I’m having a bit of fun with my leasing office at the moment over the placement of my satellite dish. I think I have the situation under control, but I wanted to share the fun here and see if anyone had any ideas I might not have thought of.
I live in a second-floor apartment with a patio. It consider it a nice place, if a bit overpriced. I’ve been there for 7 years, and it’s relatively quiet, and everything generally works. The leasing office staff seems to change every two months, but since I rarely have to deal with them, it’s not a major issue.
A few years ago, my complex decided to sign an exclusive cable deal with a small, local provider. Their service left much to be desired. For digital cable, the picture was kind of lousy, and when I called to ask about HD programming, they said they didn’t even have a timetable on it. A year or so later, I got tired of paying $50 for basic cable and decided to look into Directv (I even started a thread here about it).
I talked to the leasing office about mounting options, and they showed me some photos of what was “compliant” vs “non-compliant.” I decided to take the plunge, did my best to stick to the guidelines, and showed the setup to my leasing office. They said I was fine. For two years, through a multitude of new employees, I’ve never had a complaint about it. And, I love directv. I have Sunday Ticket and all sorts of HD service and would rather move than go back to regular cable.
Last week, I arrived home to find a red note pinned to my door, signaling an “Illegal Satellite Installation.” On the form, there were several possible reasons listed, but none were checked off. Someone had simply written in “lower or remove satellite dish.”
However, at the same time that I arrived home, I found my leasing office manager waiting for me, wanting to talk about the dish. She explained that she was currently getting a lot of pressure from her corporate office (my complex is one of many owned by the same company) to crack down on satellite dish placement, and she’d been specifically asked to place the note on my door, even though she believed the placement of my dish was compliant. She asked if I would be willing to slide my dish further into my patio for a day, so maybe things would blow over, and I agreed. I moved my dish Friday morning, slid it back into place Friday night, and that was the last I heard until today.
This morning, around 8:30, my service vanished. Out on my patio was one of the maintenance staff with a POWER SAW. He was just finshing up cutting part of the center pole in my tripod, after having been asked by the leasing staff to go onto my patio and physically lower my dish. He had indeed lowered the dish, cutting off all reception.
As far as I’m concerned, this is complete BS on almost every level:
- I followed the guidelines set by my leasing office; they agreed it was compliant when it was installed; and they haven’t complained in two years.
- The notice I was given last week did not spell out any specific policy that I was violating, just “we want you to lower your dish.”
- My leasing office manager stated to me directly that she thought my dish placement was compliant.
- Although my leasing office says they tried to contact me Tuesday, no one successfully got a hold of me before going on to my patio and essentially vandalizing my setup and effective disconnecting my satellite service Wednesday morning.
Ultimately, I don’t want to make a huge deal about this. I want to restablish my service and not be bothered about it again. Before I can do that, however, I need to settle things with these clowns so I don’t have to worry about people climbing on my patio and playing games every day. At this point, I’m already talking to a regional property manager, but apparently both her supervisor and the CEO of the entire company were both at my place and decided my dish was “noncompliant,” which resulted in today’s activities.
Personally, I think I have the inside track on getting this resolved to my satisfaction, no matter what the CEO or property supervisors want, simply due to the poor manner in which its been handled. My guess is they’ve broken about a dozen codes in the way they’ve handled this. But I’m curious if anyone else has had experience with this sort of thing:
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Can a leasing office change rules overnight? Or does there have to be some period of time where people are asked to comply with new rules, such as implementing stricter rules on dish placement?
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Does a leasing office have to give some sort of official notice of action that will be taken? Can they just send someone on my patio to vandalize my setup without proper communication?
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Let’s say this drags on a week. Can I bill them for any lost service?
Anything else I’d want to consider? Having once worked in customer service, I’m obsessive when it comes to documenting conversations and continually pressuring people up the chain, but I get the feeling these guys are going to be hardasses about this, and am looking to build up all the ammo I can get.