DirecTv's amateur Installers of DirecTech

[JohnCarver]

DirecTv's amateur Installers of Directech: Two of the Three Stooges showed up for an HD/OTA install without equipment they were supposed to have. They didn't have an HDTV OTA antenna, didn't have a separate stand-alone mast, and didn't know how to install the substandard antenna they were told to install, a generic no name brand. Further searching on the Internet revealed it to be what's called a "Two Bow Tie Indoor Antenna". When I called DirecTv to complain even the DirecTv supervisor couldn't get to anyone in authority on the phone at the Installer's out of state office. While I was waiting until DirecTv instructed me to return the receiver the installer had handed me, the installer falsely reported I had taken it off their truck. I wish DirecTv could have seen the way they tossed the HR10-250 back into the back of their pickup. The Installer's company apparently has a standard policy of not answering their phone, and if you do get through, they falsely promise a manager will call right back so as to get you off the phone. Internet reports of poor morale and mistreatment of contract "employees" at the Installer company were found.

DirecTv needs an alternate installer for Southeast Texas, so it can have some leverage over these clowns. The install has now been rescheduled, but with conflicting reports as to which day it will be, and of course promised phone calls never happened.

FOLLOWUP: DirecTv snaps into inaction. Twenty hours after emailing a version of the above, the following boilerplate was received:

"Thank you for writing. I have forwarded your message on to a manager who will contact you within the next few business days. We appreciate your patience.

Sincerely,

Christina
DIRECTV Customer Service"

Anyone care to bet that it won't be a "manager" who "contacts" me???

[SpoonsJTD]

I had a similarly poor experience way back when I first had my 'free installation'. Among other things, he put the dish in the wrong place after I told him twice where I wanted it. He was terminating the crappy, used-looking cable with a pair of pliers. After he left, I promptly moved the dish, used a new spool of cable, and used the nice compression connectors.

When I asked him if he knew if my area required the dish to be grounded, he looked at me blankly. "Grounded?"

Where are the guys in the blue shirts you see on the TV commercials?

Granted, this was during the *shiver* Pegasus days. It may be better now.

[tgif]

DirecTv's amateur Installers of Directech: Two of the Three Stooges showed up...
He he. Well, the third stooge was apparently at my house. I swear, Dtv really needs to tighten up the screws on these jokers. Granted, there are some excellent techs out there, but there are also plenty of dim-wits. The tech at my pad showed up without the right multiswitch, and kept trying to tell me his cheapo 3x8 would handle three birds. Sheesh. And of course, the lacky shows up 2 days later with again, the wrong switch! I told him to where to put that switch, and called Dtv's customer retention dept. They gave me a $150 credit so I could go out & purchase my own 5x8 switch.

[captain_video]

These guys are all independent contractors and most likely aren't policed all that well. DTV doesn't pay them all that much to do their installs and they make most of their money by installing extra feeds and such at the time of the "free" installation. Just keep in mind that you get what you pay for and free doesn't buy you a whole lot. I learned a long time ago to do my own installs and do them correctly so I don't have to deal with the stooges. When they do eventually show up I have everything configured so all they have to do is connect the cables and plug it in.

[PapaSmurf]

I learned a long time ago to do my own installs and do them correctly so I don't have to deal with the stooges. When they do eventually show up I have everything configured so all they have to do is connect the cables and plug it in.

Sometimes thats not even good enough. My mother had ordered a DirecTivo some time ago and upgraded to the phase III dish at the same time. She already had 3 receivers in the house, was moving the LR receiver to a bedroom and adding the Tivo (so she needed 5 outputs). I had everything ready for a new multiswitch and the new dish. All they needed to do is run two new lines and install the correct 4x8 switch. They hooked the two existing lines to the existing unpowered 2x4 switch and and because the movement of the existing LR receiver was on a different work order that they had not received yet, they left it at that. I could have easily moved it myself, but to get Directv to pay for the new switch we needed to go through them.

