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Thread: Foxtel cuts my customers service..your thoughts ??

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    Junior Member ozisat's Avatar
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    Default Foxtel cuts my customers service..your thoughts ??

    I had a job where I installed a hills 65cm dish,tin roof mount and cable to a customers set top box.
    The whole kit was provided by me as a new install.
    It was lined up to D2 and has been running for 14 months.
    Customer rings me up to say service has been lost.After a while talking he says foxtel had been there that same day when he lost service.
    So before I go there I can see what’s happened.Fox has cut the cable and re routed a new cable to someone else in the set of units and re-pointed the dish to C1.
    I’m going there today to restore his system back to D2 which of coarse will lose the connection to the other unit with fox.
    Just wanted to ask what’s your thoughts to what legalities could arise,as I can’t see any thing being my fault or the customers in restoring a customers own equipment.
    Plus the customer is being charged by me $75 for doing it and is willing to pay as I do have a long drive to get there.



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    The foxtel insaller could be charged by the police with malicous damage. It was not his (customers) property and he damaged it.
    Reality is an invention of my imagination.
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    I would be ringing foxtel and advising them that action will be taken should their installers vandalise private property again.

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    Senior Member NoService's Avatar
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    So they came there and re-aligned a privately owned dish for another foxtel customer in the same complex.

    i think there is a case for foxtel to pay you to repair their vandalism not your customer and id be calling the police too.

    NS
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    A lot of 'What you might do' will need to be dependant on the bigger picture of what your client was accessing off D1 and how.
    I mean if you complain to either Foxtel or the Police, how deep do you want them look - some things are better left alone.
    On the other side of the coin, if your clients actions were 100% legit then stick it to the bastards

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    This installer is obviously an idiot, and if he was doing an install for Fox then he is their agent and they are responsible for what he does.

    Subtle clue #1: The dish was not aligned to a satellite that carries Fox programs, which necessitated realignment.

    Subtle clue #2: The cable was going to a different unit, which necessitated re cabling.

    I'd first ensure that he was a Fox installer, doing a legitimate Fox job, and not some cowboy doing an install for a mate. Then I'd present the bill for $75 to either Fox or the other flat tenant.

    In either case I wish your customer luck.

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    Senior Member gw1's Avatar
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    At risk of being contradicted by professional installers, who will know better than me, I'll stick my neck out and disagree with the previous posts.

    I think the Pay TV company lawyers are ahead of you. What Foxtel have done is selfish and tricky but they've shifted responsibility onto the guy in the other unit and can't be touched. If your customer tries to take action it will end up in court as a dispute between either him and his neighbour or him and his landlord, depending on who owns the units.

    Foxtel has many years experience dealing with apartment blocks and units of various kinds. Make no mistake they'be been down this road before and learned how to cover their arse. This is from the [280K PDF] Foxtel would have had the neighbour sign:

    "You promise us that you have obtained any necessary
    permission or authorisation for the installation
    , maintenance,
    removal and inspection of the Equipment or Infrastructure.

    "If you live in an apartment block or townhouse complex, you
    need to obtain permission from your owner’s corporation
    for
    the installation, maintenance, inspection and removal of the
    Equipment or Infrastructure. If we are required to remove
    some or all of the Equipment or Infrastructure, you may be
    responsible for the cost and may be regarded as having
    terminated this Agreement.

    "If any Equipment or Infrastructure that we need to provide
    you with the Service is already installed and in working order
    at your Address or any new address to which you transfer the
    Service we may use it
    to provide you with the Service.

    "We or Telstra own the Equipment (other than the iQ Multiview)
    and (unless you live in regional north Western Australia and
    have arranged and paid for the installation of the Infrastructure
    yourself) the Infrastructure (except for the satellite dish and
    the cabling from the satellite dish to the wall plate at your
    Address, which you own once we have installed it at your
    Address
    )...

    "Unless the law says otherwise, neither we nor our Business
    Partners, Related Companies, Suppliers or any of our agents,
    contractors or employees will be responsible to you or any
    other person in connection with:

    • ...
    • ...
    • any loss you suffer if you do not receive a Third Party
    Service or a Retransmitted Service or a Third Party Service is
    terminated; and/or
    any loss you or any other person suffer as a result of:
    (i) the installation of the Equipment or Infrastructure by
    you or on your behalf;

    (ii) ... "

    Foxtel and Austar are pricks in this respect. A more ethical policy would be "installers shall never interfere with dishes on other birds under any circumstance". But that would reduce their profits. Welcome to Foxtel. The world is full of arseholes, but life is too short to get angry at all of them.

