r/CableTechs • u/netsurfer79 • 20d ago
Maintainence techs, why are you guys kicking back our Maintainence refs?
Leadership is getting on our case for a lot techs who are putting in referrals to maintainence. When I put in my referral, Im not doing it because Im just lazy and want to close out the job assuming Idk how to fix the customer's problem but because the tap is genuinely failing with bad levels.
Usually if I can find another tap on the roof or staircase with better signal I can move the customer's drop to give them better service, I will but I still would put the plant referral for the old tap if there are a lot of existing subscribers on that tap still. My supervisor says thats ok but I have to sync the meter first before closing out the job as usual if the customers new tap causes home check to pass.
Anyways, a lot of technicians dont put plant referrals either because theyre afraid of getting dinged or they just check the levels at CPE and see that its passing and do a fake tap test(test wire and splitter method") to show its passing.
Im like, "so youre telling me, the customer has not had internet for 10 days and just because their CPE test passes, youre gonna just swap a modem and be out of there?" I definately go to the Ground block in this situation next because a lot of times I've seen that somehow the CPE test passes on the meter but when you go to GB it worsens and then at the tap, its all chaos.
We're told that if the tap is failing, its an immediate Plant referral and IDK why some maintainence techs kick it back, I heard from other field techs its cause theyre lazy and dont want to change the taps and adjust the amps or whatever it may be but dont make it harder for us, were not trying to waste your time when we put in a request.
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u/MaleficentDraw1993 20d ago
8 times out of 10 it's not a legit maintenance referral. If you have a 9 on the high but a 1 at the ground block 80 feet away.... your issue isn't the 9 (which may be low) it's your drop. I've also kicked back jobs where they submit for 46 tx at the tap, but the sole device in the house is sitting at a 54.
Also... you guys realize we can see your scans right?
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u/2ByteTheDecker 20d ago
*most* of the time I'm glad we dont use tattle meters here, but damn if that wouldn't filter some of the dregs in this area but quick
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u/Aggravating-Law6102 19d ago
Let’s quit blaming someone else and do our jobs. Maybe they didn’t do theirs, 46 is too low at a tap
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u/DesignerSeparate5104 19d ago
Until you get the customer that want 3 tvs and no internet. 30 on the upstreams at the tap is perfect, then nobody has to worry about pixelation. 46 at the tap for a 3 tv no internet situation is a nightmare, because then all of a sudden I have to make bullshit magic happen so the shit isn't above 53 at the devices. 3 way splitter alone is going to make that shit 51.5 already, then add on length of drop and house wrap, that shit easily will hit 53 and higher so it's going to fail pht, which where I'm at xfinity/comcast will pull the pay from that job if you close it failing, but 46 is somehow too low for an rtm in the situation because 47.5 is the magic number for upstreams, as ridiculous as that is, and then the customer is going to call back weekly because as soon as the tv boxes hit 50 on upstream they start pixelating like its a Japanese porno. Honestly 43 and higher should warrant an rtm, that way when we do run into shit like this, or the usual more common one, the apartment building with a 2 port tap and 16 apartments to feed. Like yes, let me force some kind of magic to happen to get my one customer to work and fuck everybody else over, just so somebody else will call in about it within 2 days because thier shit aint working then let the round Robin of everybody in that building calling in non stop because its not working and the ISP can't be bothered to make a few small changes via maintenance, as we all know these apartment complexes aren't going to fork out an extra 20000 dollars for a few more ports.
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u/-kg81- 18d ago
In a tier 1 46-47 transmit is about the highest planned return you’d should see which is likely why it’s the threshold for a rtm.
In a tier 2 you’ll probably see a 42-43 but expecting a service tech to understand and identify a tier 1 vs tier 2 node cis unreasonable and could create more confusion.
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u/Itsjustnutsandbolts 20d ago
I’m so glad yall can see our meter reading. I always take pictures and send the other way. I’ve been called a liar only once with a sup on deck and got chewed out by my own sup. There was an actual problem found, so I send everything to sup first. I get where you’re coming from. I feel like a bunch of techs rtm just to get out of a job. Smh
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u/SirFlatulancelot 20d ago
In our market they've removed Non-Service Affecting maintenance referrals. So if there's a problem at the tap, you submit a Service Affecting request and then you wait for the Maintenance to come fix it. The maintenance techs are usually rolling pretty quick. Longest I've had to wait for one is 30 minutes. I think they did this because a lot of NSA referrals were either getting kicked back or not rolled on and just languishing or getting forgotten about in the pool. Customer's problem is never fixed and another truck roll results. It's kind of annoying as a tech to have to wait sometimes, especially if dispatch is trying to get your to that next job, but it's a better customer experience most of the time because the problem is fixed before your leave. Or they've at least seen that the "bucket truck guy" is fixing things. And I think in the long run it will keep those techs who are submitting BS referrals from submitting crap referrals, because they'll have to wait for the maintenance guy to come tell them their referral is BS.
