Oh the things we see out in the field as retailers

[dishstaller]

Got a Dish service call the other day. Said it was a sound issue. Called the customer but she was making no sense....said her TV had to stay on ALL night and she was sick of it and wanted it fixed asap. Drove 15 miles out to her house and she angrily picked up her remote and aimed it at the TV pressing the volume button "SEE.....SEE......it won't work the volume ever since I hooked up this TV". I told her that the remote has to be programmed to a TV....it can't just magically work ANY TV instantly. She said "but it worked my other TV"
I programmed the remote and she grabbed it and KEPT turning the TV on and off again to the point that I started getting concerned. I finally said "you know...it's not really a good idea to keep doing that...." I then reminded her that when she got a new TV the remote would have to be reprogrammed. She sternly told me "this wasn't a NEW TV...it was the one from my bedroom".
Crap like this is why so many companies don't offer much in the way of customer support anymore...they have probably found it is cheaper just to lose those who are unhelpable.

 

[JSheridan]

Got a Dish service call the other day. Said it was a sound issue. Called the customer but she was making no sense....said her TV had to stay on ALL night and she was sick of it and wanted it fixed asap. Drove 15 miles out to her house and she angrily picked up her remote and aimed it at the TV pressing the volume button "SEE.....SEE......it won't work the volume ever since I hooked up this TV". I told her that the remote has to be programmed to a TV....it can't just magically work ANY TV instantly. She said "but it worked my other TV"
I programmed the remote and she grabbed it and KEPT turning the TV on and off again to the point that I started getting concerned. I finally said "you know...it's not really a good idea to keep doing that...." I then reminded her that when she got a new TV the remote would have to be reprogrammed. She sternly told me "this wasn't a NEW TV...it was the one from my bedroom".
Crap like this is why so many companies don't offer much in the way of customer support anymore...they have probably found it is cheaper just to lose those who are unhelpable.

We learned a long, long time ago that there are some customers you're better off without. Thankfully it's been very few over the years.

 

[HipKat]

We learned a long, long time ago that there are some customers you're better off without. Thankfully it's been very few over the years.

I've often said, this job would be great if it weren't for the customers.

My favorites on trouble calls are when they won't give up the remote until they show you that there's no signal, or it's off input, etc

 

[telstar_1]

They're afraid you'll fix it too quick

 

[sktrus]

It is quite possible some, mostly old people are having issues with basic steps. Dementia, alzheimer, tired brains?

My mother is 88 and living alone. Long time ago, I gave her a kitchen timer where she could use 3 timers. She was fine with it with initial help. Last year, she needed to be reminded how to use it. It was impossible for her to comprehend. She couldn't follow simple steps.
Without having her feel ashamed, I claimed the gadget was no longer working properly.

Let's assume not everybody is as dumb as they act. I am pretty sure most installers feel that way.

 

[HipKat]

It is quite possible some, mostly old people are having issues with basic steps. Dementia, alzheimer, tired brains?

My mother is 88 and living alone. Long time ago, I gave her a kitchen timer where she could use 3 timers. She was fine with it with initial help. Last year, she needed to be reminded how to use it. It was impossible for her to comprehend. She couldn't follow simple steps.
Without having her feel ashamed, I claimed the gadget was no longer working properly.

Let's assume not everybody is as dumb as they act. I am pretty sure most installers feel that way.

TBH, the worst thing I see is when I have to go to somebody's house like you described, an elderly woman who may live alone and the work order calls for an upgrade from 211 to a hopper three. The sensible upgrade would be a Wall-E, but this won't do work orders for Wally's anymore unless it's commercial or outdoors. Then I have to teach this woman about new menus, a new remote although she can keep her VIP number one remote if it's still a good remote because many times those old remotes are shot.

And you have to just bite your tongue and close your eyes to the utter confusion and frustration that you know they feel

 

[AZ.]

TBH, the worst thing I see is when I have to go to somebody's house like you described, an elderly woman who may live alone and the work order calls for an upgrade from 211 to a hopper three. The sensible upgrade would be a Wall-E, but this won't do work orders for Wally's anymore unless it's commercial or outdoors. Then I have to teach this woman about new menus, a new remote although she can keep her VIP number one remote if it's still a good remote because many times those old remotes are shot.

And you have to just bite your tongue and close your eyes to the utter confusion and frustration that you know they feel

My mom just shy of 99. In the retirement home they just dropped Comcast and added Direct streaming. All she says is Gemini this and Gemini that she is so confused she wont watch TV now.

 

[Jimbo]

My parents are having issues from time to time as well ... they are in an Assisted Living place that gives them the local Cable company with a remote .... it works, but I added the Streaming stuff they need (football, YTTV ect) which works off the TV remote.
Sometimes when I go over they are on the YTTV, other times they are on whatever they happen to find, it's a Sony Tv so it's got Google TV built in ... I have found that often times they just look at the tiles on the TV and pick one, so they could be on ANY of them ... Sometimes when I get there, they say the TV hasn't worked in days ... I'm usually there every few days.
Sometimes everything is Fine ...

