Where Does Dish Get All These Incompetent Installers?

[az99]

I just got new service 3 weeks ago and the original installer put the dish aimed at trees but he said it was good enough. Or I think that was what he was trying to say in the little bit of English he spoke. Of course we lose signal all the time with any clouds or rain. EA setup.

So they send another guy who says the dish needs to be moved. He takes it and moves it to a location where there is a 10 year old dish of questionable condition. It was a 3 LNB something. Throws the LNBs to the ground from 25' up smashing pieces all over. Says they are no good and the 119º sat is being turned off anyway. The pole for that one is screwed to the soffit fascia by 2 drywall screws and moves around a lot. He says it is fine. Never checks it for plumb. He uses all the old coax connectors and cables then splices 2 of them inside and 1 outside. Never caulks the hole. He has no stripper, just rips the jacket off the coax with old side cutters. He then splices some more pieces to existing cables in the basement using my stepladders as he did not have one.

He leaves the pole and all the cables from the 1st install just hanging outside on the house.

After all that the signal strength only improved from 40 to 44 on 61.5 sat. Within 3 hours of him leaving the clouds rolled in and the signal was gone.

I have lost signal more times in 3 weeks with this EA setup than with DTV in 5 years. Are the signals that weak on them?

Rant over.

 

[Scherrman]

Like any service company, techs can be hit or miss. You just happened to be pretty unlucky. The service man is not a very sought after career so you don't always get quality people. Service can be a very hard and unrewarding job that doesn't always pay that well. I think it's hard to find a tech who truly enjoys his line of work.

 

[boba]

You are a perfect customer to contact DIRT. You will find them in red in the list of staff online at the start of the forum.

 

[JSheridan]

That's the difference between a good local dealer and the corporate 800 line crap shoot.

 

[Scherrman]

That's the difference between a good local dealer and the corporate 800 line crap shoot.

Generally yes but you can still have a terrible local tech. We found out the hard way years ago when we hired a new tech. He was very rude and just didn't take care of himself very well. He wasn't what we wanted representing our business so we no longer used him.

 

[JSheridan]

Generally yes but you can still have a terrible local tech. We found out the hard way years ago when we hired a new tech. He was very rude and just didn't take care of himself very well. He wasn't what we wanted representing our business so we no longer used him.

No longer used him? He wouldn't have made it through the first day here.

 

[Scherrman]

No longer used him? He wouldn't have made it through the first day here.

Like I said earlier, being a technician is not a very sought after career. It can be very hard to find a good quality tech. The one we have now is pretty good but he has his moments. We also struggle at finding quality help for appliance deliveries and service.

 

[stardust3]

You get what you pay for.

 

[Scherrman]

You get what you pay for.

Are you saying techs should be paid more? I'm not saying they shouldn't, just curious.

 

[KAB]

You get what you pay for.

More to point, you get what Dish doesn't pay much for.

 

[Scherrman]

I don't think pay has much to do with it. I think it has more to do with what the job description is. There are a lot of jobs out there that pay a lot of money but still gets some odd people because of what the job entails.

 

[KAB]

To be fair, in my seven or eight tech visits in 12 years, I had only one that was train wreck. The rest were acceptable to great.

 

[Kraven]

You get what you pay for.

And what would you suggest?


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[KAB]

I don't think pay has much to do with it. I think it has more to do with what the job description is. There are a lot of jobs out there that pay a lot of money but still gets some odd people because of what the job entails.

So, you are saying installers can make a lot of money? That seems to fly in the face of common knowledge, which is, they certainly do not.

 

[stardust3]

People that are compensated well tend to be more thorough & take pride in their work. Also good paying jobs attract a better caliber of people.

Dish is paying fair money to have these jobs installed & serviced. The problem is the companies dish hires & contracts with. The money is cut too much by the time it gets to the guys doing the work. The end result is the current system of low pay & unrealistic expectations leading to poor workmanship & dissatisfied customers.

What would I suggest? It is simple & would save dish a ton of money while having well compensated & competent installers.

FIRE all contract & installation companies. The owners of these companies are getting fat off the backs of the working man & are not held to the same standards as the people who work for them. Nuff said there, that can be a whole other subject by itself.

The solution? Dish should deal with contractors on an individual basis. They would have to create a company position for someone to just handle contractors. Dish could get by with paying a whole lot less to get the same jobs done all while significantly increasing compensation for the individual installer. This would also attract better qualified & more competent people for this line of work which in turn would create more satisfied customers who would more likely refer more customers.

Cable companies used to do this very thing back in the 90's before mso's monopolized the whole country.

That's my thoughts for the evening.

 

[dwarren2]

You don't need to go to the top of the Forum to see if anyone from DIRT is on line. Just go to the Forum list of message and you will see a list of who is on line on the right. DIRT will be in red.

 

[KAB]

You don't need to go to the top of the Forum to see if anyone from DIRT is on line. Just go to the Forum list of message and you will see a list of who is on line on the right. DIRT will be in red.

What Boba said.

 

[Scherrman]

So, you are saying installers can make a lot of money? That seems to fly in the face of common knowledge, which is, they certainly do not.

Well, a tech working for a retailer can make good money if the retailer can provide a lot of installs. If a tech is only doing install and not during service calls they can make plenty of money. Most do not make a lot but to say it's not possible would be a lie.

Our tech's son works for a company that handles Dish's service work in our area. He likes his job there. He gets a uniform, tools and a vehicle along with benefits. He's a pretty hard worker because he's busy from 8am to 8pm some days.

 

[mitchflorida]

My first Dish installation about 5 years ago was a complete disaster. The contractor only wanted to get out the door and have me sign the release. I later found out he installed the dish on a pink brick so the dish was always moving when the wind blew or if some gardener accidentally brushed against it. Why he put it on a movable brick I have no idea, as I am the owner of the property. Dish sent four people out before they poured some concrete to anchor the dish.

The man who installed it for me about a year ago did a very decent job and Dish sent some managers to inspect his work. The biggest issue is that they are all in such a rush to leave so they can do as many jobs as possible for income.

 

[bobvick]

The installers that Satellites Unlimited, the RSP in the southeast have are as a rule VERY poor in providing quality service.
I have had a problem with low signal on an EA install, they have sent the same guy out three times, to try and get a WA dish to work with my DPP44, I think one of the existing cables he was hooking up was bad. Anyway, he was in a hurry, you could tell, and didn't run new cable to test. To make a long story short, I have just decided to not even mess with the ilk of the RSP tech, and I am going to install two separate 24" Winegard dishes for 61 and 72 and see if that helps. I am for sure canceling the Dish Protection Plan, I would just rather do my own troubleshooting.


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