Despite the total nightmare with installers I have thus far been a happy Voom customer. I am posting this for 2 reasons. One - I hope that someone from Voom or Installs Inc. would read it. Two - information for other's like you about some policies.
I ordered Voom back in March. I am not going to name any installers partially because I don't even remember. The first guy came 7am Saturday morning. It was a cold misty day. He got out of his van looked up in the sky and told me that I don't have a clear view of the required elevation and left.
I did not give up and purchased a satellite compass. After about 5 minutes of searching for the spot I found it in the yard about 50 feet from the house. Before I could make another call for installation Voom called me back and set up another appointment with a different installer. I give Voom A for trying.
When the next guy arrived I did not tell him about the spot I had found and let him climb around looking for it. He indeed found the same spot. Of course he was not prepared for post mount installation. My choice was to put the post up myself or pay him $80 to do it. I told him just to go ahead and put it in. He promised to be back the next day.
Days came and went. After a week he showed up again at 7pm for "noon to 5pm" appointment. He put the post in and poured concrete. It got dark so I told him to rush and install the dish and worry about the OTA antenna later. Here's where everything fell apart. He had a box but no remote, antenna but no amplified board in it, no grounding blocks, wrong diplexer (as I learned later). He "finished" the job got the picture up, drank a beer I offered, took my $80 and I never saw him again.
After 3 weeks of complaining about unfinished business Voom finally sent over a new installer from a different company. In the mean time I had bought my own ground rod, ground wire, grounding blocks, the right diplexers and hooked it all up.
The new guy had everything he needed. He checked all connections gave me diplexers so I could return the $50 worth of bought stuff back to radio shack, changed the board in the antenna, put it on the roof and even gave me a separate amp in case I chose to disconnect the diplexers (which I soon did). I'd give that guy an A if he had tighten up the dish bolts.
OTA antenna was pretty much worthless since the mapping was so screwed up that I could only tune into one local channel. I was fully aware of the OTA problem and had sent Sean an e-mail in hopes to get the right channels added.
After 2 days of Vooming I lost the satellite signal completely. At this point after talking to dozens and dozens of Voom CSR's who were dumber than my dogs I decided to check the dish myself. Sure enough the nuts were loose and after 15 minutes of tuning I got better signal than the installer left me with.
Once my channels were mapped (thanks Sean) I had a new challenge to get that signal right. I decided after getting tired of climbing the roof all weekend that the rotator may be a good investment. So life was good with 10 local channels and satellite signal of about 87...
...until it started raining...
I decided to wait until v6.01 was available so that if both the dish and the antenna end up being changed, it would be a one service call. Once v6.01 came I realized that I have a pretty good chance to receive another 5-6 OTA channels - most of them showed signal of 76-81 but not enough to lock in.
So I called Voom back. I tried to be as articulate as I could about the bigger dish and a bigger antenna. The girl kept asking me 3 times if I put my box on standby during the night time even after I told her that I have 6.01 already downloaded. She finally got Installs Inc. on the phone and scheduled the appointment for TODAY.
Saturday I got a message from the local installer (same as the good guy who had all the parts) stating that he cannot keep the appointment since he needs a extra cost approval from Installs Inc. for bigger antenna - no word about the dish. I immediately called Voom back and ran through the whole thing again and inquiring why was the work order issued without approval. Voom said that Installs Inc. needs to sort it out with the local guy.
TODAY - the local guy calls me and warns me about the antenna which is "big and needs to be 15' above the roof". I asked what type of antenna is it (because by now I know all about them). He said that he needs to do research. I told him that the channels I have trouble with are in different direction and I have a rotator to deal with that. I also mentioned the dish issue. He agreed that the bigger dish would help but was also wondering if the post has moved. I assured him that I have occasionally "fine tuned" the dish if I see a gradual drop of the signal. At this point he started reading me some Voom regulation that basically states that the Owner is not suppose to do the things I did - install rotator, touch the dish. He said he needs to figure out how to get "around this problem". I did not know that it was "a problem". For me it had been a SOLUTION!
This just did it for me. After all the hassle, after finishing half of the installation myself, after taking numerous hours off from work, having to buy splitters, connectors, grounding cables and rods, being on the phone for hours trying to make sure that I won't waste another day waiting for a guy to show up with no antenna and dish thinking that all he needs to do is "tweak"...
This better not cost me more money because Voom will void the warranty. I would have had to touch anything if it wasn't for the morons answering the phones and high school dropouts installing equipment.
