Christy is having the best time getting DirecTV installed in her home. Highlights of her hilariously tragic email include:
• An unused bracket bolted to the side of her home, then abandoned.
• Holes drilled without permission.
• Outlets left hanging, unattached to the wall.
• A DirecTV installer who prefers Coke to water and wonders aloud several times why Christy is not making lunch for her son, then
• Asks Christy to fill out his paperwork.
• Leaves his signal box at her home. Leaves. Calls. Comes back. Leaves. Calls again. Asks if she’s seen his shovel.
Read Christy’s tale of woe inside.
Christy writes:
So my husband just switched jobs from Cox Media to a local tv station and we lost all of our free cable benefits. We started shopping around and decided to try DirectTV. They were offering many rebates and specials which were cheaper than cable. They advertise a lot about “professional” installation and quality signal, so we decided to give it a shot. Mistake? Oh hell yes…We placed our order online and secured an installation date quickly. The soonest they could come out was in five days, but we were ok with that. The DirectTV tech shows up during the appropriate time period. I show him the rooms we want the receivers in (two) and he begins what will end up lasting SIX HOURS.
Within 15 minutes of being at my home, the tech looks exhausted so I offer him water. That began a snowball effect. I will refer back to that later. He asks about an old dish that is on my roof and I told him it was from a previous owner and was not working. I asked him if he’d be installing the new one on the roof. He said no. They do not install on any rooftops. So he then told me that it would be placed on the side of my house. The side of my house is blocked my many trees and a large overhang. I figured he knew what he was doing though. Boy was I wrong…
Apparently the little signal box he had was not used prior to drilling a bracket into the side of my home. He drilled into my house, placed a bracket there, THEN decided that there was no signal there! (By the way, the bracket is STILL there… just an eyesore on the side of my home, dishless…). After about an hour, he tells me that he will need to place the dish on a pole in my yard. He wants to place it out in the middle of part of my yard. I’m not thrilled about this and I ask him if that’s my only option. He says yes. I told him to put it as close to my house as possible.
Next issue is installation into our bedroom. I didn’t think it would be a problem since the old cable line was run from the outside. That could just be replaced right? Pfft! He started talking about running a “flatline” through my window. I asked if the window would be able to close completely and he told me yes. He said he needed to do this since I had a DVR in that room and it needed two lines. I said fine and he proceeded to start in that room. Later I come back into the room to find a huge hole in the wood under my window that he decided to drill without my permission! This hole becomes home to my new outlet which as shown in the picture, just hangs beautifully from my wall. And yes, he just left it like that.
Now for our living room. My husband already had a line fished through our wall in order to run computer cable so the tech had it easy. Or so you would think. We are now about 4 hours into installation and he asks for something to drink. I offered him more bottled water, but he asked for a “soda or something else”. Fine. Gave him a Coke. He goes back out and into the attic for room number 2. But not before asking me for duct or electrical tape and a flashlight. (Don’t these guys have their own crap?).
He then runs the line along the back of our house and in through an attic vent. My husband is home for lunch at this point as is asking why he is doing it that way. He said is standard procedure because they want to try not to cause any damage (HAHA) to the home if at all possible. So now we have a hole in our bedroom wall and a line that is run as sloppy as possible along the back of our home. At this point he has tools all over my home, a sweaty towel on my kitchen counter top, and he proceeds to ask me to fill out the paperwork HE is supposed to fill out.
He gives me the papers and tells me to fill out my information at the top. I hand it back to him and he then gives me the bar codes from my boxes and tells me to fill out all of that information on the middle of the sheet. He’s now been here for almost 6 hours. He starts to make comments about the lunch I am not making for my son. MULTIPLE TIMES. I am at the point where I am BEYOND wanting him gone. I start to help him gather all of this stuff that is inside my home while he’s getting everything outside. I didn’t even make him clean up where he drilled the hole. I swept it up myself. He needed to go before I lost it. He hands me the DirectTV folder as I escort him out the door. Is it over? Oh but of course not!