Anyway, after that they couldn't figure out why all the sats won't working on the new DirecTivo. They somehow determined that it must have been defective and called Dtv to send her a replacement. After about a week of calling Dtv and the three stooges to try to get them to come out and at the very least run all 4 lines from the sat, the got the other work order to come out and install the older receiver into a bedroom, replaced the old 2x4 switch with a 4x8, and to their amazement, the DirecTivo wasn't actually defective. :rolleyes:

[jrock]

If the head is sick it's just gonna trickle down to the toes. They do sweep alot under the rug. I'm just waiting for Directv to look under the rug... I professional installation company shouldn't ignore reallity if there is a problem take some steps in right direction. And yes upper management has a hostile veiw of thier workers. They do like to run people in the ground... What can I say? Sometimes ya just gotta step back and let em' self destruct. Directv has a excellent product it's to bad it's being brought to people in this manor...

[jrock]

These guys are all independent contractors and most likely aren't policed all that well. DTV doesn't pay them all that much to do their installs and they make most of their money by installing extra feeds and such at the time of the "free" installation. Just keep in mind that you get what you pay for and free doesn't buy you a whole lot. I learned a long time ago to do my own installs and do them correctly so I don't have to deal with the stooges. When they do eventually show up I have everything configured so all they have to do is connect the cables and plug it in.

Haha! Directv pays Directech well. Unfortunatly Directech started chinching on thier installers. Might be wise to run cabling so the stooge crew does min work... Get ya a compass if your in SE Texas make sure your clearing is from roughly 210 and 190 degrees with 4 degree buffer...

[Borbastic]

First installer did not ground the dish.

Next installer several years later did a good job outside, then spent 30 min looking for the problem: sat cable was connected to the antenna jack.

I order HD tivo from DTV on Sunday. They say it must be professionally installed, can't just ship it, even though I already have a triplehorn oval dish. Fine, installer coming Tuesday. Tuesday installer cancels because of sprinkles of rain, even though no outside work is needed. Reschedule Friday, 1-5pm. At 2 pm Friday, they call and cancel; they have no boxes. We conference with directv, I smell dead fish I tell them. I cancel the order, buy from newegg for $100 less and still get my retention credits.

Really what do you expect? These are not PhD EE's, they are high school dropouts with ladders.

[SmithJohn]

If you're unlucky enough to have DirecTech as your HSP (home service provider) here's some advice to save you some real headaches. This company is seriously bad. Horrible. The only good team they have is out in Williston, VT. The rest are an absolute joke.

1) CALL DIRECTECH at the beginning of your scheduled time frame, either 8am or 1pm and ask for an ETA for your technician. This won't speed up his arrival but it will make a CSR pull up your work order. Once they are looking at your work order they will catch any notes or spot any potential problems like having no technician assigned yet.

2) If you are getting an upgrade or your new install involves any HighDef/HDDVR equipment, ASK DIRECTECH If your technician has the equipment that day. Some of these monkeys will make you wait all day before bothering to call you and inform you they do not have the required equipment that day. Same thing goes for ladder work.. ASK THEM to verify the technician has a 40foot ladder if needed (I've seen customers rescheduled *4 TIMES* before because they continue to send people without these ladders).
Same thing goes for white cabling if you requested it, pole or tripod mounts etc...

3) If it's getting towards the end of your timeframe and you haven't been given an ETA yet, call DIRECTECH and *do not* accept the standard "he should be there soon" or any other line that does not indicate what time.
CSR's are trained from the beginning to NEVER LET DTV or a Customer know they don't know where the technician is. They will tell you a series of lies, make you wait well after the timeframe, attempt to reschedule you etc.. before ever admitting they can't find a technician. BE FIRM, ask them to call a tech supervisor.

4) You can always call DirecTV and complain, get a resolution specialist on the phone, they will in turn get on to DirecTech. Dtech will still lie to them if they can get away with it, but the RS has more clout/experience/authority than you do when talking to DirecTech.

