I just wanted to open a topic of discussion about one of the most talked about but least acted upon conversations rattling around most prime offices on petty much every day of the year. Why are subcontractors being treated like lepers by charter.......or any other M.S.O. for that matter. My point being ... We as subcontract installers have an awful large plate to swallow everyday. First of all not only do we have our workload and idiotic customers to content with , But we are also required to put up with the ever increasing amount of crap that mso's like charter want to keep piling up on us day for day. In the past (10 years ago) It was simple ...we got our route , got our equipment and ran our route and met our time frames and only had our work order to fill out with signal readings and explanations of anything we needed to notate on the work order. Then it went to having to call in to dispatch for every job to have yourself put in service, and then we had to begin calling in to dispatch to have equipment put on an account to now.... now we have to put ourselves in service with tech net, we have to use tools like a self install page and tech net to add equipment to accounts we have to call some stupid non speaking idiots in india to install a phone 3 times, on a decent day. and complete 4 forms of paperwork and run and print eqa's to prove that we installed it withing spec and print that to go with our work orders and then we have to do all of this in a time frame , we get an over abundance of work on any given day and to top it off...... heres the real kicker. and to my point....... we get back charged for being late to the next time due to charters incompetence....let me explain......this ios why the mso is always wrong and is always the weak link in the install business.....
1. Charter creates work orders for phone or modem installs..... but don't create the package for the product which causes us to have to call there dispatch and wait for 55 to 70 minutes for some fat black woman to answer only to be laughing and chit chatting to her co worker about who wore what to the club last week and whats shes gouing to do this coming weekend. which takes up more of my time.
when she finally decides to put down the chicken wing and talk to me ...she screws up the order worse and causes my modem or digital box to be further screwed causing me to have to go to my truck to get another one and call them back and repeat the process.
2) there dispatch has only 1 or 2 people who actually know what there doing . the others have to pass you around until you get to one of them. to make matters worse is that they think this is funny......
3) charter warehouse guys are supposed to be testing the equipment they send out to prime offices warehouses before they send it out....do you really think that they do that? hell no. we get bad digital boxes everyday....sometimes 5 to 8 bad boxes on a truck at a time. bad modems are very common too. who the hell has the time to do 9 jobs a day up to spec while searching for 1 good modem out of the 25 you had to carry with you that day just to find a good one? I know i don't
4) you get work orders for phone jobs that the T.P.V. hasn't been done on or is on hole because the account hasn't been built yet or any 1 of a few stupid charter have not been done......I mean common you idiots ,,,how are you going to create a work order and put it out in the field if you haven't even had the customer complete tpv or built the dammed account properly....
5) Charter creates work orders for customers with out telling them that there is a cod to be collected ... they creat work orders for customers who didnt order any other services and they refuise to create a work order for a sro or a rework for a 13 year experienced tech who knows that there is water dripping from a tap plate or that the return is screwed due to too much forward and they tell you ...well your not qualified to make that call. youll just have to do the job and a supervisor will have to go out and check it.
6) THEY HAVE INHOUSE TECHS who are dumber than dirt and have no buisness doing cable....we have to go behind them all the time and clean up there mess.... they are under educated and have no cares in the world.
all of this crap takes up most of my day...I have most jobs completed and above and beyond charter specs in a matter of 45 minutes ..... but 1-6 up there makes my jobs take from 1 and half hours to up to 6 hours on the phone and replacing equipment...
they are constantly pushing us to be somekind of supertechs and killing alot of tech pockets by demanding excellence but thwey cant keep up there part to make our installs work they way they are supposed too.....guys like john hammond and joseph stevens would rateh run out the good techs and hire fry cooks and burger flippers and black ball techs who get aggrivated with the stupidity of there dumbass dispatchers than just take some innicetive and get charter running right instead of screwing us over all day everyday.....
who can we talk to about this? does anyone care? not at charter they dont ...they dont give 1 crap about a technician as long as they have this overinflated ego about how wonderfull they are .....while in fact guys like john hammond and joseph stevens and dispatchers and there in house employees are in THE WEAK LINK......
Charter vs. Sub Technicians (Who's the weak link)
Member #: 25086
Registered: 8/17/2003
Posted:
25
Name:
wookie1
Company:
American Cable
Personal:
early 50s
Experience:
~30 years
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