    If your customer owns his unit
    Tell him his neighbour is liable for the cost of your work to restore D2. The neighbour needs to be told he wasn't entitled to authorise Foxtel to use the dish because it's on his property. Just because the neighbour didn't understand that is no excuse. If the neighbour refuses to reimburse the customer for the labour then he can be taken to small claims court. Because the customer has legal title to the property, and Foxtel's agreement is publicly available, presenting the case to the court would be straightforward. He wouldn't need a lawyer. When the court finds in the customer's favour the court sheriff has power to seize property to the value of the claim. Most commonly when a legitimate case with supporting documentation is taken to small claims court the other guy either settles at the last minute or doesn't show up when summoned, in which case the court finds in the complainant's favour.

    Nobody wants bad blood with their neighbour though. The customer should be encouraged to try and negotiate a settlement with his neighbour amicably. I think the best approach is for the customer to offer to leave the dish as-is and get a second one installed if he reimburses him, which is in the neighbour's best interests. The alternative - if he sticks to his rights and repoints his own dish - will leave the neighbour without Foxtel, forced to pay Foxtel to come out and fix it (which under Foxtel's contract terms he's required to pay out of his own pocket). You can say Foxtel will charge more than you will, especially if Foxtel are prevented from reclaiming the dish again. You could maintain goodwill if you want by offering to supply your customer with the new dish, LNB and cable for cost and by doing the second installation at a reduced rate.

    If your customer is renting
    He's basically screwed unless he can get the landlord to side with him. The best approach in that situation is for the customer to explain to his landlord what happened, get permission for a second dish to be installed and wear the cost himself. At least then he'll have the landlord on side if something like that happens again.

    Legal liability
    Simply repointing the dish doesn't put you at legal liability to Foxtel because the dish isn't owned by Foxtel and because you did the work under instruction and authorisation of your customer, provided you explained to him that he needs to have permission if he's not the owner of the property. But it may expose your customer to legal action from the neighbour if he's a rental tenant and doesn't have written permission from the landlord to operate the dish. The neighbour's case isn't strong but he could argue he signed his agreements with his landlord and with foxtel in good faith.

    I'm not a lawyer but I had a mate who had a similar experience in a unit he was renting. Others here are professional installers though and their advice will outweigh my 2 cents of opinion.

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    I remember a posting of some years ago where an almost similar thing happened but in that case, all the installer did was cut this persons cable on direction of Foxtel as he did an install for someone else .
    The cut cable was not in the way of this install and nothing was said to the person to whom the cable was cut. it was also cut where it wasnt easily seen, inside the roof cavity I think.
    Obviously this person found the cable was cut when he tried to use it later that day.
    This was long before SelectTV existed and I am not sure if that ethnic company that went bust was operating .
    The inferrence was that this person wasnt on Foxtels list and therefore it was an illegal install for the purposes of Piracy.
    I feel this was in the era when Foxtel would come and remove the dish if you cancelled the service.
    From other postings of the day,it appeared some installers were recovering unused dish's without being told so they could ON-Sell them at another install.

    Would those postings still be available in an achive or were they lost when the server failed that time?
    Last edited by gordon_s1942; 26-07-09 at 03:13 PM.

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    Amongst the best 2c worth of reading I've seen in quite a while.

    I still wish your customer luck!.

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    Obviously, if a dish is pointed to a different satellite, you would expect someone to be using it. It's not that hard to find out who.

    The installer did the wrong thing. He was too lazy to install a new dish for Foxtel. He probably even pocketed money for a full install. In that case, he's fraudulently charging Foxtel for a complete install. Therefore, he's in the wrong again.

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    Simple.
    Go up on the roof and take down your installed dish and mounting bracket.
    Wait until they install there own, Then refit yours back again.
    Pricks.

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    Quote Originally Posted by BillyGoat View Post
    Simple.
    Go up on the roof and take down your installed dish and mounting bracket.
    Wait until they install there own, Then refit yours back again.
    Pricks.
    Sounds like the best solution so far
    If I want too,I can, I will

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    My sister and brother in law were living in a block of flats in Brisbane in the early 1970's, They paid to have an antenna fitted above their unit as there was no antenna available to the units.

    After about a month they noticed that their picture quality had dropped considerably and on investigating found that the tenant above them had spliced into their cable.

    My brother in law is a reasonable man and asked the neighbour to disconnect his splice as it was a private antenna, The neighbour was a less than reasonable man and told my brother in law to get stuffed.

