No TV For Three weeks!

 

About a month ago I noticed my satellite TV (Shaw Direct) TV reception starting to fade out badly with any rain. I just assumed the weather was worse a little further south or back east where the signal originates. It is something I have always dealt with but it was worse this time. About three weeks ago the signal was off more than it was on. That's what I did for a living, radio, satellite and fibre optics communications so I should have been onto it earlier but I wasn't. I went out and sighted along the path to the bird and saw that a tree in my neighbour's property had grown quite a bit taller and wider and decided that was the problem, "tree fade" and there was little I could do about it.

 

The property is owned by a Vancouver real estate company and is rented out so I could probably have gotten permission to remove or at least top the tree but I would have to hire a tree removal company company to do it as well as to finance an engineering report to say it was safe to do so without destabilizing the steep slope behind both our properties. A very expensive proposition. The other option would be to move the dish, something I would have tackled myself long ago when I was 50 or 60 but not so much now at 80. So I called Shaw Customer service.

 

I explained the problem and he started going through the checklist. Are both the TV and receiver plugged in? I told him I had 40 years experience dealing with equipment far more complicated than theirs and he could be assured that I had done all the preliminary checks. He finally agreed to send out a repairman but it would take three weeks! I told him the dish needed to be relocated and he said they would do that.

So, no TV for three weeks! At least not regular programming. I have Netflix, Prime and YouTube so I was not without entertainment and I usually get my news from the computer anyway with CBC, Aljazeera, BBC, CNN and others so I wasn't really missing much. Except for sports, I could probably live without network TV. They will be here on Tuesday and I will see what they say. If they won't do it or if they want me to pay, I will just cancel the service and go to Telus TV. It can't be more expensive that the $150 per month I pay for Shaw Direct. More to come!