He calls me back about an hour later asking me to look for his signal box. I finally find it in the backyard. He asks me to leave it at my front door. I ask him about my tape he borrowed and he informs me that he left it in my attic. Thanks. Then my husband gets home and loses it when he sees the damage done. On top of that, our dish has been installed pointing towards a wall and our signal is crappy. Then if a cloud crosses the little signal we do have, it’s gone. Oh and I forgot, he told me we had 197% signal strength. Now that’s some serious signal huh??
So now we call DirectTV. We are told to begin a lengthy damage claims process. We have to take pictures, write a detailed letter describing what was done, and send all of that in. I take the pictures and do as I am instructed. Now what about our crappy signal and getting the installation fixed. Oh well they will come out in another week to handle that. That’s supposed to happen tomorrow. In the meantime I am speaking to DirectTV about four times a day.
Waiting to hear from Supervisors… Telling my story over and over again (apparently they don’t note accounts very well)… Trying to make sure the same idiot doesn’t come back to my home. And then I get a call two days later. It’s the original tech! He lost his shovel and thinks it’s at my house. I mean seriously… So now I wait. Supposedly a Senior Installation Tech (sounds cool huh?) AND a Supervisor will be coming to my home tomorrow between 8-12. Keep your fingers crossed.
– Christy
Fingers crossed, Christy. Fingers crossed. —MEGHANN MARCO
(Photo: Christy)
More From Consumerist
-
When Cable Installer Accidentally Kills Your Pet Lizard, Can Anything Make Up For The Loss?
-
It Should Go Without Saying: Do Not Install Satellite TV Dishes Near Beehives
-
DirecTV Wants To Sell You A Home Security System
-
DirecTV Misled My Parents About Free NFL Sunday Ticket, Made Them Sad
-
How An EECB To DirecTV Gave Me A Glimpse Into An Alternate Reality
@romulus:
No, Comcast contracts out most of their installations.
Just last week a Comcast contractor rang my bell to install cable at my house.
One little problem!
I never ordered cable, he had the correct address on the order ticket, but with a name I’ve never heard of. He spent the next 15 minutes wandering around the block looking for the right person’s home. I don’t think he ever found her!
I had a DirecTV installation a few months ago. They outsource from a company called Ironwood Communications here (don’t know about other cities). The installer made a mess, drilled a hole in my wall without a faceplate, and a bunch of other annoying things. There’s pics on my website in case anyone wants to read the whole deal: upt.org/directv
@romulus: Umm, actually the outsourcing issue isn’t specific to DTV or even satellite. I’ve had many service calls for both Comcast and RCN (my city has both) handled by contractors. In fact, once RCN sent out a contractor, on a Saturday, with no ID or work order to install a filter on my cable box. Sure, a phone call to RCN eventually cleared things up, but the point is, a cable tech does NOT necessarily work for the cable company.
Hmm… Sounds like DTV is taking a page out of Comcast’s book.
My f’ed up Comcast anecdote: “Calvin” shows up after calling to ask directions to my house. I’m getting two wall jacks installed: one for internet, one for TV. Calvin drilled through one of my wood baseboards after his flex bit went astray, and this was after repeatedly seeking my help on where to pull the wire in through the basement.
Then, before Calvin is done his supervisor calls and tells him he’s needed on another job. So, supervisor knows Calvin isn’t done, tells him to leave anyway, and Calvin does so. Nice management skills. I left work early for this crap. So, I get to set up a second appointment for another guy to come out a different day and finish the work.
After Calvin had left I was trying for the life of me to figure out what his deal was. Then it dawned on me: the slow speech, the lethargy, the poor coordination: he was stoned out of his mind.
Overall, my .02: Map out exactly where everything is going with the installer: box here, jack there, cable from here to there. No ad libbing. The moment they cause damage or do something without permission get them off of your property.
We had DirecTV installed last year, on one of the hottest days of the year. The guys were late in arriving, and only one spoke English (the other was apparently a trainee, whatever), but the work was awesomely done, and fast too.
The installer was clearly having a bad day and was not in a good mood, but he did his job well so no complaints.
A few weeks ago we had a new receiver installed in the basement so a technician came out. Different guy, and the work order was entirely screwed up. Everything DirecTV had told him we’d need was wrong, but we had the receiver and the cable lying around. He was in and gone in 15 minutes.
