30 minutes to activate? Someone's not using RIO.
The dish usually takes me about 20. Lots of them going in on cinder block walls with less than 20 feet to the prewired demarc.
I show up at the house with my receivers in hand. Have customer show me where each one is going and put a color coded tracer for my mapper on at each one (red always for power inserter). Confirm location of dish, usually by getting customer sold on where I wish to put it. Hang the mounting bracket and monopoles. Go out to truck and build dish with a long piece of coax, usually 20' long. Put dish up and point it, dither it. Route coax back to prewire can. Use mapper to determine splitter config. Go to truck and grab bucket, toss in remotes, av cables, hdmi's, 20 feet of coax, H25 power cords, etc. Go to HR24 (this is where power inserter goes), hook up PI, hook up HR24. Power scan remote (it's faster than doing it off receiver). Move on to each H25. Usually the HR24 is on the "English or Espanol" screen by this time. Choose English. While verifying install, I input RID, etc into RIO on phone. RID shows on screen, I hit submit, then on to next box. Rinse and repeat.
As far as tips to being faster: Do you wear a toolbelt or carry a purse? Do you have an extra set of crimpers and strippers and make jumpers when you are sitting at red lights? Are you getting SWiM HD installs or are you getting upgrades with R15 boxes that can't swim? Fight to make your numbers look good. Once they look good, you get the good work. If you have good numbers and don't get the good work, you're at the wrong outfit. I try to avoid upgrades as much as possible, I hate going behind someone else's work.
The small town I live in doesn't have a major cable company. The local podunk cable company has crappy TV and crappy internet that has horrible downtime. Lots of these homes have dishes already and so that is also a bonus. Centurylink pretty much has all the broadband out here. If the DSL isn't in a convenient place for DECA such as by a prewired cable jack and it's only being used wirelessly, I'll convince them to buy a phone outlet install from me to relocate the DSL by the main TV. It's pretty easy if you explain that they can get their games hooked up, web-enabled TV or blu-ray hooked up, etc. and then I can put the deca there off a 2 way.
Like I said, if it weren't all prewireds around me, I would probably balk at the rates. It ain't worth it if the bulk of your work involves wrapping homes and you're getting out the ladder for every single job.
Re: DirecTV SUCKS
Member #: 40846
Registered: 9/19/2005
Posted:
1493
Name:
Duane Vick
Name:
Duane Vick
Company:
Self-Employed
Occupation:
Installer
Location:
Phoenix AZ
There are 2 replies to this message
