Voom Early Term fee, unwarranted? or am I out of luck?

ArTT Vandelay

Active SatelliteGuys Member
Original poster
Mar 29, 2005
18
0
First of all, let me thank the other forum members for a very useful repository. I have lurked for some time :)

Secondly, I loved Voom. The product was just what I was looking for. Until...

I initially had Voom installed in December. We sold our house and moved into a condo until our new house was going to be finished. We live in the Sacramento area, so the Voom dish points very low, about 16 degrees above the horizon. There were some OTA issues, and some initial aiming issues with the Voom dish, but everything was semi-worked out. The community we live in has free basic cable that is actually pretty good, so the two OTA HD channels that I couldn't get wasn't a big deal. The sat signal was typically in the low 80's, and when it rained, it would drop to the low 70's. Depending on the day, we either got picture or we didn't. The only reason I was willing to deal with this is because we are building a new house in a location that I'm hoping will have better OTA and Voom signal, plus the fact that we had basic cable from the HOA. Anyway, when the dish was installed, pointed due east, it appeared to be shooting directly into a tree about 100 yards away. the tech said that it was shooting just under the tree and that it wouldn't affect it anyway. It was the middle of winter, and I thought nothing of it. Along comes March with it's new leaves. No signal. sat signal in the low 60's. Called Voom, had a tech come out, of course he came out at the wrong time, 4 hours before he was supposed to be there, and while I was at work an hour away. so I let my wife handle it. I'm sure some wives are good at handling TV stuff. Mine isn't. The tech told me over the phone that whatever guy originally installed the dish pointing into the tree was an idiot. The tree is big enough that nowhere on the building could we mount the dish and not shoot into it. Now, we live about 30 miles out of town, and to avoid a second trip out to de-install, the tech simply took the equipment with him. This was before he had approval to do so from Voom. Vooms records show his request on the 15th, but that the ok to de-install wasn't till about a week ago. My wife did not get a work order, sign a work order, get a phone number or a company name for the tech. :( anyway, now voom wants me to pay the $250 early term fee, because if i originally signed off on the install, i agreed to see it through. My 6 mos are up in May. I could keep an un-working dish and reciever until my contract was up for less than the term fee, and had I know they were going to charge me, would have negotiated to have it "suspended" until May when I move. As it is, I was advised by a Voom CSR on a previous call complaining about signal to deinstall and reinstall to avoid paying for a move. He said I should just re sign under my wifes name or something.

Anyway, the long of the short is that Voom is refusing to waive the $250 early term fee, which I feel is totally due to the tech trying to take a shortcut and save himself a trip. Voom has confirmed that they have to speak to me on the phone before actually removing the equipment, they also say that they disclose the early term fee in the initial sales call, which i don't believe they did.

my question: How can I get them to waive the fee. I would like to explore re-installing the service at the new house, but not if they are gonna jack me around like this.

thanks for reading. sorry for the rambling. :eek:
 

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