I guess I’ve been lucky.
This contractor problem is the reason why Shaw Cable dumped it’s sub-contractors and brought everything in house, they just couldn’t meet a standard of quality that was acceptable. However, when I had my satellite installed in March, the girl was making a big deal about having to pull new coax through the vents (old stuff was there, just needed to be replaced, very simple) and was trying to convince me it would be easier and therefore better to let her drill holes in the side of the building and run cable from the outside.
I said no and she argued with me, saying that my neighbours had done. I was like, well, that’s their choice. She had a bit of a hissy fit but eventually did it. Last week I had another tech in for a repair on the system and he said she didn’t even bother to crimp the ends, they came off in his hands, nor did she tape the connections outside, which is why we were loosing our satellite signal.
NEVER EVER let them drill where you don’t want them too. Whenever I have any maintence or technicians around I follow them and watch what they’re doing, partly because I’m curious, and partly because they’re less likely to take short cuts if I’m asking them questions and calling them on it.
While I simpathize with this ladies problem, I thin I would have tossed him out the first time he drilled without permission.
I just hit on a new business idea… Ninja’s seem to be the only ones in the workforce who still know how to do their job (as evidenced by the fact nobody has seen one)… Lets train Ninjas to be cable repair guys. You won’t know when they will come, you’ll never see them working, but at some point in the day a Katana blade will jab out from the wall, cut a hole, and a pair of gloved hands will string a new cable jack, then disappear in a puff of smoke.
NINJACAST!
We have Comcast and thus far it’s been good, although we have internet issues that nobody knows how to fix. This happened constantly at first, not so much these days. I have 4 computers running on one wireless router and we would constantly lose signal in the apartment. Nobody knew why and how. All modems/routers were new, the Comcast tech even came by again to see if he could fix it. According to his tests everything worked fine. He did something, although the problem did not go away completely. So besides the fact that this problem still occurs, Comcast service was always good, techs seemed like they knew what they were doing.
@andros:
I think this follows with the same sentiment of: “If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself.”
I never had an incompetent cable installer come by, nor do they ever charge a single dime at any point in time. Guess it depends on who you have to deal with.
When it come to the way this person was treated by their installer, it is sickening, but you can only defend her so much since she did not speak up to the installer. First, I would never offer anything to them. I am a good host, but only to those who I know. Even though they should be prepared, I would not refuse water if asked, but I would refuse anything else, if you say are thirsty and water is not good enough for you, then I can conclude that you are not thirsty.
I would also refuse to have a dish installed anywhere but on the roof, you can’t get signal through trees, it is simply stupid to think otherwise. The fact of how unprepared and disorganized this guy was is simply sad. She should have demanded he leave and tell DirecTv to send out a new tech who is not incompetent.
@kerry:
Schadenfreude
Pronunciation : sha dEn froy dE
Definition : Pleasure derived from the misfortune of others. (German)
I had a similar problem happen to me as well. When I first moved into my house, I purchased a DirecTV system from Circuit City. I thought that by purchasing one from a retail center and not a neon-lit corner store, I would get professional installation. We’ve all seen the ‘directv installation trucks driving around our neighborhoods. No, I didn’t get the professionals. These two guys come trotting out of their 1980′s van with a ladder bungeed to the top of the roof rack. OK, that’s fine…you shouldn’t make your decision on looks.
Luckily, I ran all the cable myself inside of my house so I didn’t have to worry about them turning my walls into swiss cheese. I wanted the dish on my garage, so they put it there and click tied all the coax to my telephone line. Mind you, this is about 4 coax cables or so and the weight really adds up. Ma bell wouldn’t be too happy if it caused the line to fall down.
So once they got done doing that, they just ran the cables into the house. They never grounded them, grounded the dish, or anything like that.
After that fiasco, it took them another two hours to aim the dish properly and take off. I don’t know, it just didn’t seem like a very “professional” installation in my opinion.
Wouldn’t it have been better to just feed the guy?
I learned a tip a long time ago for getting service from Verizon etc. When you place the service call tell the phone rep to add the following note to the comments field “customer will provide cookies”. It really works.