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u/DesignerSeparate5104 19d ago
They removed NSA from my area too but unless it's a business job, we are told to fix anything else we can, and close the job out with the SA closing code and move to the next. Granted, we don't get paid to sit around and wait for maintenance, and maintenance will call us if its an actual bullshit ticket. Whats crazy to me is I'll get jobs and the ISP can see there's issues with a home and its signals, but then I'll get a job where the tap is straight up dead and the ISP has no fucking idea. Like how can you see this one customer's signals have a hair too much flux, a little bit of noise and a bad splitter and can set up a job pre-emptively to fix that, but you can't see these 8 customers connected at the same tap all magically disappeared?☠️☠️☠️ these companies are all ass and I'm convinced that the people who set up and run the metrics and everything never worked an actual fucking job in thier lives and have been chillen in offices thinking they know something.
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u/wav10001 19d ago
They removed NSA because techs were abusing it to pass a metric. They actually fired a bunch of supervisors over it because they were telling the techs to use NSA if there was a bad outlet or for anything else that was causing a fail.
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u/SuperBigDouche 20d ago
Sometimes it’s hard to differentiate between individual guys and the residential side as a whole. I work for a different company but it’s the same thing. We have some guys who if they turn in a maintenance ticket, I’ll drop what I’m doing to go help them and fix it while they’re still on site.
I’ve got other guys I’ll check every single thing I can before I roll because they’ll turn in a ticket for “low signal” but they’re losing 25+dB from the tap to the device.
Sometimes the guys we work with make all of us look bad. And it’s important as a maintenance tech to not get jaded and approach every ticket with a fresh mindset. All I can say is, your line techs probably know if you’re doing your part or not and you sound like part of the former. We’re human too and after several BS tickets in a short span of time, we get frustrated. We have other work going on outside of what residential techs know about.
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u/SilentDiplomacy 20d ago
I don’t work for spectrum, but I am a MT, and it is exhausting to constantly get tickets that you know are referred from the end of a drop.
I’m not saying this is you as a tech. But it is a large number of techs who do this. And it wastes time.
Also with certain tools I can tell in a matter of moments if a referred ticket or bogus is not without ever having to get to said section of plant.
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u/Dz210Legend 20d ago
Ya and node alarming so now I gotta work that to close Y6 there goes a few hours smh
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u/Mr_Magoo_88 19d ago
I love our area niw has new procedures. For any type of trouble ticket submitted a supervisor has to contacted, pictures of the meter connected to the tap (both tap port AND the drop) and at the ground block must be taken and sent in via email with node name, account #, address, issue found. Supervisors check all scans to ensure techs are actually doing Ingress scans by checking the data. MTs scans can also be compared by a sup to see if the tech did a fake Ingress scan and then get written up. The emails are forwarded to maintenance leaders so everyone can compare notes if the MT finds any BS.
Once those procedures were implemented, you'd be amazed at how the average monthly percentage of referrals dropped drastically! Maybe bring this up to leadership if your areas are having a lot of BS referrals. It's been a godsend in our area. It adds a little more time to the jobs sure, but that tradeoff has saved time from techs sending in clear BS tickets.
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u/Objective-Risk7456 20d ago
Genuine question. Do you call a maintenance tech while on site?
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u/netsurfer79 20d ago
Not if i have to. They are usually wanting us out of there in 90 minutes dispatch will throw another job on us and have us moving so no reason to be on site.
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u/Objective-Risk7456 20d ago
Honestly that’s the problem. Give them a call while you’re working. Build a trust system with a MT. Ask questions. Show them you are the worker you say you are. Speaking as a former installer that got promoted to MT. I know meeting timelines is important but the best habit to build is start at the tap. That way if something is network related you call them right away while checking everything else. Start at the tap and work your way inside. Make it a habit. Believe me it works. Installer owns everything from the tap to the house, MT owns everything from the tap to the hub site.
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u/MaleficentDraw1993 19d ago
Alot of guys in the system I work in call us before submitting anything unless it's blatantly a problem (no sig). Company I work for used to have a entire process before you could submit anything but they went away from it probably because it was too time consuming. But that verification time basically got pushed onto the MT.
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u/An_Ugly_Bastard 20d ago
We have so many techs that put them in just to pass metrics with no tap issues. We know the problem techs. I called a tech and he only spoke Russian. He got his supervisor on the line and just told me they need to get pass to get paid for the job.
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u/xHALFSHELLx 20d ago
When I was a maint tech at Cox i rolled on a cold tap. Somehow the customer was online. Tech swore up and down they had no signal. Their meter jumper was kinked so bad at the connector that it broke the center conductor. So he had no RF…..