DirecTech hides as many problems from DirecTV as possible, for fear of losing their contracts. This is the primary reason a lot of problems are not noted correctly in the system for DTV to see. If you follow the above advice, things should be easier for you.

[Ravhub]

Great information

[sandpjones]

Reading the posts was deja vu! I recently had to deal with Halstead Communications located in Massachusetts to install a second DVR unit and move the original DVR unit to another location in the house. The bozo and his dumbwitted apprentice came 3 hours early and had no box.:eek: My customer service experience mirrored the others with excruciatingly long hold times and offers to call me back or requests for me to call later. I hung in there and finally got satisfaction. :mad: Directv had better be on notice that its contractors are a "direct" reflection on them. I hope they will look under the rug and decide to beat out the dust.

[jrock]

More of an ear full on Directech. In the Houston office they'll hire anyone. I mean anyone. They've advanced people that had no buisness being advanced. Most of the management has done and does jobs just like what you guys are complaining about. Seems as in buisness now days people are quantity minded and forgetting about quality. Quantity is good quality better. Balance is the goal. As far as calling Directech and hounding the installer, lol, sounds great but i don't know if i want to waste my time. If ya know a better installation company you can call Directv and try to request them. I'm starting my own installation company in my area. So thanks for the feedback on Directech. Right now I'm doing the Wildblue (satellite based highspeed internet) thing but if I go back to Directv sinking Directechs ship in my area is a plausible goal...

:D

[dman8168]

ok dammit enough with the directv installers bashing as i am one !!! now i must say i am not trying to start any thing here but i damn sure cant sit and let it slide... . and i dont see any other threads on how BAD my doctor,garbage man,boss,etc are. i dont expect to be dogged either . i am a member here and a t several sites and this is unusual as this complaint is about directv installers???????you cant judge the entire industry by a few bad experiences as i ahve been doing this job for 9 years and a lot of the incompetence starts with directv in several respects.RANT OVER The biggest reason you guys have shitty techs is because the money has gone to shit!! you used to be able to make a living at this but now its real hard ,directv dropped half the pay to the hsps, and it just got passed on to the subs and emps,so please call directv and bitch!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :mad: :rolleyes:

[cheer]

ok dammit enough with the directv installers bashing as i am one !!! now i must say i am not trying to start any thing here but i damn sure cant sit and let it slide... . and i dont see any other threads on how BAD my doctor,garbage man,boss,etc are. i dont expect to be dogged either . i am a member here and a t several sites and this is unusual as this complaint is about directv installers???????you cant judge the entire industry by a few bad experiences as i ahve been doing this job for 9 years and a lot of the incompetence starts with directv in several respects.RANT OVER The biggest reason you guys have shitty techs is because the money has gone to shit!! you used to be able to make a living at this but now its real hard ,directv dropped half the pay to the hsps, and it just got passed on to the subs and emps,so please call directv and bitch!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :mad: :rolleyes:

We're not ranting about our doctors or sanitation workers or bosses because this forum has nothing to do with those things.

Oh, and a tip...you might consider, y'know, being coherent. Less exclamation points, more proper spelling/grammar. And make sure you have a consistent point: are there really few or no problems with the installers, or are the problems but it's DirecTV's fault?

My personal experience: on the whole, the installers have been OK. Not great; I generally have to watch them, and once or twice I had to explain a couple things to them. But that's nothing compared to the people Comcast used to send out, who, generally speaking, did not appear to have the IQ of a common house plant. (Comcast out here used to be AT&T Broadband, which used to be TCI, and TCI had a long history of hiring day laborers to do cable installs.)

[captain_video]

The one major complaint I have with the installers I've had personal experience with is that they're just poorly trained. They know the basics of running cables and setting up a dish but they know little or nothing about the hardware itself. I know they don't pay these guys enough which is why there's little or no incentive to go the extra mile for the customer. Most of them just want to get in, do the job as quickly as possbile, and move on to the next one. The customer usually gets the installation for free but as we all know, you get what you pay for.