Although this site is mostly concerned with consumerism in the U.S., I feel an international perspective is, at the very least, interesting and informative.
While I have done years of self-installation of dishes in Ontario, I did not have this option while living in India this past year. New Delhi has made the transition to various DTV standards, and Tata SKY offered some incredible deals, and offered installation. When I had problems with the phone line and internet in the past, companies like MTNL (a govt. subsidiary) sent farmers (yes, they were farmers…i asked them)armed with nothing more than a sharp blade for wire stripping and a scrap of paper on which were scribbled DNS server and IP address. Escalating there means that the District Superintendent Manager comes to your house and apologizes while the farmers bang the computer Zoolander style.
The Tata dish installation was flawless. Within a few hours of calling for service, two young men arrived with two dishes and three receivers and their equipment, piled on a scooter, and without a ladder climbed on the roof, installed the dish, and using some sharp tool ran cables through a chink between the window frames and the concrete structure. As one finished aligning the dish, the other swiftly installed the receiver in the room where i was seated and tuned to BBC, handed me the remote and instruction manual and they were gone in another 5 minutes.
That is incredible service for India. The certainly give these American companies a run for their money.
First, I would like to apologize to Christy for how she was treated. This incident gives all satellite technicians a bad name.
I have been installing satellite TV for over 25 years. This is not a problem with Satellite TV, it is a problem with how both DIRECTV and Dish Network have tried to drive consumers away from local shops to their own in-house installation work force. I am not going to say that all local stores are perfect, but I no local shop stays around very long if they do not offer great customer service.
I strongly suggest anyone considering satellite TV to contact a local store, with a local installer. These stores can offer the same deals you find online. You may not get a free $20 DVD player, but you will most likely get far better service.
http://www.dbsinstall.com
Another thing I would like say about getting poor service. Unless you cancel you deal BECAUSE you had poor service. Nothing will change. You can complain all you want, but in the end if you keep the service, they consider the installation successful. The ONLY thing that matters is getting you to sign the contract. Unless you refuse to sign the contract and kick the installer out, the company has no incentive to hire better quality people to provide their installation service.
Send this email to: chase.carey@directv.com (president of DirecTV). Trust me, it works.
I agree with Neoshell 100%… I worked in the NY/NJ/PA area for a good while for a company that installed DTV and home theatre systems. Like many other companies, this was a contracted company that subcontracted the work out to others to keep their profit margin high. I would like to point out before I go further that both Circuit City and Best Buy will often review these techs after the job has been completed. The tech knows what his scores are and wont be afraid to tell you if they’re good (1-10 scale). Though I personally always recieved exemplary marks (and still have the feedback to prove it), I worked with some techs who were little more than common thugs. I have seen techs steal paintball guns, video games, tools, DVDs, I even got half way down the road from a job where we were tipped $100 each, and one of the other techs pulled out a case of omaha steaks he had put into his toolbox. NEVER let these guys out of your sight. Ask what they’re doing, they’ll explain it, and it lets them know you’re watching. As for working conditions, there were times I admittedly refused to go on the roof for a mount. Many times this was either because of snow, the pitch of the roof (installers rarely have the gear to walk a steep roof safely, or the training for that matter), or because the other techs were high as kites after having passed a joint around on the trip to the job. If you think you smell that familiar old scent, you probably do. I later found out most of the employees were buying from the boss man. If you want a roof mount, make sure the tech has roofing tar (usually in a caulking gun), if not, you’ll have to do it yourself later. I know a lot of people have heard techs say they have to run new lines instead of using the old ones. Well, 90% of the time, this is completely true. For those who don’t know, satalite signal cannot be split like cable. This is because satalite signals come down the line with two polarizations. So, if you use a regular splitter before the box, you’d only get half the transponders you needed. The solution here is a multi-switch. Most techs will have them if it doesnt come with your dish kit. They will also try to sell it to you at a bit higher of a cost. My reccomendation is to plan for the future, if you’re hooking up two, or three boxes, then go get a multi-switch that can carry more boxes. And don’t forget, a diplexer is a different beast. A diplexer allows you to combine satalite and rf or cable into a single line on one end, and seperate it with another diplexer on the other end. It’s been a while since I brought up this sort of thing, but most people don’t seem to understand that when you let these people into your house, you can’t just trust them because you scheduled them to be there. The company I worked for was shadey to the extreme. It was run out of the owner’s house, all equipment was stored in his basement, the techs not only got paid about 15-25 bucks a job (depending on the job), but also had to pay for all the wiring we needed, all the tools, every faceplate, connecter, wiretie, multi-switch, and diplexer. When we said we were giving the customer a piece of equipment and we didn’t write it on the bill, it really was coming out of our pockets. I will give the owner one piece of credit though, he did start having *all* jobs require the tech to take digital photos of all work done, if you wrote 5 drops, you had to have 5 pictures of drops. And he did pay for the cameras. A quick note about drops… never ask a tech to run a cable horizontally unless you dont mind a hole in your wall every six inches or so… they can’t magically drill around the studs and beams, and they rarely carry drywall patches ;P Anyway, that’s my bit… just remember, use common sense about it, and never let a stranger near your valubles unsupervised (that includes your children and fridge… lets not forget those steaks, shall we?).
