "give" him for free a 622 saying that the SD PQ (while having a HDTV, he does NOT subscribe to HD services) is much better with the 622, saying that Dish Co. had set up the initial call to make the appointment and this was an upgrade Dish Co had approved. Of course, my brother would have been charged additional fee because of this. Anyway my brother called Dish and confirmed they were never involved in this and after hearing the facts he was transferred to a different department where Dish apologized and took lots of detailed info because they wanted to "investigate" this.
Sorry, yosemitesam, but what vash1090 has posted is ABSOLUTELY TRUE and a NOT croc of [the crass word you used] in the LA area and in is most likely true in his area. I should add that this is true for DirecTV contractors, as well. And yes, Dish Co installers spend an inordinate amount of time cleaning up contractor installs. Maybe in Mayberry the contractors are nice and do good installs, but NOT here, and here has the HIGHEST penetration of satellite in the country.
Try to have an open mind for the fact that each of us share our impressions, views, opinions based on our personal experience and others are free to post that their experience is different and in the exchange of information, we can get a picture if this is regional problem or isolated to one area. So, what may be a croc of [the crass word you used] to you because you speak for yourself and YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE, vash1090 posted his view with the same validity as yours, but expressed it in far more mature, intelligent, and calm post. The best response from any of us is essentially, "Well, in my area," or "in my experience it is the opposite."
You folks have NO IDEA how bad it is here in the LA area with the Dish/Direct contractors, and, for that matter, a whole lot of other small businesses here for reasons that are far too long and controversial to get into on this forum. vash1090 speaks a truth for he and his area as you, yosemitesam, speak a DIFFERENT TRUTH for you and your area. One will rarely find an ultimate truth with something so varied as quality of installs. The point is on this board we can share our truths and learn from others rather than just stomping on someone using crass words that indicate a person's limited vocabulary who expresses something you don't like to hear. Next time try entering the crass word used in your post into a PC thesaurus, and you will seem more intelligent than others could ever imagine.
And BTW, we have always heard good things about Dishstore, so we now there are some good (I did ONE good contractor experience) contractors out there, just not many in Grater Los Angeles metro area.
