DirecTV Installer Needs Electrical Tape, Prefers Coke To Water, Is Concerned About Your Parenting
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...Fingers crossed, Christy. Fingers crossed. —MEGHANN MARCOWe 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
(Photo: Christy)
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Comments:
Are you sure the tech wasn't executing a really dorky version of flirting?
Someone should send this lady a copy of 'cable guy' just to make her feel better.
Damn, that's a very unprofessional installation. I am guessing that DirecTV takes a lot of the blame for not having its installers abide by a code of conduct.
On another note, I have met some good installers, but it pisses me off how the majority of telco, cable, and satellite installers will drill right into exterior walls without permission. This is why I do all hookups myself (except when I got DirecTV out at our rural property -- they forced me to have an installer do the job if I wanted to get new service).
I'm exhausted by just reading that. That makes me angry to no end. I am sorry you have to deal with this.
@ Consumerist: What, no DirecTv exec numbers? I think she needs to rapidly elevate this claim - the damage he did is ridiculous.
Wow... i think my comcast installer guy that trashed my house is now working for DirecTV.. hmmm.. i had wondered where he went to.
--Jason In Nashville
You left Cox for Direct TV? Seriously?
I would click my tongue, but I don't feel like exporting and uploading audio just to express my distaste.
Good luck with the Senior Installation Tech!
And people wonder why I do things myself. The "Professionals" you pay to fix your computer, install a phone line, hook up a satellite, or install an alarm system are usually unemployable morons who are given crash courses in corporate methods of f'ing the dog, then tossed a company jumpsuit and now they are a pro.
I've heard quite a number of these 'professional installation' horror stories in the last couple of years, so I am quite wary of the provider-provided (ha!) installation services. But, here's a piece of my story you might like...
About 8 months ago, I moved into a new (rented) house. Property had no cable drops, so I checked out providers, settled for Comcast (not that there was much choice) and gave them a call. Unsurprisingly, I was told next open 'technician time slot' was roughly two weeks ago. Displeased with this (I often work from home, and dial-up just doesn't cut it), I explained my need for cable was urgent and (knowing they hire contractors anyway) asked if I could get a contractor to do it and they could pay him.
This resulted in 4-hop escallation (most of it lateral, not upward) until one CS manager finally agreed, but warned me they could pay no more than $50 for 'non-affiliated' installation service. Whatever.
So, I contacted some friends (benefit of working in IT field myself) and got a friendly, recommended cable jock to come out that same day. He had a look at the house, location of nearest Comcast's snake pit, talked to me about what rooms I'd like drops in etc, and said he can get it done in ~2-3 hours, 1 hour if I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty.
About 90 min later, we had everything done - cable pull to Comcast snake pit (though Comcast guy still needed to swing by and connect that), in-house wiring for TV / Cable router drops in 3 locations, and (since it was convenient) CAT6 (ethernet) cables pulled along same runs. He even tested signal quality between all the points, and replaced one of the ethernet cables with a shielded one because it ran too close to power conduit, and was getting bad signal.
Total cost? $100, including all the cabling etc. Admittedly, it included a small 'friend of a friend' discount, but still. I paid the man and submitted his bill for a refund to Comcast. got $50 back from them, and landlord happily split remaining $50 with me down the middle.
End result? 3-day wait for Comcast cable (just because Comcast tech had to still come by and plug it in), no mess, perfect signal quality, and awesome service. Try it sometime :)
Unsurprisingly, I was told next open 'technician time slot' was roughly two weeks ago.
That two weeks ago is french for two weeks away of course.
Cox has always asked permission to drill holes, I'm pretty sure there is something legal involved there...
I have to give kudos to Comcast, at least in my area. They're switching to using only Comcast employed techs. No contractors, no Retards With Ladders (RWL) - just their own techs. So if they hose it up, they have someone back out there that day or the next day.
Oh hell to the no!!!! Just another sterling example of why NOT to get Direct TV or Dish Network.
Cable guys aren't any better. The Cox guy hung around my house for three hours, farted continuously, and spent half the time screaming into his call phone in Spanish. Joy.
Holy Cow! This person must have worked for Dish network in Northern Indiana. Almost the same exact thing happened to me. One difference was the tech helped himself to the Hooters wings I had ordered for MY lunch.
LONG story short I called Dish network the next day and cancelled. The same day I ordered cable and never looked back.