I've had two "professional" installations performed for DVRs that I purchased through DTV. The first one was for a S2 DTivo and I ended up waiting for over 12 hours for the guy to show up and do a 10-minute job. I had already run the cables so all he had to do was plug it in and activate it with DTV.

The 2nd job was similar but for an HDTivo. As before, I had already run the cables and the the guy actually showed up within the scheduled window. The problem was he reminded me of the gorilla in the Samsonite commercial by the way he treated the HDTivo. When I informed him that he was handling a delicate piece of electronics he just blew it off and said he never had one go bad on him. The unit lasted exactly 93 days before I had to get it replaced through DTV.

[chris22]

I have moved 4 times. only one time has the install gone GREAT!
(the guy did not speak english very well)
The rest of the time it SUCKED!

[jrock]

:D A customer should have a good install. One that last more than a year. There is nothing I like more then getting that point to them. Time will tell. The cream will rise to the top Mr. D. With or without you!!! Sweeping it under the rug all the time will leave a big lump. Sooner or later someones gonna look. A customer should feel good about his/her installation not feeling raped or sodomized! :eek: :mad: Wake up!

[jrock]

There is hope and it's in Dan the man. Mr. P. A true man of destiny. The inspiration of the true tech. The spirit of progression. Ladies and germs, the one that see's through men. The one that will not turn a blind eye. Yes, Dan the terrible... There is thunder in his foot steps. As he walks the crowd parts the way. Will he keep his face from us? Will he hide for long? God is with him! A man of action. The prince of the revolution. If one bell should ring celebration for a king. So fast the heart should beat. As proud the head with heavy feet.

[cheer]

Up the voltage.

[JRUSSELLOS]

I have scheduled with this company 6 times and I am waiting on a call today for my 7th installation appointment. This company is not reliable or competent, you have to wait on hold for over a half hour to speak to a representative. I was told to go to Dish TV if that is what I wanted, hello where is the customer service. They spoiled my Thanksgiving dinner with family (because the men had to watch fuzzy football games), I have wasted over 2 hours in cell phone minutes arguing with this company and their rude and ignorant staff. I have never had issues like this before with an installation company.

I have had a tech lie to me, I have had a tech come out to my home 3 times without a ladder and for him to show me the work order that showed he needed the damn ladder!!!! I had a tech come to my home and then leave without telling my sitter who was at home upstairs with my 2 kids, she comes downstairs and the front and back door is wide open!!!!!!!! When I called DirectTech they said "Well why couldn't the sitter shut the door", the point is your techs should have announced they were leaving and why?? I should not have to call you to find out why you left. I am reporting them to Direct tv and to the BBB, I am going to make sure Direct tv is aware of this site as well.

[wasdvd]

Back about a year ago, when I upgraded to the HR10-250, I had the wiring done, but needed the new dish (long ladder needed). I also added a plain receiver in another room.

Two installers came in the time slotted, installed and aimed the dish, prepared several short coax cables - free - to hook up the receivers, AND programmed the remotes to control my other devices. I did not know they were doing that until they were finished

The only delay was the long initial loading time for the HR10-250, so they could activate it.

I would say it went great! Needless to say, they deserved the tip they received.

[MWendel]

I just joined the site and saw your forum on the installers. Been in the industry for 20 years. Pretty much have seen it all. Then I ran across a blog this week, pictures of the ratted out vehicle, and the customer was still trying to get their DTV system installed. Most of the "training" offered is a week at best then the probee's go out on their own. Damage claims just waiting to happen.

Well, I'm now doing the billing advocate for the contractors I brought on board when I was with the corporate office for one of the mainstream dealers and contractors for DTV. Been charging back the corporate office ever since and the guys have been happy.

[MWendel]

Has anyone out there been charged back excessively for non responders? You can cut that down by having the techs ask for a signal or ping to be sent to the ird's before they close the job. It's worked pretty well for my techs.