Dr. Antenna

The company owner started out being very friendly. He came by right away to remove the antenna tower attached to my house so that my contractors could re-side my house. I really thought this was a great company at first! I came home to greet them in the afternoon and we discussed pay. He wrote me a receipt for $400 and told me that it would cost $200 to take it down, and $200 to put it back up. I thought this was expensive, but because I needed it done, I went ahead with it and paid them the $200 for lowering it. I would then pay them the $200 balance upon re-installation as the receipt has shown and as he had said. It did not take them any more than one hour and 20 mins to put it back up. After they re-installed it to my new house, the boss had difficulty getting a signal on my television. He claimed that my "Channel Master" antenna was only a $40 antenna and that it wasn't very good. I right away felt like he was trying to sell me a new one just to pocket some more money off me because he must have assummed that I was made of money because of all the work I was having done on my house at the time. He clearly was trying to take advantage of me. Anyway, my HDTV antenna was in perfect condition when they lowered it and it hasn't been great since. If there was something wrong with it, it vcould only be two things: they either busted it when they lowered it, or they don't know what they are doing when setting these antennas up. My antenna I just bought last year and it is actually a $100 antenna, not $40 like he said. Anybody who knows antennas also knows that Channel Master is a great brand.

Also, he spent no more then 1 hour and 20 mins doing the job...I really don't think his labour is worth any more than $50-80 an hour tops. I realize this is a specialized, esoteric company, but that doesn't mean being outrageous and taken advantage of the average consumer. Most of that time was spent trying to get a signal to my tv. He really hard a hard time! The picture quality coming in was terrible and it was not stable---the signal would cut out constantly. This was terrible!! This guy does this for a living and couldn't make it work properly. (Btw, I had the antenna inspected since and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it). And this is the way he left it! He told me that he had to get to his other job and that this was the best he could do for me because there was "something wrong with my antenna."

But we are not done!!! When I went to pay him the balance of the bill (remember: $200), he told me it was now going to be $250!!! He then proceeded to tell me that he "put a new pole on the antenna and ran me a new line." To my knowledge, a quote (in this case a hard-copy receipt) is supossed to be the price---otherwise, what is a quote for then?!!?? I didn't need his sad story to make me feel guilty for work that he is supossed to do anyway! What a manipulator! Don't be fooled by his charm!!!!

Guess what? That's not all. Upon telling him that I would not pay him anymore than the $200, he swore at me 4 times using the F-word. His co-worker even had to calm him down (by the way---his co-worker barely assisted the job and still wouldn't warrant the $200 job of re-installation either). Dr. Antenna would not leave my property until I paid him $220. I should have called the police.

Here is the worst part: I noticed that just before Dr. Antenna left, he walked back to my antenna tower and then walked back to his van. I didn't see if he actually did anything, but you can read between the lines on this one: when I went back inside the house after he left, there was NO signal anymore!!!! I went back outside and noticed that the connection at the bottom was severelly bent and kinked by force. I will be calling Better Business Bureau this week.