@ NeoShell. You’re absolutely right about never leading your significant other home alone with the installer. I had an office cubemate who literally spent 7 hours one week on the phone with DirecTV to troubleshoot a botched installation. How do I know it was 7 hours? I was keeping a log. My coworkers always ask my why I don’t have pay TV; in addition to the time suck that 600 channels brings, I don’t have to deal with the cable/dish company. My coworker left his girlfriend at home, and the DirecTV installer told her she had to pay him a $30 installation fee. My coworker returned home and confronted the installer, who admitted to my coworker’s face that he’d LIED about the fee. This is all documented in his DirecTV customer service call record.
I hate to be the minimalist in the room, but I think I’ve figured out how to have the best experience with cable/dish tv.
1. Don’t get cable or satellite TV.
2. You can rent all movies, cable or network shows on DVD, commercial free, you just have to wait a bit longer.
3. With all the money you say on Pay TV, you can afford to subscribe to several magazines, plus have tons of cash left over for copious amounts of beer.
4. If there is a show you need to watch, go to a friend’s house. Again, not having cable means you should have enough cash to bring something (a six pack or a pizza)so you don’t wear out your welcome.
at least Dish network Inhouse techs have a month long training schedule along with 2 months of on the job training with another tech
We (wife and myself) entered a two year contract (that we understood at
the time to be a one year contract)with Direct TV in late 2007. Big mistake!
I have had problems with the service from the beginning. It started with
shoddy installation that prohibited me from locking my home and protecting
my family and valuables from break in. We are plagued with downtime due to
faulty equipment that won’t even last through the contract period. When we
request service on their defective equipment, they tell us they are going to
charge us to fix their equipment. I had cablevision for 30 years prior to
getting screwed by Direct TV. This is the worst service coupled with the
worst product I have ever been stuck with in my entire life. The worst thing
that ever happened with cablevision was being down for 2-3 hours once every
year or two because of a down line. When I call Direct TV for service, they
tell me it will be a week to ten days before they can get to me. So I am
without television for that long but am still charged for it. I am also
expected to take four to eight hours out of my work day every time Direct TV
comes to my home. The last time I was told service would be performed
between eight o’clock in the morning and noon. The technician did not even
arrive onsite until 12:10 p.m. Service was not performed until after the
agreed upon time that it would be completed. That was just two week ago. Now
the service is broken again and we are told it will be another week before
they can come to fix it. How long will the FCC go on allowing Direct TV to
cheat and take advantage of customers? I would love to have the opportunity
to do a commercial for cable television. After being subjected to customer
service as poor as Direct TV, I know what the worst is. And to top it all
off, when my wife negotiated this contract with Direct TV she was told that
it was a one year agreement. Two weeks ago when we had trouble the last
time, we were informed that it was a two year and not a one year contract
that we originally agreed to. I suppose we can throw a little deceptive
trade
in for good measure… huh? This is the worst experience I have ever had
with any vendor in my 50 years and I will make sure I tell everybody that
has ears to hear.