Usually when I find the Cable co remote out, I know he couldn't find what he wanted.

As people get older, you have to understand that they don't remember things like they use to ...
I've had conversations, that they don't remember a few minutes later ...

People not understanding older people is really hard ... Dad turned 88 last week.

 

[navychop]

Ah gotta tell ya AGIN ta get offa my lawn!

 

[HipKat]

My mom just shy of 99. In the retirement home they just dropped Comcast and added Direct streaming. All she says is Gemini this and Gemini that she is so confused she wont watch TV now.

I just went through this on an upgrade from DIRECTV to dish and the work order was a hopper 3. She doesn't record. She doesn't have Internet, so she doesn't stream. She didn't understand the dish remote, and even though I went through it with her over and over how to find her favorite channels and write down the numbers of your favorite channels, you could tell that at 95, this was so confusing to her that she just said I'm just not even gonna watch TV anymore. I tried to do everything I could to make sure that she understood how it works, but you could say she was completely confused. And this wasn't her calling dish network, this was an outside sales company that goes to DIRECTV customers and sells them on dish, which gives us a lot of work in the summertime, but this customer had no business being pushed into changing from a service that she knew how to use. And me, as the tech, not completing a job works against you so it puts me between a rock and hard place. Not to mention, I'm one of the last guys here who still gets paid by the job.

Sucks to have a conscience sometimes

 

[telstar_1]

I just went through this on an upgrade from DIRECTV to dish and the work order was a hopper 3. She doesn't record. She doesn't have Internet, so she doesn't stream. She didn't understand the dish remote, and even though I went through it with her over and over how to find her favorite channels and write down the numbers of your favorite channels, you could tell that at 95, this was so confusing to her that she just said I'm just not even gonna watch TV anymore. I tried to do everything I could to make sure that she understood how it works, but you could say she was completely confused. And this wasn't her calling dish network, this was an outside sales company that goes to DIRECTV customers and sells them on dish, which gives us a lot of work in the summertime, but this customer had no business being pushed into changing from a service that she knew how to use. And me, as the tech, not completing a job works against you so it puts me between a rock and hard place. Not to mention, I'm one of the last guys here who still gets paid by the job.

Sucks to have a conscience sometimes

Your examples are precisely why I could never do DiSH for DiSH. I need to be able to fully apply good judgment to every situation. They should have just left us to our processes of serving our local communities in their better interests rather than hounding us all out of business to replace us with centralized sales & "service".

 

[Strega]

For me the problems began when I bought my parents a VCR and they couldn't understand the idea of the TV being on channel 3, and seeing something that was on some other channel via the VCR. Later they got a TV with multiple inputs but that didn't clear anything up - inputs just weren't part of "TV watching" for them.

Many years later, the senior living place they moved to switched from Comcast to DirecTV. The administrator pre-announced the move telling people that nothing would change except they would get a new remote! I immediately knew there would be trouble, but I was unable to convince the administrator. The administrator - in his 40s, could not understand how disconnecting a cable from Comcast and connecting it to a dish on the roof would affect people's Comcast Internet and Comcast phone that were delivered on the same wire. Eventually he kind of understood the wire issue, but asserted there were multiple wires (really outlets) in each apartment. Um, yeah, but there's only one wire per apartment in the building wiring closet! Still he asserted that the direcTV installers would make it work. Turns out the installers didn't know what the admin was smoking.

Not to mention the smaller problems of: Different channel numbers, different channels, and a remote that was VERY different. Many people couldn't even figure out the volume control, because instead of buttons you pushed down, you had to nudge a single bump forward or back. Not to mention this button was tiny and old people couldn't even find it.

Now dad's vision is so poor that it's a 50:50 chance of whether he is holding the remote right end up when he presses the "Power" button in the top right corner and when he gets it wrong, the button in that position is "Input". When he presses that, the TV appears "off" to him since it goes to a black screen. (It says No Signal but he usually doesn't see that.) So next time he wants to watch, he picks up the remote, and this time, he might actually get the power button, so now his TV is both off and on the wrong input.

Somehow, several remotes back, They would get the TV closed caption turned on using the cable box remote. So I'd get called in and I'd want the TV remote because I didn't know how they were turning it on and off with the cable remote. I'd get to listen to some variation of: we never use the TV remote! You're not supposed to use the TV remote! etc. Yeah yeah, but where is the TV remote?

And a couple of systems before that, they had a cable remote with one power button that turned on both the TV and the DVR. The installer told them to never never touch the TV remote again! That was fine as long as the TV and DVR stayed in sync! (Which they did for about a week.)

 

[telstar_1]

When my mom was in a home it had cable and I went around and around with them just trying to get her a box that would do a "short list" of pre-programmed favorite ch's, so she could just go ch by ch on the simple remote I got her. Like DiSH has had from the outset. But no, no Comcast box would do that...

