Help thy neighbour?

[Conaxthewarrior]

Hello all,
Just feel I should get this off my chest.
I was up to my ears at work the other day when some asiatic character barges in with a satellite receiver and wanted me to set it up, dish and all.
To get rid of him I said I would do it over the weekend, scanning in the satellites beforehand that evening (19 & 13e).
Turning up at his house later, he showed me where the dish should be placed, on a mini mast tower in his backgarden, resembling the crystal palace transmitter!.
On this mast was an existing 120cm dish with 4 lnb array, so why did he waste my time scanning in the satellites he had anyway?
“You set small dish up I see 28e”, he said continuing “All lnb’s not working, you fix”.
So, he expected I was to perform a full diagnosis of the 4 lnb system & determine the fault, drive down to a local sat shop, get replacement lnb’s,cable & new diseq (proberbly the existing one was blown) and crawl around his dusty attic replacing said articles afterwich I was to set up & cable the small dish once more cabling via the attic.
Total return journey about 25 miles in a car doing just 7 miles per liter at todays petrol prices…..I asked what he thought the job was worth and (wait for this) He answered, ‘You do for free”.
At this point I lost it and calmly packed up and told him something to the effect that he could take a suck on my old uncle bazhish.
What a fooking idiot. A free installation job worth over a hundred quid for free?
It just goes to show how people think they can exploit others, my god this takes the cake.
What still gets me about all this is that he thought I’d be stupid enough to go along with it. It’s not a nice feeling knowing someone takes you for an rsol.

Has anyone else had anything similar happen to them, I’d like to feel I’m not alone!

[basilyoung]

no, your not alone at all

I once agreed to set up a dish, ( motorized ) as a favour, it started with several PM messages, a "google" view, and thought, yep, simple
then the goal post were moved slightly, but hey ho, agredd to do for petrol cost only

got there, and was greeted with an 8 foot pole, and told that he now wanted a "gable" install, told him no way, TK job on the front of the house as agreed, or no go

did it, 100% on bbc world 1 west / 98% on 28 east

a few days later, got a message that the install was not good enough, due to wind issues, and as I "paid you" ( £15 ) I want you back here, and move it to the back of my house,
( meaning gable install ) told the cheeky fook to go kiss a tu*d

[punisher]

Lmfao there r sum cheeky lil pricks out there i swear i dunno wat goes through ther mind sumtime

[Conaxthewarrior]

Well thank god I now don't feel the only "victim". If only these people would come to understand the effort & inconvienience we go through and the hard cash the're saving (they should first go & get a quote from a tv / sat installer eg). Perhaps then things would go easier.
Being a cyclist, I also dabble in cycle maintainence and fixed a neighbours bike once - result? - over 3 months 16 fookers knocked on my door asking for repairs ranging from simple puncture repairs to a complete rebuild with new parts. A cycle shop takes somewhere around 20 - 25 quid an hour + parts & vat. These people avoided all talk of charge and some even complained that I couldn't get parts free.....
Now I've moved and don't offer any fooker nothing.

[eblaster101]

so the golden rule is to hate thy neighbour. Knowledge is power dont share it with people who you dont know.

[Sicilian]

Some peeps really try and take the piss unfortunatly.

[stopi]

Yeah some ppl do try to take the pi## but dont let that grate on you cause there are also ppl out there that appreciate your efforts also

[eblaster101]

its usually old people who appreciate things because they are incapable of doing the job.

[Conaxthewarrior]

Quite true brothers, quite true , I like to help all I can here (with that I'm sure footed on) but it's overall a pity that bad experiences "helping" tend to stop it alltogether. Eblaster's comment that the oldens usually appreciate any help forthcoming, well possibly but again my experience is otherwise.....A few years back, an old woman rang & asked if I could fix her computer - virus blah blah - did the fix sucessfully but forgot to return the start menu to "classic" and on returning she literally had steam coming out from her ears.....I clicked all back to how it was & she still complained...felt like saying somthing but refrained & walked out after....nah....fookem all brothers.....

[fruitball]

I know how you conax.

Went out to a customers house to give a quote on a single sat install, gave them the price with parts and labour and he agreed. So i came back 2 days later to do the install and he said he would like me to requote them for a motorised dish so i did and he agreed, the only thing was i had to drive 60 mile round trip to get a motor as i had ran out of stock of them. So come back installed dish and motor and had to run the cable through the loft as he did not want to see any cables... crawled around for over an hour due to the amount of crap in there attic. Got it all done and then sorted out the reciept and then to take payment. Then the cheeky sob handed me £30 even though the quote i gave him was considerable more to cover costs and labour (motor, 1.2 dish, t and k, pole, cable, labour, petrol) and then he said well 'i got a quote from another company a week ago and they said it would cost £30 to supply and fit the motorised system so i am not going to get a penny more!'... the parts cost me considerably more then that. I could have caved the twats face in. I gave him the quote... he signed and agreed to the price and for the work to be carried out and the little sob does that. I did what any sane rational person would do, i ripped the cabling out of the loft, took dish down and motor down, did not bother fixing the damage to roof when i ripped the cable out but i did inform him that his roof is gonna leak if it dont get sorted.

Never heard from him again, and when i drove past his house no dish on there so obviously his magical £30 quote from this phantom company did not exist lol. Some people are friggin ingreats and like to use and abuse people but i must say there is a lot of nice people out there aswell like when i got £100 tip for fixing a couple of roof tiles when installing an aerial. Guess it swings in roundabouts.

[Likvid]

I installed a 1.8m dish motorized back in 1992, the guy agreed on the quote i gave him, he was wealthy driving a Porsche and lived in a posh area.

Anyway, i hired a friend of mine to help me lift the dish onto the roof, i drilled through the roof and installed the large pole, the client didn't want any cables shown so i had to crawl thru the attic on my stomach and itching as hell.

Everything done and installed, gave him the invoice, 1 week later no payment done, called him and he told me he doesn't want it anymore because he got a better quote from someone else, i told him to **** it and went there and took everything down and left large holes in roof raining straight down into the attic.

This costed me about £2,500, thankfully i sold it someone else 2 weeks later that paid.

And one more thing, i met the prick in a gas station when i filled the car 1 year later and he asked me to come around and rescan the new channels as he didn't know how to do it, i told him to stick it.

[Conaxthewarrior]

Thats really a stinker of the first divison, happy I've not experienced somthing that big. Ok so I'll add that some time ago I repaired a guys car radio and recieved an unexpected tenner for the simple job it was but this seems very much to be the exception rather than the rule.

[basilyoung]

I installed a 1.8m dish motorized back in 1992, the guy agreed on the quote i gave him, he was wealthy driving a Porsche and lived in a posh area.

Anyway, i hired a friend of mine to help me lift the dish onto the roof, i drilled through the roof and installed the large pole, the client didn't want any cables shown so i had to crawl thru the attic on my stomach and itching as hell.

Everything done and installed, gave him the invoice, 1 week later no payment done, called him and he told me he doesn't want it anymore because he got a better quote from someone else, i told him to **** it and went there and took everything down and left large holes in roof raining straight down into the attic.

This costed me about £2,500, thankfully i sold it someone else 2 weeks later that paid.

And one more thing, i met the prick in a gas station when i filled the car 1 year later and he asked me to come around and rescan the new channels as he didn't know how to do it, i told him to stick it.

frigging ell.
I would have gone mental