6 hours? Sounds like he's a pretty decent hack. My dad and I, who had no previous installation experience, installed a dish on my parents house in probably 3-4 hours. This involved installing the dish on the side of the house, routing the cable in through the attic, down an inside wall into the basement and back up through the floor where the TV was. We also no signal meter.
@VA_White:
Did he say, "Necesito que me traigas Gas-X, y ya no debo comer los pinches frijoles!" ?
Because that means, "I need you to bring me some Gas-X, and I shouldn't eat fucking beans anymore!"
yeah, my cable installer left the plate hanging just like in that picture. fortunately i was just renting and a curtain covered it anyway, but totally a crappy ridiculous quality job.
Unfortunately I had a problem with a DirectTV installer last month. My signal had been getting worse and worse and it turns out that some trees had grown in the path of the satellite signal, so the dish had to be moved.
Installer calls my house and immediately begins dropping f-bombs while talking to me, and actually admits he wasn't paying attention while I have him directions cause "some chicks on bikes just went by."
He spends over 3 hours trying to find my house, I eventually had to go and fetch him from the parking lot of a Dairy Queen. When he gets back to my house, he is still cursing up a storm, but he is working at least. He gets the dish moved, leaves the original pole still mounted in the yard, along with dozens of tie wraps and stripped wires. So now I have two poles in my yard about 3 feet away from each other, one with a dish on it, the other just a bare gray pole.
So while he was filling out his paperwork, I learned why their installations are crap : they only get $15 additional per call! I couldn't believe it, but he said that every service call a DirectTV person makes only nets them $15. I presume this is over and above what their normal base pay is.
I really wanted to upgrade my service to have some extra receivers and whatnot run, but like the lady in the article, I am loathe to have another DirectTV contractor out at my house.
Not that I haven't heard any horror stories when it comes to satellite and/or cable installations, but I've never had a problem with DirecTV (or even Time Warner [now Comcast]... yet).
I'm more than willing to apportion the majority of the blame to irresponsible and lazy workers that simple couldn't care less if someone reported them for violationing company policy (even if the underlying policies are not nearly sufficient enough themselves).
Not that DirecTV, or any other 'employer' isn't ultimately responsible for the training, performance, and overall satisfaction of part of their product, but blaming someone like DirecTV everytime one of their employees or contractors acts the fool seems a little callous.
Wow, that really sucks but I did have a good laugh. Thanks for sharing!
This is why I don't switch from cable to satellite. Sure, I might save $20 a month with the teaser rates (more like $0-5 after the teasers expire) but I don't need some flunky cutting more holes that will soon be infested with bees into my house.
Oh and the guy wouldn't have gotten more than a glass of water out of me.
Posts like these are why I read Consumerist. There should be some long German loanword for taking pleasure in other people's service horror stories.
For me, the funniest part of the whole thing was imagining her offering him some water and him being like "Mmm...nah, how about a Coke instead?" Way to own, guy.
The best story I have about technicians comes from the incompetent Comcast contractors. My husband and I have a lot of IT experience and can fix most issues ourselves, but our internet was having some sort of issue that was beyond our expertise.When the third guy came to try and fix it, he noticed that my husband's coax cable stripper was sitting out near the cable modem. He asked us if the previous guy had left it, and upon learning it was ours he offered us $20 cash for it. He told us they were "hard to come by" at the office. Wait, the cable guys can't get basic tools for installing cable lines? Color me shocked!
We sent him off with a Jameco catalouge and then got ice cream with our $20 windfall.
Oh, and our internet problem? Took two weeks and five home visits to fix.
On the other hand, my directTV experience.... Chap comes over at the annointed time. Starts speaking to me in Hindi (I look Indian and turns out he's Fijian). An hour later, he's told me how much he likes Arsenal and how he's looking forward to the upcoming World Cup in Germany. I'm wondering what, if anything, does this have to do with my getting satellite TV? He doesn't finish the job, having told me his biography over the course of the afternoon and says he'll be back the next day. To make a long story short, this was a year ago, I haven't seen him since and I completed the installation myself.
i just had a new dish + HD DVR box installed. had a great experience with the tech, who was a DIRECTV employee.
the bad news was when he saw the work the original idiots did. like drill holes straight down into our roof, which is against DIRECTV policy. i have to go through the claims b.s...take photos, get a roof contracter to write up an estimate for repairs, etc.
