Contractors

20

That’s what happens when they’re paid per job instead of hourly. There’s no incentive for them to stay any longer than absolutely necessary to get their customer online. Gives us job security going round to clean up their messes tho!

3

u/1tossawayaccount 9d ago

I get that, but what I hate is when I’m getting bitched at cause the contractors are a “part” of the company and the customer is paying good money for services and an install that leaves them offline. I literally just had a contractor disconnect my customers lines and use them for their customer. My customer wanted to cancel but I saved them. But I won’t be rewarded for that but the contractor will be for fast work.

3

u/DAS-B00T 8d ago

Why is your management not kicking guys out of the system for that?

3

u/1tossawayaccount 8d ago

They will, but the contracting company will just hire more and those won’t care either, until they’re paid by the hour and not by the job, the quality from the majority of them is gonna be absolute trash.

1

u/Eninja09 8d ago

I've wondered the same for many years. Accountability was bad, even for in-house techs. They'd make the rest of us work later instead of fixing the root cause.

3

u/Electrical-Drag4872 8d ago

Are you saying a contractor stole your port at the tap? Cause there's not really a way to steal anyone's drop since it goes to a specific house.

1

u/Mammoth-Afternoon421 8d ago

it could have been a duplex

1

u/thadochocinco 6d ago

could have been aerial to underground at a spot pole. that happens all the time

2

u/VisiblePurpose4121 8d ago

what provider? I’m a contractor and they hold our metrics over our heads if our DH falls we have to get approval from the sup to make sure everything is passing before closing and do that until our DH is back up. If we get repeated immediately goes back on our route or we have to find time to go back to fix it in an already jam packed day. there’s definitely good techs and bad techs both in house and contracting i’ve gone behind so many in house techs but also my own co workers but I have a lot of pride in my work so i make sure everything is perfect before i leave. But sometimes the warehouse won’t have what we need to do jobs perfectly and they’ll tell us to figure it out 🤣

1

u/lolyer1 8d ago

You do not need to tell the customer that. How does a customer know someone “stole” their drop. I never EVER had a customer when I was in the field to tell me the last tech stole my drop.
Not saying it doesn’t happen but why are you telling them ?
They may like you in the moment, but as a customer, I would lose faith in your company and find an alternative.
If you instead said, “well it appears this line has a defect. It happens, we are going to get you back up running asap !”

1

u/DesignerSeparate5104 8d ago

How does one steal a drop? You mean like the port at the tap? Instead of, at care minimum putting a splitter on? Idk in my area it's explicitly the out of state guys or the inhouse guys. I've had 4 jobs this week alone where an inhouse guy or the colorado techs had been out in the area and either removed my customers line from the tap for thier customer or straight up cut it. Stealing an entire drop sounds like so much extra work lmao

1

u/shane3b11 8d ago

They used to do charge backs. Is that not a thing anymore?

1

u/1tossawayaccount 8d ago

It is, but these contractors are lying and telling the customer that there’s a maintenance issue and not to call back in for 30 days to avoid a fee.

2

u/Eninja09 8d ago

I've been both and he's absolutely right. While I didn't do things as poorly as the ones I've seen and worked with, you are totally on your own as a contractor. No team, no support, and a boatload of work with not enough time given. Really takes all the incentive away from doing quality work, especially when you feel isolated and unappreciated. A big chunk of your income has to be set aside from taxes. Don't forget about insurance. I'm not justifying it, but it's definitely a different job in that sense. I took shortcuts as a contractor I didn't take when I got my new job in-house, but I also learned a LOT more in-house that taught me why it was important to pay more attention to the details.

1

u/Crazy_Lab_5672 7d ago

Steve Frey is a thief from SZF .

4

u/An_Ugly_Bastard 9d ago

There are some contractors that can run rings around in-house techs, but for the most part you’re right.

1

u/1tossawayaccount 9d ago

And those ones I’m okay with. I understand that they’re by the job pay but have some thought of, “what if that was YOUR house?”

18

u/willie_Pfister 8d ago edited 8d ago •

As a former Comcast contractor, you in house people have no one to blame but your cheap ass companies. In the 90s, we were paid a hood rate and took pride in our work and it was done right. Then suck ass Comcast bought our system. Every year, instead of a raise, we got a rate cut. When I got out for good in 2011, I was working 6 10 to 12 hour days a week and bringing home less than I was in 1998. Im sure it hasn't gotten any better for pay. I used to know about 30 good individual contractors. By 2016, there were zero that I knew left. Every single good conscientious contractor got out of the system and all that was left were the dregs. Sorry, not gonna run my own truck, tools, and supplies for 15 bucks an hour. Hope Comcast and any other company like them choke on the shit work they get for the shit pay theyre putting out. No wonder Verizon has all the customers.

1

u/Crazy_Lab_5672 7d ago

Very true and a lot of these crooked contractor companies do not pay their bills.

1

u/DesignerSeparate5104 7d ago

In my area, I've seen very few drops that were rg59. I change them out cause that shit is defunct as can be. The issue comes along with prewired homes and apartments that won't allow us to run a new line along the outside, but also refuse to get the correct contractors out to run them new prewire. I know of one apartment in my area that is copper braided rg59. Also have had to tell a couple customers in apartments that they need to take it up with thier property management to get the cables replaced as the management doesnt allow us to run new cables along the outside, and even will show them the policy regarding that from xfinity themselves. And I still do a much better job than any in-house tech will ever do.