    So my reasonable brother in law disconnected the cable from his TV set and plugged the ends into an electric jug lead and turned on the power.

    Later that day the upstairs neighbour disconnected his splice.

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    Seems pretty reasonable Black Duck.

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    Junior Member ozisat's Avatar
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    OK.I just got back from this job and nothing has been resolved.

    A few points I need to bring up first.
    First of all this is an elderly guy in his 70’s who is watching free to air channels on D2 so there is nothing illegal concerning content.
    Secondly we have a language barrier as he has a hard time understanding English.
    When I do get some questions answered I did get to find out that the foxtel contractor had knocked on his door and asked him..do you watch foxtel.
    His reply was no I don’t.

    But I can see how he had no idea what that question was going to leed to in having his service cut off.
    The other thing is the room below him has the foxtel service and that’s a rented unit,they have moved out since but today a new renter was moving in.The owner of the dish does own his own unit.

    Now I go through the man hole and see 2 extra cables.
    What’s happened is the installer removed the single LNB and replaced it with a triple LNB then re-pointed the dish.

    Now this leaves me in a bit of a dilemma.
    If I remove the triple LNB and replace it with a single then it could come back to bite me in the arse.That triple LNB I think is owned by foxtel even though they have taken the customers original one.

    Plus I don’t need a triple and fitting a single would not be free to the customer which now escalates the price further and he doesn’t need to be paying for anything because he didn’t do any thing wrong.

    I could not get through to the customer what all this means and how I can end up getting dragged into some thing and even find myself standing in a court room.
    So tonight a friend of his will ring me who can translate all this so he knows how things stand.

    I have heard stories and seen many things that foxtel have done.
    During the year I have gone to 2 homes where fox has fitted a dish and that night the customer had no free to air as they cut the RG6 cable and used it for fox.When the customer rang and complained they did nothing about it.
    In the end they paid me to run a new FTA cable.

    So what’s the bottom line.
    I feel sorry for the old guy so I’m willing to ring fox and explain what’s happened which I’ll do during the next few days.
    If nothing happens then it will have to be up to the owner in pursuing the matter as have no stand in this situation.

    I’ll keep you informed.

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    The installer is definitely at fault. He did the dodgy. Also he should have asked if your customer has satellite TV, not just Foxtel.
    I would remove the new LNB, replace it with a single and repoint to D2.

    Also, install a sign on the dish saying it's pointing to D2 and owned by person in unit X.
    Last edited by vk6xlr; 26-07-09 at 03:58 PM.

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    Ring Foxtel ASAP about it and explain the situation. Should they not see things your way , demand to speak to someone in charge.

    Mistakes can be made and thats fair enough , however your client shouldnt be out of pocket. I would be suggesting to Foxtel that they fix his service to how it was and install new equipment for the other people. I cant see why they wouldnt do that.

    After all , if they dont they might get a big run of bad publicity

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    Senior Member gw1's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ozisat View Post
    That triple LNB I think is owned by foxtel even though they have taken the customers original one.
    No, according to the Foxtel contract the LNB becomes a chattel of the property the moment it's installed. The landlord now owns the triple LNB.

    Foxtel shift all legal responsibility onto their customer precisely because they don't want the hassle and cost of getting involved in legal disputes with multi-unit installations.

    Quote Originally Posted by Sanity
    Ring Foxtel ASAP about it and explain the situation... I would be suggesting to Foxtel that they fix his service to how it was and install new equipment for the other people. I cant see why they wouldnt do that.
    The Foxtel installer acted improperly, no question about that. Sanity's suggestion is a good one: it's possible Foxtel may do the right thing by your customer. But failing that, short of taking it to the media or hiring an expensive lawyer, I can't see any way of getting reparation or having the legitimacy of Foxtel's contract challenged.

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    So you’re say that the owner of the equipment no longer owns what he paid for..

    Is that correct or am I reading that wrong. ?

    But failing that, short of taking it to the media or hiring an expensive lawyer, I can't see any way of getting reparation or having the legitimacy of Foxtel's contract challenged.

    But the owner or the person who paid to have it installed no longer has any right to that equipment even though they have no contract with foxtel

    I don't get it..

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    for future reference for those in NSW at least.
    The Daily Telegraph has been running this service for people who may have run into legal problems.
    Public Defender, John Rolfe.
    email:rolfej@dailytelegraph.com.au
    blog:
    Tweet with John at
    Twitter.com/public defender

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