This water/ soda part of this story reminded me of the children's book "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie".
If you give a DirectTV contractor water....
...he'll want soda instead.
The Comcast guy who did my "install" came out 5 hours late, walked in, and turned on the TV. "Oh, you have Comcast Cable TV!" He then handed me a self-install kit and left.
Comcraptastic!
hey christy...not to make u feel any worse, but that dish that's already on your roof? yeah, he probably coulda just hooked a new LNB into that & realigned it (even if it was from DISH Network).
@dbeahn: Contractors are fine to hire when you want the skills of an individual, but it should be the customer who chooses the contractor (like choosing a roofer, doctor, etc.) When companies use contractors to replace regular employees (like installers), it's just a cheap attempt to avoid paying decent wages, offering benefits, and just general corporate scum-baggery.
@Thrust: I agree completely. If anything, I ask someone that I know personally or someone that one of my friends/family has used.
The minute the guy drilled the hole was the second you should have kicked his butt out and report it to DirecTV.
@msb2: That's funny. That conjured up images of Christy pushing the installer on a swing and taking him to the zoo...
I just had DirectTV installed a few months ago and everything went smooth as silk. The guy even helped me save a few bucks and new hole in my living room wall by using a pre-existing cable.
The ADT installer from a few years ago (before Consumerist, I think) was less than pleasant, however.
@acambras: Oh yes. Then I made my son a pizza and he commented on that. Every time he'd walk in the house he'd tell me how good it smelled. Then he'd pass it and say how good it looked. Finally before he left he asked my son how he liked his pizza and said that now he knew what he was going to get for dinner... Creepy.
Am I the only one besides the installer wondering why Christy doesn't feed her son lunch?
@mac-phisto: The dish is WAY old and beat up. We had the line still that was run from it, but it's non-functional. Plus we FIGURED that DirecTV would be easier and the new dish would be free. The old one is blocked by heavy trees too.
But on the self-install front, I consider myself handy for being a female and I could have done a better job than this guy. It definitely would not have taken me 6 hours for that crappy job.
@MiltyKiss: I tried my best to get him out of the house once that hole was drilled. It was just hard to deal with him with a bored 8 year old and a 1 year old running around. I was very busy closing doors behind him so my one year old wouldn't escape and keeping his tools out of her little hands. I felt like I was babysitting a third child the entire time.
@JustIcedCoffee: It was just noon! I think he was hungry and hoping for scraps. I feed my children. CPS... there's nothing to see here. Move along...
I just got my first Directv bill. It was higher than they quoted me on the phone because I will get my discounts in the future. I am already ticked off by them. The rep on the phone assured me that there was no higher level to go to.
So who do I escalate to?
This may be somewhat of a horror story, but it may be closer to the norm for Directv. I left them after moving because of their incompetent technicians, and their affiliation with MasTec, which is owned by no other than the noted scumbag and Cuban separatist Jorge Mas Canosa.
When I originally had my cable modem installed the cable guys who came out where top notch. Apparently one of them was training the other guy. They completed the work, got everything ship shape and clean in no time flat.
Later when I got my VOIP phone installed, I noticed they had switched to a contractor. This guy had a Brighthouse T-shirt instead of a uniform, and a beat up pickup with a sticker on it instead of a company vehicle. I guess it's plain to see that they are outsourcing their service now.
Similar to my experience with a Time Warner contractor who attempted to STAPLE the cable to the outside of my house with a STAPLE GUN. No not a real cable line stapler but an actual POSTER BOARD STAPLE GUN!
I threw him out of course.
why on earth would you now use their service?! giving the installer the benefit of having a bad day, after the second or third issue, i would have told him to pack up his shit and leave. followed by calls to whomever canceling the service, before it even starts.
this is exactly the problem and the reason why we get such shit service from these companies. it doesn't matter if they killed your dog during the installation, because all it takes is a generic apology, listening to you vent for a lil bit, and six months free hbo. now your happy to put money in their pocket and sign a contract releasing your right to tell them to fuck off at anytime without penalty.
The cable guy works for the cable company.
The dish installer is an independent contractor.
There's your problem. Outsourcing is a bitch for the consumer.
Funny enough, I had DirecTV installed five days ago, and while he was there, I offered him a Coke, which he declined in favor of water. He told me that if he took soda every time customers offered him one, he'd be dehydrated to the point where he'd be falling off ladders.