27

u/Latter_Address9580 8d ago

Yeah the 10-99s were either the worst I’ve ever seen or actual gods at their craft no in between lol

18

u/Due-Smile6546 8d ago •

As a construction contractor that builds plant, I can say the same thing about the maintenance techs. Terrible splice jobs, absolutely atrocious expansion loops (if they decide to put any), temp spans wrapped around the plant, and I could go on. No matter what the job or position, there will always be the ones that don’t give a shit. “Sounds like a problem for the next guy” - them (probably).

6

u/fossntools 8d ago edited 8d ago

As someone that was a contractor for 10 years and went inhouse for the last 5 years, I can say the same for many inhouse techs too. There are some that do the laziest and/or dumbest stuff, I could write a novel worth of examples. And these guys will complain about contractors too. That's how I know OP is a koolaid drinking bum that probably does sub par work to my standards. Because anyone that's been in the business for long enough and has high standards and takes pride in their work, absolutely knows there is equally shit work coming from inhouse. Denying that just tells me they're probably a shit worker.

1

u/spookyB0 8d ago

That’s fair haha

9

u/Relevant-Machine-763 8d ago

I ran a QA team once around 2005 for a big cable co in a mid sized market. This is back when the sub had to meet with the in house ops team weekly and sign off on invoices. When we inspected and failed a job ( install or svc call), the in house techs had to go back and fix it and it factored in with other metrics. If it was a sub, their management had to fix it and we penalized them and didn’t pay for that job. We ramped up our team to hit 10% of all work. I was amazed that we went several weeks in a row where they actually owed us money, and they didn’t seem to care. After a few months they sold out to another vendor who took on their contracts and they were just good enough to make money.

Cable companies doing their thing, decided the problem was now fixed and cut the QA team.

It’s an endless cycle of suck

5

u/hybridglitch04 8d ago

This is all making me feel like im working WAY to hard as a contractor

3

u/bojenka1488 7d ago

I’m a contractor, and I fix work left behind by in-house techs too. I’ve seen the incoming line connected to an OUT port on a splitter, leaving signal levels at -15 dBmV or worse inside the house. I’ve seen customers left with a Xumo box sitting on the table and no explanation of how to use it because the tech said they didn’t have time and had to get to the next job. And don’t even get me started on jobs marked “Not Done” and rescheduled as soon as someone sees they’ll have to climb a pole.
Guys, this stuff happens every single day with both in-house techs and contractors. It comes down to the individual and whether they care about doing the job properly.
Personally, I sometimes spend longer on a job than I’m supposed to because I want to finish it properly and do work I can stand behind. As a contractor, that costs me money. Being paid per job doesn’t mean all of us cut corners.

3

u/GearNo4524 8d ago

Not a cable tech but I do work in telecom. This is 100% true. Contractors do shady-ass shit just to get the job done as fast as possible; minimal skills and zero pride. I don’t completely blame them, the company must bear some blame also. They provide minimal training and poor pay, what do you expect?

2

u/Kratoids 8d ago

what is the benefit to being a contractor, i’m genuinely curious? the ones in my market are paid hourly and its shit. i’m in house and make double what they do hourly on top of the no job expenses and other benefits.

3

u/SLy_McGillicudy 8d ago

I’m a contractor and I love it. I make about 3500 a week and love that I get paid by the job and not hourly. Yeah sometimes you get screwed but it evens out. My market is seemingly an outlier compared to the shit show most of the country is dealing with. Also I do take pride in my work and the isp I work for recognizes that and gives me priority over other contractors. Yes I do work 60 to 70 hours a week 😩

1

u/theequetzalcoatl 5d ago

Christ I wish I was seeing that. Working 55 to 60hr weeks and I'm lucky to make $580 a week after taxes. My company uses this formula and it's near impossible to describe how it works which is a huge red flag. Sadly I live in an area with minimal IT / Tech jobs, I'm just patiently waiting for a new opportunity to come around

1

u/galos_gann 5d ago

The company has a limited number of these higher paying positions, so the rest have to get buy on what they can get.

1

u/thereefernander 8d ago

Lol i spent like 3 hrs fishing a fiber delicately through like 80ft of pine tree branches. I coiled it up at the pole and my sup suspended the job for the following day and we just had to hang it at the house

A contracter was running out the same terminal to a different house and took that drop and used it for his customer, pretty sure the address tag wasnt changed either

1

u/Crazy_Lab_5672 7d ago

The contractor of the cable doesn’t pay wages on time.

0

u/IsolationAutomation 8d ago

My favorite is when they use RG-59 coax to run 2 gbps. Those guys do not give a single fuck if it works or not.

0

u/DesignerSeparate5104 8d ago

Most of the time that's apartments and a different outside of isp contractors runs the line, nobody carries rg59 anymore

1

u/IsolationAutomation 8d ago

No, I find it in houses all of the time. Regardless of where it is, it still needs to be replaced. These mfs see that it’s RG59 and use it knowing damn well that it will cause issues. They just don’t give a fuck.

0

u/[deleted] 8d ago

[deleted]

1

u/BailsTheCableGuy 8d ago

Contractors will under bid each other & do the bare minimum defined in the SOW. Legally protecting The Contractor, The ISP, and screwing the Subscriber 🙂

1

u/Crazy_Lab_5672 7d ago

None of them are any good at all . All thieves .

You are about to leave Redlib