Will Dish Charge for Fine-Tuning Dish?
- Thread starter reubenray
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Unless you are upgrading equipment or have the protection plan you will get charged the service fee ($95 IIRC). If that fee can be waived or not seems to vary dramatically, I've heard everything from "It got waived without me even asking" to "I canceled because they would not wave the fee", which seems impossible to me because with the amount of customers Dish is bleeding and I don't see why they wouldn't just waive it (Unless you are an unprofitable customer somehow?).
In my case I have not needed a service call for years, and the last time it was to install my first Hopper3 (where the fee was waived do to it being an upgrade). I have had to re-point the dish a few times but it is accessible to me with a 6ft ladder.
In my case I have not needed a service call for years, and the last time it was to install my first Hopper3 (where the fee was waived do to it being an upgrade). I have had to re-point the dish a few times but it is accessible to me with a 6ft ladder.
Then you should be good to go then, now you just need to play the CSR roulette and hope you get someone competent that wont have you run around the house for a few hours before realizing your problem cant be solved over the phone. Been there done that oh so many times.
Same here.
It's a shame that Dish got rid of their direct help here. The Dish Internet Response Team fondly known as DIRT were fantastic. Over a period of a year or two, every problem I had was resolved in minutes without me having to chase up and down my stairs at the insistence of the regular CSRs. Maybe the same people are still there on other platforms. But it sure was convenient having them here.
DISH Support - Our DIRT team still exists!
You can tweak it yourself. Just go to the point dish screen - have someone go out with two 7/16 wrenches if adjustments are needed. You really and most likely only saw a "gravity" drop on the dish so before loosening anything up just grab the top/bottom of the reflector and kinda flex it up slightly and whoever is in side (on a phone to talk to you) can tell you if the signal levels went up or down. If they went up then loosen the elevation nuts and just slightly bump it up to that point as in 1/8th inch should be plenty at first. You don't hardly ever see LEFT/RIGHT adjustments needed unless its been hit. Same test applies for the "flexing" of the reflector to tell if that was the case or not without adjusting anything.
This is coming from an installer for years that I would always walk up to them first and just check the sagging of the dish over time as that was typically the most likely reason for a drop in signal.
I used to eyeball installs and do the final tweak using pointdish if for some odd reason and it happened once or twice that I forgot my damn meter on the previous job and I didn't want to run back in an opposite direction unless going home after it. Worked every time really with someone inside to tell ya the numbers.
This is coming from an installer for years that I would always walk up to them first and just check the sagging of the dish over time as that was typically the most likely reason for a drop in signal.
I used to eyeball installs and do the final tweak using pointdish if for some odd reason and it happened once or twice that I forgot my damn meter on the previous job and I didn't want to run back in an opposite direction unless going home after it. Worked every time really with someone inside to tell ya the numbers.
Oh for God's sake, he has the plan. Why does he want to do this himself and risk losing signal entirely while he waits for the tech to come out later.
I use to do this when I had a motorhome. This may have been an option to do if the dish was not 20' off the ground.
The biggest issue I have with calling Dish is I have severe hearing loss and I can either not hear the CS rep or I cannot understand what the CS rep is saying in very bad English.
Have you tried the online chat option? Should be available here, you can click on the "Chat with us" option on the bottom right of the page. You are gonna have to wait 10 minutes because they open at 8AM ET. If you have a online account and login first then the chat app should automatically pick up your account, otherwise it asks for your account number or gets you to an agent to identify yourself. I've had hit or miss experiences with the chat, but more often positive ones compared to phone reps.
Most techs you see around your area are contractors or work for a RSP... just see one and walk up and ask them if they wouldn't mind tweaking the dish after hours for a easy $50 cash.
I would do that all the time for people when I did the job on the side.
One more time, HE HAS THE MAINTENANCE PLAN!!!
Before I do this I want to get all of my signal strengths determined per each channel/satellite and check here to see if they are low or not.
It would appear that you are in the Fort Smith DMA. That is all western arc. The best way to check your signals, rather than to test every channel, is to use transponder 21 for all three satellites, 110, 119, 129. Your locals are on transponder 3 on 129 and it is a spotbeam. To give you an idea, my signal levels are as follows: on transponder 21, 110-75, 119-72, 129-45. My locals are on 119 and that spot beam gets 64. That should give you a reasonable idea.
On transponder 21 the signal strengths are 110/76, 119/51 and 129/52. My locals on transponder 3 on 129 the signal strength is 17. I loose my locals very easy and they stay off for a while even after the storm is gone and the rest of the channels are back up.
You are looking fine on everything except your locals. I would say that 17 is very low and that you probably should get that dish realigned to bring that spotbeam up. I am not surprised that you are having fade issues during storms on the locals.
My spotbeams have always been considerably hotter than the CONUS beams. I am approximately centered, though, as well as on EA.
How is it that the CONUS transpoders can be fine but the spotbeams from the same satellite are not? Even if two satellites are approximately co-located, that should make no difference as viewed from a small dish.
