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)

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