From the picture, I'm wondering if the installer miscalculated how long of a cable he needed to go into the house, and the only male-male connectors he had on his truck were the kind that were fixed to a wall plate.
For what it's worth, the work described here is really shoddy, but I don't think anyone can reasonably expect fishing through walls or outlet boxes from a "free" installation. While the guys at Best Buy and Circuit City will lie to you to your face to get a sale and confidently tell you they'll use only unicorn-grade wiring, it's pretty clearly stated on the DirecTV website what the free install entails. Specifically, drilling a hole in the wall (DirecTV reference). Sure would be nice if they asked permission before doing so, though.
I just had Verizon FIOS installed a week ago. It took seven hours. They drilled a hole in the wall without my permission and it split the wood outside (I rent, so I am not sure what I am going to do when my landlord sees it.). The guy did not sweep it up and unplugged my stuff to install his HUGE power pack thing so I can't put anything on that wall. There is an ugly black wire skirting the front porch.
I will say the guy was nice and professional, however ten minutes after he left he needed me to give his van a jump. The next morning, he called and told me that he left his ID at my place.
Back in college I worked as a custom installer for a Home Theater company. Granted, my skill set was quite a bit above the average DTV tech, (I hold multiple certifications including projection service tech, ISF, on and on plus I was the lead installer for the company)We used to install DTV (and this was when it first came out) and I could do the average install in 10 minutes flat with a perfect signal and no complaints. Other installers who came and went fell through ceilings, asked housewives for oral sex, drilled holes in roofs and one in particular ended up costing the company untold thousands of dollars when every single client of his sued for damages.
Don't give an installer ANY benefit of doubt, period. The FIRST time they cause you to question their skills ask them to stop working and call someone. You don't even want to know how much damage a village idiot with a Dewalt drill can do in 5 minutes. I made 11 bucks an hour back then which was actually pretty high pay compared to my co-workers and at that rate I was trusted to cut holes in the penthouse ceilings of Fortune 5 CEO's homes and hang 400 pound projectors over their heads. There are decent installers out there.
1. Discuss your install - ask the tech to review the work to be performed once they survey the site and get your approval before proceeding. If you disagree with anything it's better to discuss it before holes are drilled.
2. Ask the installer to show you exactly where cable drops will be located. Keep in mind that retro-fitting a cable into the location where you want it may not be possible without attic access large enough to work a drill into above the wall or an exterior wall. You may have to deal with cable being run on the outside of the house, under carpet etc - this is why pre-wiring a home for cable, internet and phone is worth the $$$.
3. Call DTV customer service, relate what's happened and tell them if they don't expedite correcting things, including paying to fix damages you will not only sue them but you'll be calling Dish network. They make nothing on the install and need you to stay with them for 3-6 months to break even on the equipment and labor.
4. I will NEVER leave my wife alone with a service tech of any kind. These guys are not always drug tested or given background checks and they do assault women and children more often than you want to know. Both of you being present will avoid any issues and also help you stand up for your rights. If you're a single woman try to get a male friend to be there to play "house". I'm not sexist, I just know all too well how some installers think and you can always play good cop / bad cop if you have issues with the tech.
5. Unfortunately a large number of people won't complain and bad techs can get away with doing crappy work for a long time. I saw it happen when I would go out and fix work another tech had screwed up months or even a year before. The most common excuse given was that they didn't want to get the tech fired, he was a "nice guy" etc.
6. If you ever plan on selling your home the crappy work that tech just did is going to cost you $$$ for a long time. I'd check the entire house, especially the attic and any ingress points he may have made for cables. You might have a bigger problem in the form of a leak sneaking up on you.
Good luck and I hope the rest of you learned a lesson....
The angle of attack on a dish is not what you might think based on looking at the parabolic. It's actually around 52 degrees and good for quite a ways above that. I used to install dishes on side walls between houses which were may be 10 feet apart and get 100+ signals. You could actually take a very small window out of a tree if it's really impacting signal....
OMG -- that's pretty bad.
The tech probably wanted to know when you were going to make lunch for your son because *he* was hoping for a free lunch (and another Coke to wash it down with.)
"What is your son having for lunch? Tuna sandwich? Oh, I don't like tuna -- could you just make me a PB & J instead? Jif Extra-Crunchy, please."