One from way back was a guy I converted to DiSH from Primestar who complained that there was no ch# lit up on the front of the box. No amount of my explaining that everything appears onscreen when he uses the remote could shake his conviction that he was being gypped.

 

[EatMyVolts]

It is quite possible some, mostly old people are having issues with basic steps. Dementia, alzheimer, tired brains?

My mother is 88 and living alone. Long time ago, I gave her a kitchen timer where she could use 3 timers. She was fine with it with initial help. Last year, she needed to be reminded how to use it. It was impossible for her to comprehend. She couldn't follow simple steps.
Without having her feel ashamed, I claimed the gadget was no longer working properly.

Let's assume not everybody is as dumb as they act. I am pretty sure most installers feel that way.

My wife (75) is in the early stages of alzheimer's. (You wanna talk about the "deer in the headlight" look when you get the diagnosis?) Anyway I was able to make things a bit easier for her by getting her a 60.0 remote and leaving the audio amp on all the time. Fewer buttons is making for fewer problems.

When it comes to memory issues with older folks, please remember that this is not the life they wanted and these are diseases for which there is no cure.

 

[navychop]

Thus my FiL went. At one time, he was a FTAer.

 

[HipKat]

Your examples are precisely why I could never do DiSH for DiSH. I need to be able to fully apply good judgment to every situation. They should have just left us to our processes of serving our local communities in their better interests rather than hounding us all out of business to replace us with centralized sales & "service".

They feel your better interests are to conform to Dish Standards to keep everything consistent - even if they aren't

 

[dishstaller]

It is quite possible some, mostly old people are having issues with basic steps. Dementia, alzheimer, tired brains?

My mother is 88 and living alone. Long time ago, I gave her a kitchen timer where she could use 3 timers. She was fine with it with initial help. Last year, she needed to be reminded how to use it. It was impossible for her to comprehend. She couldn't follow simple steps.
Without having her feel ashamed, I claimed the gadget was no longer working properly.

Let's assume not everybody is as dumb as they act. I am pretty sure most installers feel that way.

Oh believe me, I understand. My Mom is 85. There IS however a HUGE difference between dealing with a family member and dealing with a customer.....especially customers who get very angry and start demanding you fix something that ain't broken. Not every older woman is a sweet old lady....many have pretty sharp fangs.

Also, I live in FL where we have a very large percent of the population over 65 so my odds of dealing with an elderly customer are rather high.

 

[dishstaller]

It is quite possible some, mostly old people are having issues with basic steps. Dementia, alzheimer, tired brains?

Right after I posted the above I was reminded of a situation I ran into recently. Older couple....been customers of mine since my Radio Shack days...their daughter in law even used to work for me. She called and was having issues with the TV in her bedroom. I go out there and they have a 722. Go back to the bedroom which is the TV 2 location and put the TV, using the TV remote, on the right channel...fixed. I then ask for the Dish remote and she tells me that she has NEVER had a Dish remote in that room I tried as gently as I could to explain to her that there was NO way she could have ever changed channels without one. She quickly got ticked at me and I said to let me look around the store and see if I could find one. On the way out I noticed a remote beside the TV in the kitchen.. That was it. I took it back to the bedroom and was able to change channels with no issue. When I left her husband walked out with me and said he was sorry....her mind has been getting worse and worse for some time. He thanked me for my patience, which was good to hear because I honestly didn't know if I was coming across as patient or not.

 

[telstar_1]

People told me I had the patience of a god. Especially when it came time to call DiSH and try to get them to do something in the customer interest.

 

[tsunami2311]

Got a Dish service call the other day. Said it was a sound issue. Called the customer but she was making no sense....said her TV had to stay on ALL night and she was sick of it and wanted it fixed asap. Drove 15 miles out to her house and she angrily picked up her remote and aimed it at the TV pressing the volume button "SEE.....SEE......it won't work the volume ever since I hooked up this TV". I told her that the remote has to be programmed to a TV....it can't just magically work ANY TV instantly. She said "but it worked my other TV"
I programmed the remote and she grabbed it and KEPT turning the TV on and off again to the point that I started getting concerned. I finally said "you know...it's not really a good idea to keep doing that...." I then reminded her that when she got a new TV the remote would have to be reprogrammed. She sternly told me "this wasn't a NEW TV...it was the one from my bedroom".
Crap like this is why so many companies don't offer much in the way of customer support anymore...they have probably found it is cheaper just to lose those who are unhelpable.

This is why I got out IT field and why I wont help anyone with anything tech. It also why I told my dad dont get mom and ipad/iphone, because YOU will be explains thing to her over over again, cause I wont do it.

20 years later he is still explain same thing to her, she barely understand how to work tv, forget about concept remote need to be programed if tv changes or dish remote need to be replaced.

You had more patience they i did, I would just programed the remote explained nothing and left, and moved on The is no point explain thing to some people