Consumer rights question / advice needed

[Lee]

I need some advice on our consumer rights, if anyone can help

Story so far

Big storm

Lightning strike

Big boom with lots of sparks and farts

We had an aerial company replace our aerial, pole, coax and they fitted a signal booster

And charged us over £700

We never had a booster prior to the storm

Within two weeks, our reception on bbc1 has deteriorated

We called the company and asked if they could send an engineer back, they told us Wednesday

Wednesday, we got a call saying the engineer had been delayed and it would be Thursday

Today we got a call saying the engineer had been delayed, it would be Monday

What are our consumer rights on this?

We paid with a credit card, if that will make any difference

I have a gut feeling after the initial charge amount, they will try and avoid blame and want to charge for more parts / work

[DiscoDes]

This page may be somewhere to start :-

www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/

Got to that page from here : www.gov.uk/consumer-protection-rights

HTH

[calnorth]

I always fit my own antennae and TV cable systems..all of it Lee. £700 is a bit stiff to say the very, very least...

An act of God is what did it I'd say and that perhaps knackered the antenna amp and its power unit. Its not a lot of work to correct. Amp is about £20 max from Screwfix (Labgear stuff).

Not sure consumer rights come into this...more like a company helping PDQ in order to gain custom.

[calnorth]

I should add to my post above that from an area transmitter (DTV) there are multiple service providers...aka channels. Largely sh8t of course. The power level transmitted for each channel varies dramatically with the highest power level for the BBC and its 3 channels of nonsense. The state broadcaster has the money for the best hardware...pity about the fleshware!

I note aerial fitters put an antenna amp on a mast almost by default. If you only need BBC and ITV that probably is not necessary unless you are in a fringe area. Also, it stops some picture pixellation here and there and I won't go into that. They simply try to keep the signal level high at the TV socket.

It could be a bad joint in the installation. I have never suffered storm damage on any TV or Sat antenna over 30 years... I suspect I will now though?

[Lee]

I just popped round the side of the house to see what had been done.

The work looks neat. That's the good part

The aerial, lets just say, I cant find anything that looks that cheap for more than ten quid on amazon
Poles cost ten quid, I live near Boston, so we have plenty in the area. We could have paid one to sit on our roof

Twenty quids worth of kit, on the invoice over £200 with fitting

At this stage, I'm honestly considering, hiring a set of ladders for a day, buying a few meters of coax and a decent aerial
Then some man sized nappies for my fear of ladders

[Lee]

Jul 14, 2016 17:47:46 GMT calnorth said:

It could be a bad joint in the installation. I have never suffered storm damage on any TV or Sat antenna over 30 years... I suspect I will now though?

If you want some kind of extra protection, these units have a good name

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0002AG9SA/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Belkin also have insurance with each unit, if you suffer surge damage

Nice units, that look and feel well made

[Deleted]

£700 !!!!! ... 2 years ago we had a new aerial, pole, coax wiring and a 2 way splitter fitted for £110 by a very conscientious young man and two days later the owner of the firm gave us a courtesy call to check that we were happy with his work ... that is what I call service.

[calnorth]

Jul 14, 2016 18:20:55 GMT Lee said:

I just popped round the side of the house to see what had been done.

The work looks neat. That's the good part

The aerial, lets just say, I cant find anything that looks that cheap for more than ten quid on amazon
Poles cost ten quid, I live near Boston, so we have plenty in the area. We could have paid one to sit on our roof

Twenty quids worth of kit, on the invoice over £200 with fitting

At this stage, I'm honestly considering, hiring a set of ladders for a day, buying a few meters of coax and a decent aerial
Then some man sized nappies for my fear of ladders

Your'e covered by the Belmont Tx in Lincs Lee and I think you would pick up ok without the amplifier as the colour shown in the link below is green...good signal strength countywide.

ukfree.tv/transmitters/tv/Belmont

I lived at Coningsby, Stixwould and Pinchbeck in the 70's and 80's. I picked up with 2 antennas at Pinchbeck both Yorks TV and Central TV.

Goto Screwfix and get Labgear stuff...its UK designed and I think was based in Cambridge area. £200 is about right for a rigger of TV stuff.

The antenna is regionally specified...and should be with your signal strength (green) no more than £25 to £30. I use satellite coax cable for all this work (TV and Sat) which is double screened and about 7mm dia. And is black to prevent UV penetration.

[Lee]

We spoke to the company yesterday, stating that if an engineer never turned up today, we would be after a refund and they could collect their gear
ITV HD is an intermittent mess, along with several other lucky channels

Engineer promised between 8am and 9am
9am and we had a call, the engineer had rung in sick

Again, we pointed out that we would like this resolved today
We were told the engineer would be free from mid day and sort the problem

The same guy that did the original job, finally returned at 5pm
He was quite polite to start with
He showed us that we should be tuned into the Norfolk transmitters for a stronger signal and that's what all aerial engineers do and our TV needed resetting

This is where his day started to go bad
I pointed out the error of his ways
We have two TV's, both different makes, same problem
We have no interest in Norfolk news, we live in Lincolnshire
And we were never given the option of what area we would receive tv from

We were then told, he had plans and should leave work early for personal reasons
He would be back when next in the area

His day, suddenly got worse
When you have a 6ft3 lump with bulging neck veins give you two options, of sort now it or refund now, you tend to have the two choices offered and not the return later option

He dashed up the roof.
Turned the aerial
Set the tv to retune
Then we heard the door close and he was gone

We had to call them again and ask where the engineer had gone, since there were still channels breaking up

Under the consumer protection act, we had 14 days to ask for a refund
Monday was day 15 when the call was placed

Doing my digging online, I found their TV advert
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3DPD3fvm71xbvT3cZ0xtcLn/skyforce-ltd-trading-as-action-aerials

We are now going to get legal advice and contact our credit card company