Wilt, please take a notice.
I ordered Voom back in March. I am not going to name any installers partially because I don't even remember. The first guy came 7am Saturday morning. It was a cold misty day. He got out of his van looked up in the sky and told me that I don't have a clear view of the required elevation and left.
I did not give up and purchased a satellite compass. After about 5 minutes of searching for the spot I found it in the yard about 50 feet from the house. Before I could make another call for installation Voom called me back and set up another appointment with a different installer. I give Voom A for trying.
When the next guy arrived I did not tell him about the spot I had found and let him climb around looking for it. He indeed found the same spot. Of course he was not prepared for post mount installation. My choice was to put the post up myself or pay him $80 to do it. I told him just to go ahead and put it in. He promised to be back the next day.
Days came and went. After a week he showed up again at 7pm for "noon to 5pm" appointment. He put the post in and poured concrete. It got dark so I told him to rush and install the dish and worry about the OTA antenna later. Here's where everything fell apart. He had a box but no remote, antenna but no amplified board in it, no grounding blocks, wrong diplexer (as I learned later). He "finished" the job got the picture up, drank a beer I offered, took my $80 and I never saw him again.
After 3 weeks of complaining about unfinished business Voom finally sent over a new installer from a different company. In the mean time I had bought my own ground rod, ground wire, grounding blocks, the right diplexers and hooked it all up.
The new guy had everything he needed. He checked all connections gave me diplexers so I could return the $50 worth of bought stuff back to radio shack, changed the board in the antenna, put it on the roof and even gave me a separate amp in case I chose to disconnect the diplexers (which I soon did). I'd give that guy an A if he had tighten up the dish bolts.
OTA antenna was pretty much worthless since the mapping was so screwed up that I could only tune into one local channel. I was fully aware of the OTA problem and had sent Sean an e-mail in hopes to get the right channels added.
After 2 days of Vooming I lost the satellite signal completely. At this point after talking to dozens and dozens of Voom CSR's who were dumber than my dogs I decided to check the dish myself. Sure enough the nuts were loose and after 15 minutes of tuning I got better signal than the installer left me with.
Once my channels were mapped (thanks Sean) I had a new challenge to get that signal right. I decided after getting tired of climbing the roof all weekend that the rotator may be a good investment. So life was good with 10 local channels and satellite signal of about 87...
...until it started raining...
I decided to wait until v6.01 was available so that if both the dish and the antenna end up being changed, it would be a one service call. Once v6.01 came I realized that I have a pretty good chance to receive another 5-6 OTA channels - most of them showed signal of 76-81 but not enough to lock in.
So I called Voom back. I tried to be as articulate as I could about the bigger dish and a bigger antenna. The girl kept asking me 3 times if I put my box on standby during the night time even after I told her that I have 6.01 already downloaded. She finally got Installs Inc. on the phone and scheduled the appointment for TODAY.
Saturday I got a message from the local installer (same as the good guy who had all the parts) stating that he cannot keep the appointment since he needs a extra cost approval from Installs Inc. for bigger antenna - no word about the dish. I immediately called Voom back and ran through the whole thing again and inquiring why was the work order issued without approval. Voom said that Installs Inc. needs to sort it out with the local guy.
TODAY - the local guy calls me and warns me about the antenna which is "big and needs to be 15' above the roof". I asked what type of antenna is it (because by now I know all about them). He said that he needs to do research. I told him that the channels I have trouble with are in different direction and I have a rotator to deal with that. I also mentioned the dish issue. He agreed that the bigger dish would help but was also wondering if the post has moved. I assured him that I have occasionally "fine tuned" the dish if I see a gradual drop of the signal. At this point he started reading me some Voom regulation that basically states that the Owner is not suppose to do the things I did - install rotator, touch the dish. He said he needs to figure out how to get "around this problem". I did not know that it was "a problem". For me it had been a SOLUTION!
This just did it for me. After all the hassle, after finishing half of the installation myself, after taking numerous hours off from work, having to buy splitters, connectors, grounding cables and rods, being on the phone for hours trying to make sure that I won't waste another day waiting for a guy to show up with no antenna and dish thinking that all he needs to do is "tweak"...
This better not cost me more money because Voom will void the warranty. I would have had to touch anything if it wasn't for the morons answering the phones and high school dropouts installing equipment.
Wilt, please take a notice.
