When last we left our hero he had just discovered that he had lost his DirecTV HD channels and a technician was scheduled to arrive Friday morning to correct the dish’s pointing problem.

The tech was scheduled to arrive between 8:00 AM and 12:00 PM and showed up just after 8:00.  I was pretty happy about that because there were several things I needed to do on my off Friday – get a hair cut, go to the store and buy something for dinner, stop by the hardware store, go to Petco to get some supplies, pick up a new kitten at someone’s house whom I’ve never met, and so on.  An action packed day to be sure, and if I could get this DirecTV thing fixed early it would help immensely.

The guy was on the roof for about 30 minutes or so, came down, and said that a couple of screws hadn’t been tightened.  He said he fixed the problem and we should be set.  I checked each TV to verify that we had everything back and took a look at the DirecTV signal strength.  The DirecTV receiver doesn’t give you a signal strength that you’d expect if you’ve actually worked with such things but instead converts the readings to a 0 to 100 scale.  I was seeing low 80s on the transponders, on the lower end of acceptable.  Since this was the first 5 LNB dish I’ve had, I just assumed that these as okay values.  The tech left.

I ran my errands (with the exception of going to Petco and picking up the kitten; Janet wanted to go with me when we did that) and returned home.  The program Janet records at noon was on the DVR, we were still getting television with HD, and I assumed that the problem had been solved.  Then late Friday afternoon arrived.

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I turned on the TV, found the hockey game on VS HD and selected it.  I got the 771 searching for satellite signal message just like before.  I tried to get some of the non-HD channels and all I got were the local channels.  I took a look at the satellite signal strength and saw numbers in the 50’s to 70’s, just like before.  I was not happy and called the number on the invoice that the tech had given me.  I got an answer at the office but the techs were out.  He’s have them call me back.  I was not thrilled.

I fixed dinner and we watched something that we had recorded on the DVR earlier in the week.  When that show was over (it was about 7:00 PM or so) we flipped back to regular TV to find nothing.  No channels at all.  I took a look at the signal strength and it was zero for every transponder.  I called the tech’s office again and not surprisingly got voicemail.  I was not happy.

I called the DirecTV support line and after navigating through voicemail hell and listening to their commercials for a tennis tournament I finally got a hold of one of their representatives.  He was extremely unhelpful and said that the earliest they could have someone out to the house was Sunday.  My reply was, “bullshit!”  I was livid, pointed out that I’ve been a subscriber for about 20 years and I was 5 minutes away from calling the cable company.  He basically said to go ahead and cancel.  I hung up on him.

After cooling down a bit I called DirecTV again.  Got a different person this time and he said that the installation people would call back within 2 hours.  They didn’t.  In the mean time I left voice messages on the installer’s supervisors’ phone, which were conveniently located on the invoice for my use.

Saturday morning rolls around and I go to the Comcast web site to see what cable TV looks like these days.  They’ve got most of the same channels, a smaller selection of HD channels, and a DVR that I’ve heard is a piece of shit.  If I wanted to do this, I’d have to get a Tivo 3 for a shit-ton of money (they cost 3 times what the DirecTV HD DVR does) just to get the same capability I had now.  Well, would have if I actually had a satellite signal which is why I was doing the research anyway.

Eight AM Saturday morning rolls around and I start calling the technician’s supervisor again.  Success!  I’m speaking with an actual person.  Yes, he had my message and he was going to call me.  A tech would be out between 11:00 AM and 12:00 AM that day.  Screw you DirecTV guy who said it would be Sunday at the earliest.

The doorbell rang at 10:45 AM.  The new tech (this is my third one for what is now four service calls) climbs on the roof.  While sitting in the family room watching one of our remaining previously recorded shows I hear all kinds of noise on the roof, far more than tech number two had made when he did his satellite adjustment.

Ninety minutes or more go by and the guy climbs off of the roof.  He reports that the original installer had only used four bolts to mount the dish.  He tightened those and added two more.  In addition, the original guy didn’t add the upper bracing that should have been installed.  Every time the wind blew or there was a vibration the dish would move a little bit.  Even a slight misalignment can cause you to miss the satellite by a thousand miles.

This was also a potentially dangerous situation.  The new DirecTV dishes for HD weigh somewhere around 35 pounds.  If it had come loose I could have had hole punched in the roof and people or pets hurt.

I could tell that tech number three was pissed at tech number 2 who works for the same company.  He said that tech number 2 should have seen these problems immediately and corrected them.  So basically the original guy did a piss-poor job of installing the dish, and the second guy didn’t give a shit enough to fix the problem.

After rebooting all of the DirecTV receivers I checked the signal strength.  This time I had 85 to 97 on most of the transponders; far better than I had before.  This latest guy knew what he was doing and cared enough to do it right.

DirecTV called later on Saturday and gave me a special number with a PIN to call if I had any more problems.  They will also call on Thursday to follow up.  I’ve still got a bad taste in my mouth about this whole thing.  I have no patience with incompetence or general not-giving-a-shittedness.  And so far I’ve still got great signal strength.

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