Yup this is true. In my contracting days you could cut off a fitting and charge for connecting that 'outlet', depending on how the job was set up. 99.9% of the time is was horribly terminated horrible old fittings anyway. If there were actual good connections I was so excited I would just screw them on the splitter and go about my business.

...And last week I had a directv installer who INSISTED that the customer told us not to use crimp-on fittings. We had a hand written note that said "compression fittings ONLY" This is after the guy pointed the dish straight at a chimney and couldn't get signal, and then he left a roll of about 50' of RG-6 sitting on top of the HR24 that was going directly in front of the cable jack that HE installed. Oh, and there was about 20' of RG-6 mixed in the big pile that had one end on it. No idea what that was supposed to be for.

jim,
I'm not surprised that an ignoramus told you not to use a perfectly good connector. Whether that ignoramus is the client or the installer is unclear, as the installer could have been passing the buck.

Remember that Bose sells. Doesn't that prove that ignoramuses sometimes rule?

...and why don't you, or didn't you, have compression fittings? Or was it a matter of them changing out perfectly good old crimps?

Sometimes we have to do things that make no sense because others will come along and make less sense. A long tmie ago I got agreement out of a Belden wire specialist (the Steve who wrote the book on installing) that we usually don't need Quad, as plain foil and shield will do just fine unless you're inside the building at the bottom of the transmitting tower. Howsomeverly, though, if you use foil and shield, some idiot will come along, tell the customer "oh, I see they didn't use THE GOOD STUFF on your install..." and you will no longer be their installer.

Last year we had a decent size job....rack in the basement and a few wall enclosures for distribution....I got a call from the client mid morning, their phone didn’t work after time Warner activated it. We did the install, the client picked up all the equipment for us. I walked to the basement to see two time Warner techs ripping wire out of my wall racks fist over shoulder. I asked them three times to stop, they kept saying it wasn't wired anywhere close to being right and it was their equipment in there and they had the right to do it correct. The fourth time I had to ask I stated it was my enclosure and stuffed the mess back in, closed it, locked it and took the key.

One installer told me he was calling his supervisor to tell me to give them the key so they could do their job. The other installer got verbal with me in front of the customer (not one of my best moments), but I physically removed him from the basement with his partner trying to grab their things and talk to their supervisor!! The customer smiled and step out of the way.

It took me most of the day to rewire the enclosure on my dollar....when I finally got it back exactly the way it was (not working but complete). I showed the customer it still didn't work, I then proceeded over to where Verizon came in and disconnected the line and WOW we had phones!!!!....I found the note in the trash I left for the Time Warner techs to disconnect the Verizon after they activated. I left it on so the client could still conduct business until the new system was running...It still pisses me off how they acted.

You rock charter!

Charter installers told GC/Homeowner that:

In wall HDMI from bathroom closet to bathroom TV was bad.

Did they test a different HDMI source... no
Did they plug the cable box directly into the TV... no
Did the cable box output HDMI when connected directly to the TV... no
Did it work fine when I connected an alternate source... yup

All the cabling in the walls was defective so they couldn't "tone the wires out" to find out which ones to hook up to. And that the ones that they did hookup did not have any type of signal at the end.

I bypassed the cable cards and hooked directly to the TV's QAM tuners so the client could have their basic tier. Not a single Tivo was past the provider selection screen.

They also said the network was "messed up" and internet wasn't available in the house. Of course, that wasn't the case either as every networked device was getting an IP assigned from DHCP on the router and had internet access.

|As said, they get paid to put new ends on. They get paid less when no ends are replaced...
|

This isn't entirely true. While they do get paid per outlet connected, it is not why they replace the ends. In order to get paid, all they have to do is put on their paperwork, X amount of outlets installed, and once the customer signs, they get paid for it, whether they connected or not, changed fittings or not. The reason they replace them is that IF a supervisor comes out to check out the job, which does happen from time to time, they will be backcharged more then they made on the job if every criteria is not met. The cable company states they have to replace every fitting, whether being paid for it or not.

I think we have all had the cable installer screw up racks. Many years ago I was working on a project that did not have a true rack but instead a built in cabinet. The cabinet had a hidden 'door' that allowed us to get behind it and wire up all the gear. This was prior to HD and the main television was a Sony RPTV. It was the XBR with the wooden sides, sorry I dont remember the model number or size but it was 60"+. Anyway, myself and another tech were working on the system. It was a full Soundstream MRAV system, surround receivers in key locations. At that point it was a pretty big job. We broke for lunch right as the cable company showed up. We showed the tech the shelves we had alloted for the cable boxes, including the cabling we had put in place for them. All they needed to do was hook up the boxes, activate and go. We came back to find that they had removed EVERY interconnect in the system. Coax from the cable boxes to the TV's around the house. We had a composite video switcher in place (yes, composite) that they were trying to feed RF signal into via adapters they ran to Radio Shack and bought. Pissed doesn't even cover how mad we were over the situation. The owner of the company called the cable provider raising mortal hell. In the end he got a supervisor onsite to look at the mess created by his techs. Luckily we had pics of what we had done before lunch. We used photo documentation of the progression of our installs. It allowed us, with date/time stamps, to show a client what we did on each day if they had questions. A couple of pics an hour covered our ass generally. After showing the supervisor the pics he agreed his techs screwed up in a big way. They agreed to pay for our time to repair the install. That was the best day I have ever had dealing with a cable company. The agreement to pay, not the destruction of the install.

Several years back, charter figured out that paying contractors by the foot for wire that they buried may not be the best practice. They realized this when the amount buried was coming tho significantly more than the amount the estimator figured. Also, being that we are in the mountains, the ground is very rocky so they would drop their trencher just below the sod because it was a lot quicker than at the depth charter spec'ed. Cable feeds would wrap around the house to get to the demark instead of in a straight line from the pole. When I was installing underground fences I was guaranteed to hit a line almost every job because of their depth and unpredictable path.

Just got a call from my father in law that the cable company was out at his vacation home. Cable guys on the OBX could not figure out an HD box to an A/V
receiver... System has a 70" Hitachi, 3 digit Denon, and a Samsung BD player... RTI T2c and RP6 controlling everything. I figured they could not get the RTI working. But bloody hell, how can you be in this industry and not be able to get something this simple working...

Luckily me and another CI are headed out there in a couple weeks... lol

..