The Honeymoon is Over
A few years back I had satellite television for 2 years and almost never had a problem but this time apparently things are going to be different.
I've only had my DirecTV service for a week plus and already there's issues. I have no local HD channels at all. See the picture below for details:
I went to my troubleshooting guide and lo and behold, two of my transponders are out of commission. The pictures of the individual analysis are below as well as a picture of a correctly functioning transponder.
Sure, some would say that I should be happy that 30 out of 32 transponders are working fine and dandy. Those folk are the glass is half full sort. To be quite frank, I hate their everloving guts.
I don't want only some of my service working, I want it all to work. I'm paying for everything so it should all work, dammit.
When I called the customer service line I was given the long runaround by the automated computer service.
In one sense it's amazing how good those things are these days. What with voice recognition and automated switching the computer can almost replace technicians on typical trouble shooting calls. However in my case I'd already covered the simple fixes like rebooting and checking outside for blocked signal, etc. Which meant that I had to go through multiple lists of options and possibilities that I'd already eliminated.
This ate up 20 minutes of time. Bad DirecTV! LOL
Realistically I understand why they have to do that sort of triage but still it's aggravating waiting so long when you know you've already covered the basic steps.
Once I finally got a tech rep on the phone, we once again went through those same menus again though this time I was able to do a few extra diagnostics with her help.
The run through with the tech took nearly 90 minutes, largely due to the rather lengthy times that the satellite self diagnostics took. In the end, the analysis was just what I started with. Transponders 18 and 26 were out. *sigh*
The added value here was that the tech knew what this meant. In my location those two transponders are the only ones run by one of my 5 LNBs, which means that for whatever reason, that specific LNB needs to be replaced by a field tech. First available appointment? Next Monday. An entire week away!
We had a nasty windstorm over the weekend and I bet a buttload of people had satellite dishes knocked out by the wind. In my case, due to the location of my dish, that's not likely to ever be a problem--it's just my bad luck to have a bad LNB when there's a lot of local repairs being done.
Damn. A week without local broadcasts on a new system. Bah, humbug! At least there's a lot to watch on HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, etc. Thank god for that 3 months of free extended service.
I've only had my DirecTV service for a week plus and already there's issues. I have no local HD channels at all. See the picture below for details:
I went to my troubleshooting guide and lo and behold, two of my transponders are out of commission. The pictures of the individual analysis are below as well as a picture of a correctly functioning transponder.
Sure, some would say that I should be happy that 30 out of 32 transponders are working fine and dandy. Those folk are the glass is half full sort. To be quite frank, I hate their everloving guts.I don't want only some of my service working, I want it all to work. I'm paying for everything so it should all work, dammit.
When I called the customer service line I was given the long runaround by the automated computer service.
In one sense it's amazing how good those things are these days. What with voice recognition and automated switching the computer can almost replace technicians on typical trouble shooting calls. However in my case I'd already covered the simple fixes like rebooting and checking outside for blocked signal, etc. Which meant that I had to go through multiple lists of options and possibilities that I'd already eliminated.This ate up 20 minutes of time. Bad DirecTV! LOL
Realistically I understand why they have to do that sort of triage but still it's aggravating waiting so long when you know you've already covered the basic steps.
Once I finally got a tech rep on the phone, we once again went through those same menus again though this time I was able to do a few extra diagnostics with her help.The run through with the tech took nearly 90 minutes, largely due to the rather lengthy times that the satellite self diagnostics took. In the end, the analysis was just what I started with. Transponders 18 and 26 were out. *sigh*
The added value here was that the tech knew what this meant. In my location those two transponders are the only ones run by one of my 5 LNBs, which means that for whatever reason, that specific LNB needs to be replaced by a field tech. First available appointment? Next Monday. An entire week away!
We had a nasty windstorm over the weekend and I bet a buttload of people had satellite dishes knocked out by the wind. In my case, due to the location of my dish, that's not likely to ever be a problem--it's just my bad luck to have a bad LNB when there's a lot of local repairs being done.
Damn. A week without local broadcasts on a new system. Bah, humbug! At least there's a lot to watch on HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, etc. Thank god for that 3 months of free extended service.
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