Aerial service

loueli

Emailed to Aerialforce
Engineer could not do job as not equipped to get on the roof. Had requested that an existing aerial in eaves be attached to chimney stack. Reason - slight pixelation on ITV 3. Engineer insisted aerial would be ok If left in eaves and tried with difficulty to retune my TV. Told him aerial could go back in the same place in the eaves that it had been for the past year, showed him, and he said that won’t work, you need an amp. At no point was there any indication of what the cost would be. I left him to it as he said he would fit the amp and bolt the aerial in the eaves. Another round of tuning, even worse result but he then decided to change the aerial socket to cope with the boost in signal. Then tuned and ITV3 signal fine. Checked the TV in my daughter’s room - ok, then checked signal in lounge and informed me that the signal there wasn’t strong enough for a 3rd TV, because it was going through a splitter. A nightmare of a morning, followed by a bill of £129 for ‘a new aerial’ and £110 for amasthead amp and power supply, plus VAT, coming to £286.80. Outrageous! When I looked in the eaves, I discovered he’d given me a new aerial - there was no need for that, and to increase my annoyance the aerial was where it was before. Would you care to comment on the above?
Haven’t heard from Aerialforce yet but wondering how to deal with this. Causing me a sleepless night!

Les79

Seems a bit weird this one...

You say in your first two sentences "Engineer could not do job as not equipped to get on the roof. Had requested that an existing aerial in eaves be attached to chimney stack."

But:

1. If you requested an existing aerial be moved to a chimney stack, why did the engineer turn up ill-prepared?

2. Why did you not refuse to allow them to undertake work if they couldn't access the roof?

3. Why did you not check the work immediately after, or during, completion and dispute anything you didn't want?

Ultimately, there are legitimate reasons for an aerial to be replaced. It could have been damaged (water ingress?) and causing pixelation. It could have been needing a 4G filter (they sometimes get built-in to newer aerials) and/or mast head amplifier, which were incompatible with your existing aerial. Re-positioning the aerial to somewhere higher is not necessarily the solution to the problem. That being said, you allowed the work to continue without re-positioning being an option to test!

I think your charges are well on the steep side, but I don't fully buy into the idea that work was undertaken that was unnecessary. Think you may just be upset with the cost to be honest...

Ultimately, you had pixelation on ITV3 and they've fixed it through means which most people would consider fairly reasonable.

I'd speak to the company and explain that they didn't re-position the existing aerial and you feel this was a solution which was ignored, and maybe the price of a new aerial. That aside, you'll probably have to take it to court and dispute it there. Really really doesn't help that you allowed the work to take place and let the engineer to walk away.