Balls…

Posted: May 7, 2006 at 4:52 pm by John

I forgot that I had taken this photo of our Japanese snowball this morning in our back garden.

Speaking of balls, let me just say that I think it takes BIG balls to have someone wait around all day for installation service and then to tell them (only after they call) that they should just reschedule for another day.

Just who is the tail and who is the dog? (I just know who the ass is!)

Fortunately, its a sunny day. Jeff and I have had a relaxing time puttering around the house, and we did get out to the Apple store briefly to buy a connector to store photos from our camera onto my iPod. This way, we don’t have to cart a computer around when we travel. THIS is a cool widget to have.

But…our tale of woe is with DirecTV.

I stumbled on a web article telling me that San Francisco local channels are now available in high definition. (For the record, this is how you find out things about DirecTV, because they like to bury this information on their website.) So, I called DirecTV on Friday night and they scheduled me for a Sunday morning equipment upgrade. We currently have HD through DirecTV, but apparently we need to keep up with the times and get a new HD receiver. But its free…so cool.

Anyhow, our appointment was between 8-12 this morning. At 11, we got a call saying that the technician was behind schedule (big surprise) and would not get to us until 2pm. OK. I was annoyed to lose 3 hours of my morning, but we ran off to do our errands and returned at 2pm.

At 4pm, I called DirecTV. They called their local contractor. The contractor “tried to contact the technician, but could not reach him” and suggested that I reschedule for another day. I said no…that I had wasted my day waiting for them, and that they can try a bit harder to find their guy.

Sooooo, they are sending a “supervisor technician”. I don’t know how much I trust him, since he can’t find the technician he is supposed to be supervising.

It is 5:16. He is late.

An update. It is now 7:34. The “supervisor” never showed up. Instead the lost technician arrived. It look him FOREVER, but he did the job. (Jeff actually hooked up the HD receiver while the technician was on the roof.) Of course, when the technician called DirecTV to activate our new receiver, they tried to charge us, because there was no record of our ‘no charge update’. Total time spent on the hook for DirecTV? 11 hours 34 min.

6 Comments for Balls…

JamesF

I seem to recall once when it was my turn to wait on the cable guy when we were in Falls Church I got told he would be there between 12 to 4 PM (on a Friday no less). After I called at 8 PM they tried to reschedule to another day, but I convinced them to send the guy anyway since I had already wasted 8 hours waiting on the him. He eventually showed up at 10 PM.

CAPT_Sawyer

That’s why this country is going down the toilet – the service industry sucks my ass. It was better when the market was in the crapper and you had people with an engineering degree installing your cable system – that was good service. And they usually didn’t show butt crack when they bent over. But alas, all the engineers are back at engineering jobs and we have the retards installing our cable.

BullBunky

I actually felt bad for this guy. His work order didn’t match what we needed, he was clearly under-trained, and he just couldn’t communicate with me. The real issue for me was that there was nobody to really complain to. The nice person on the phone from DirecTV did her job, the technician at the end did his job, and the hidden company in the middle (and this so-called supervisor) plus Big DirecTV are truly unaccountable. And of course, since the job was FREE, then I can’t even ask for something. THAT is why this stuf is free…because nobody would pay for such lousy service.

JamesF

In the interest of full disclosure, my story is from back when we all lived in Falls Church, not something recent.

Jeff

My favorite part of the installation process yesterday was being asked by Directv whether I leased or owned my equipment. I said that I had no idea. Of course, they didn’t either. Then they proceeded to ask me very specific questions on what we paid originally etc. Even with my good memory, who would remember such insignificant details after about 1-2 years. It was really quite comical. In the end, I settled on ‘own’, figuring that would cause less problems terminating some lease. Little did I know at the time, but I should have said ‘leased’ because then I would not have this worthless junk in my house. When ‘leased’, they clean-up and take the useless crap. Anyone want a free Directv dish and slightly outdated HD receiver? 🙂

Anonymous

I like my cable. I already get local channels and I know I own nothing. 🙂