sean’s place

Dish Network Receiver Failure?

I have another Dish Network appointment scheduled. This is the 3rd in the last month (or two) or so.

In late November, I inexplicably lost all signal. I had a guy come out and replace the LNB on my Dish and all was well again.

In mid-December, I again lost all signal one morning and it was back in the evening. I lost it again for longer period the next day. Another technician came out and replaced the “barrel” (that’s tech slang for a coax coupler) with a “high-frequency” model and all was well again.

That is, until today.

I lost signal this morning and ‘lo and behold, it was back this afternoon. I lost it again tonight. The last time the techs were here, they pulled perfect signal out of the wall plate. Unfortunately, whatever they did fixed my receiver. To their credit, they didn’t think it was fixed either, but they couldn’t justify a receiver replacement until it went out again (because they actually did something — replaced the barrel).

This is when the red flag went off in my head that it might be my receiver. You see, the receiver has a handy signal measurement tool in its menu. It registered a strong signal level from the 110 satellite despite its connection to the Dish antenna being unplugged.

I called into Dish tonight and got “Ashley” (with a detectable Indian accent) who ran me through every painstaking step of the script — the very same script I’ve been through twice before. I wish Dish Network would be a bit more proactive in training their reps and had her just schedule a truck roll without having me bother running through the steps again. It would have been even better if she had looked at the account notes and been able to setup an advance receiver replacement.

Oh well. The last guy left his business card, so I’ll be giving him a call tomorrow. Maybe he can save us all the hassle.