Need advice about a bad install

[MEJHarrison]

Here's the deal. I ordered a DirecTV, two room setup with a DirecTiVo in one room, regular receiver in the other and a round dish. I got sent an oval dish and triple LNB by mistake and eventually agreed to pay a little extra to avoid the hassle of sending it back and all. I didn't want or need the better dish, but otherwise I would have had to wait even longer for the install and figured I would get a few extra channels (like the NASA channel). Plus I'm setup for when I do decide to switch to HDTV (probably not for another couple years).

So the installer comes a week ago and did a pretty crappy job in my opinion. He didn't hook up either phone line. I had to do it myself with the TiVo so I could activate the thing. Plus when I wasn't looking, he mounted the dish at about eye level out back. I was hoping to have it high enough to keep the kids from grabbing it. I just wanted it mounted about 8-10 feet up. Then the installer setup the system as a round dish system in the setup screens. I mentioned it to him but he said that's how it should be if I don't want HDTV or the spanish channels. So I took his word for it. Then I discovered that as I suspected, I don't get the NASA channel. I tried going through the guided setup again, but could only set it up as a round dish since it couldn't see the 119 satellite. So, here's my questions:

1) Besides foreign language channels and HD channels, is there anything else on the 110 or 119 satellites that I could be getting if things were setup properly?

2) I assume the dish would need repointed to see all three satellites. I currently get signals in the high 80's up to 100 on the 101 satellite. I assume I would have to trade off some signal strength on 101 to see 119, right?

3) The round dish option seems to only look at 101. The oval with two LNB option seems to look for 101 and 119. The triple LNB option looks for all three. I get good signals on 110, but since it won't find 119, it seems my only option is to go round at this point. Is there a way to just pickup 101 and 110? Is there a good reason to?

4) Is it ok for the receiver upstairs to be unplugged? Will I just loose the ability to order PPV up there?

5) Should I call and complain at this point? I'd really prefer to have the dish a little higher, have the dish pointed correctly (if there's a good enough reason to mess with it) and have the phone line installed upstairs. I can run a line across the room myself of course, but feel like it should be done properly by someone more qualified. I'm not expecting to have everything perfect and can live with a little problem or two, but I'm on the fence at this point about how much imperfection I should tolerate before complaining about it.

I'm guess I'm just a little annoyed that I paid half the cost for a better dish than I asked for and have nothing to show for it at this point. Any thoughts on what I should do now?

Thanks for your thoughts.

[SamC]

1 - There are a very few English language channels on the "side" sat. But they are free.

2 - Assuming you don't have a tree or something in the way, the interactive guide should tell you the correct settings to get all 3 sats from the dish. You can fix this yourself.

3 - no

4 - you mean unplugged from the phone?

5 - You will find that calling DirecTV is a pointless exercise. The CSRs will just look in the Big Book of Why the Customer is Always Wrong and tell you to go away.

[MEJHarrison]

1 - There are a very few English language channels on the "side" sat. But they are free.

Is there a place that lists the channels that are on the other satellites?

2 - Assuming you don't have a tree or something in the way, the interactive guide should tell you the correct settings to get all 3 sats from the dish. You can fix this yourself.

I'm aware of that, but I'd rather have the installer come back and fix things if it comes to that. Plus I don't really know what I'm doing and don't have any kind of signal meter. I'm afraid I'd leave things worse than when I started.

4 - you mean unplugged from the phone?

Correct. The installer didn't hook either unit to a phone line. Downstairs was easy enough to do myself so I could activate it. I can also do it upstairs, but I'm annoyed that it wasn't done to begin with. He should have taken care of it and didn't.

5 - You will find that calling DirecTV is a pointless exercise. The CSRs will just look in the Big Book of Why the Customer is Always Wrong and tell you to go away.

I just planned on calling the dealer who sold me the system and telling them the job wasn't done right and needs to be fixed. I'm just trying to decide at this point if it's worth the hassle or not. It's not that I can't do any of the things that were done wrong (in my opinion), but that's no excuse to let the installer off the hook. I paid for a professional install and feel that that's what I should have received.

[Jacob S]

That is the first thing I would do, is to call the dealer that sold it to you, and tell him that you are not satisfied with the install and what all the installer done wrong. The retailer may want to know what is going on with his installs and may not be aware of anything like this that is going on.

[SamC]

English language, standard def, channels on the side sats (opinions are my own):
BYU-TV (not valuable unless you are in the LDS (Mormon) Church)
NASA-TV (not my thing, but if you like pictures of rockets sitting on launch pads for days and days, there you go)
RFD-TV (channel for farmers and like that, award winning hog reports)
CCTV (should stand for Communist Chinese TV, pure propaganda)

That be it. Unless one of those jumps out at you, there you go. Really the "side" sats are the home of HD, locals in mid-sized markets, and the non-English services.

As to your other issues, absolultly you should call a dealer and get what you paid for. The box will work fine w/o a phone line, but get it fixed anyway.

[MEJHarrison]

English language, standard def, channels on the side sats (opinions are my own):
BYU-TV (not valuable unless you are in the LDS (Mormon) Church)
NASA-TV (not my thing, but if you like pictures of rockets sitting on launch pads for days and days, there you go)
RFD-TV (channel for farmers and like that, award winning hog reports)
CCTV (should stand for Communist Chinese TV, pure propaganda)

That be it. Unless one of those jumps out at you, there you go. Really the "side" sats are the home of HD, locals in mid-sized markets, and the non-English services.

As to your other issues, absolultly you should call a dealer and get what you paid for. The box will work fine w/o a phone line, but get it fixed anyway.


Thanks for listing the channels. I don't really need any of those (which is why I ordered the round dish in the first place). But since I paid the extra, I'd like to have something to show for it.

As for calling the dealer, I think I'd let it slide if it was one or two issues, but at this point I may just call them. As someone else pointed out, they'd probably like to know someone is doing a crappy job in their name. I know he was in a hurry to go on a weekend trip up to Seattle, but still, it wouldn't have taken that much longer to do a couple more things.

[paulh]

I'd want to make sure you could receive 119. It might be a defective LNB or bad built-in multiswitch, which you might as well get fixed while it's free. (unless something like a tree is blocking the 119 sat.)

[Claude Greiner]

Sounds to me like the installer didn't find the 119 and didn't say anything about it since most customers wouldn't know the difference.

I would call Directv and tell them you would like to cancel. When they transfer you to the winback department demand that they send someone out to fix your installation!

Or alternativly, call back the dealer that sold the system :)

[bigbw]

I would call the dealer for sure. I have this thing about wanting things I pay for to work. Does not matter to me that I will never watch the BYU channel, if I paid for the ability to do it, it better work. You never know what will come in the future either. It will be a lot easier to get it fixed now then it would next year.. There are too many people out there that don't bother to do what they are paid to do nowdays.. The guy who came out to install my triple LNB dish didn't want to do it the way I wanted, told him to do it my way or leave.. He left, I called directv (they setup the install) and the second installer was a lot more cooperative.

[Mark Holtz]

I got a triple LNB dish because I may want to subscribe to a spanish language package at a future date (when I get around to cramming the language into my thick cranium), plus I would be good to go with HDTV since most of that programing, at this time, is delivered from 110.

In addition, some local markets are delivered to the 119 slot instead of the 101 slot. Sacramento isn't one of them.

I still would recommend getting a triple LNB dish for a new install since it's cheaper when you're a new customer verses getting it as a existing customer.

BTW: A big :welcome_s to DBSTalk, bigbw!

[MEJHarrison]

Thanks for all the advice. I was on the fence about letting it go, but you all brought up some really good points. I do want to make sure the hardware is functioning properly. And it would be better to have it fixed now for free while I can still whine about it than wait till next year when it costs me. They already screwed up and sent me the wrong dish then talked me into paying half the cost, so I'm going to demand that they at least make it work. I guess it doesn't really matter if I'm going to watch those channels or not. And I'll see if I can talk them into raising the dish. I don't live in a high crime area where theft or vandalism is a problem, but with a six year old playing out back where the dish is (and a one year old who will be a problem in a couple years), I don't want to take the chance that he or one of his friends will be messing with it. Plus it just looks stupid mounted 5 feet off the ground on a two story house. I don't know why, but it just bugs me.

I'll probably let the phone line go. We don't really need it upstairs at this point and I'd rather not have someone do a crappy job on it.

Thanks again for the advice.

[bigrick]

you mentioned that you would have to lay the cord across the upstairs room and it would not look good and you thought the installer should have done it. Well he is not required to if it is more than 25 ft and if it must cross doorways or openings. that is your responsibility to call the phone company. It sounds as though he did a crappy job but some of the things you mention are not his job. I have had installers that could not locate the 119 (tree, stupidity,etc) so they hurry inside and set it to round dish just to get the guide update so they can go home. That is because most aren't paid enough to mess with it especially if the customer is wasting their time worrying about the location of the dish. Did he put it there to be closest to the utility ground with the minimum wire run for less "rain fade" or db loss for your benefit?

[crkeehn]

RFD sometimes has some cool programming that you won't find anywhere else, often early in the morning. You can find tractor pulls, and histories on things like steam traction or antique tractors.

[KMB2]

You can also get local weather at 119.