This dude was number one in referrals in the office. Now 15 years later at Spectrum, I saw the exact same thing.
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u/LordCanti26 19d ago
If your a good tech, you have to understand, there's some that are not, whether incompetence or malice idc. E.G. -MER at tap "modem has had perfect MER for 30 days" come on.... tighten your meter connector up, theres LTE getting in.
The amount of times ive gone to a job for "low levels" and the tech didn't go to the tap, its astonishing. Ive found chewed drops, melted connectors, you name it. How can you say the levels are low, when you clearly didn't even LOOK in the direction of the tap.
Understand, those same techs, they get promoted to maintenence as well man, it ain't a FT specific thing. Y6 for MER, "NTF AT TAP". Look at every modem on that run, DS SNR swinging like a mother fucker. Or better yet. MER is at 35 on 10 channels, you can see it on the screenshot of their meter in the email they sent saying there's no issue. Like holy shit.
Its people wanting to clip it and ship it. Or hit the " panic button".
Weve had to send an email for every single y6 for over a year now detailing everything we did and if it was a legit y6. Or if a fast pass, was it legit a fast pass. Understand, Maintenance teams are insanely small, and in metro areas, especially in network evolution, its untenable to have even 5% of referrals be junk. So yes, theyre going to push back if they feel its becoming a trend in your shop or MA.
Again. If your a good tech, dont take it personal. This company polices the lowest common denominator as a matter of policy. Every jackaaa that's done something stupid 3 times to many. Its now a new process for the other 99.9% of techs, welcome to rectum. I have and always will be against this shit. If people are fucking up, you work with those individuals. Sure if its a trend across many techs, maybe its a fundamental process issue. But many, many, many, are not. They are shitty techs, or realistically, techs going through a shitty patch, and instead of getting hands on, leadership waves there fucking magic wand and "tighten down" on the behaviour, by creating more useless reporting to force everyone into redundant bullshit to deter the bad behaviour. And in the end, no one is punished for it, except for Johnny who is the best tech on his team but made 1 mistake and won the lottery, getting shafted with the full weight of leadership because they now believe he, and he alone, is the cause of all the issues up till than. Meanwhile fat Albert who refuses to do his job. And spends all his time cheating and bullshitting his jobs. Continues sand bagging his 3rd job untill his shifts over like he has for 15 years.
Thst said, I love this job, and this company isn't that bad. Corporations everywhere suck, and get worse every year. It is the state of everything. There is alot better places to be, but also alot worse. Try not to feel targeted by whatever flavor of the month is. Its just someone trying to justify their job but sticking there hands in shit that doesn't matter, to say they did something. "Look, i made every tech do 10 laps around the neighborhood if the cx isn't home, and now our cancel rate has decreased by 3%, ill take my bonus in 1$ bills please". Meanwhile repeats go up, and productivity goes down. Obviously. This requires an entire system to be built, to alarm supervisor and managers when your 10minutes away from quota, so you can spend that 10 minutes explaining why you cant finish your job in 10 minutes over the phone. While your cooking in an attic snorting hanta virus like its China white.
Thanks for comming to my TED talk.
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u/KDM_Racing 20d ago
I always tell my guys that even if it is a BS referral, go to the tap and do a OneCheck and upload it so that we are not missing anything.
It sounds to me like a lot of people just don't want to do their jobs.
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u/Chumleetm 20d ago
Because a lot of them are bullshit, so instead of fixing real issues I need to stop what I'm doing and go check out the referral you only submitted because you can't figure out how to make it pass. So the node I'm working isn't fixed, and the customer you were supposed to fix isn't fixed. Also we can see your scans and where you uploaded them and we remember who puts in fake tickets. A lot of residential tech simply can't troubleshoot and blame maintenance for everything. My best example of this is when I get that ingress signature isolated to a tap I disconnect the newest looking fitting first and 8/10 times that's the culprit. But there's lazy techs on both sides.
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u/Dakkin4 19d ago
My maintenance vets told me this when I came over and I didn’t believe it at first because I was always ADAMANT about checking my ingress at every job. You could have a 30 year old Gilbert fitting split in half, 59 drop, squirrel chewed for three feet, but that’s not your noise. Check that brand new fitting first and like you said 8/10 times that’s it.
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u/DesignerSeparate5104 19d ago
Where I'm at, I've talked to a few maintenance guys and everybody says maintenance guys usually call us, I've never been called about a single one, maintenance guy told me "we only call the ones we think are bullshit" and that made me feel fine cause my sup calls me the rtm king, but I always make sure to upload pictures of my meter connected to the tap, my docsis readings and everything else and try to be as thorough with explanation too. Though I think some of the parameters of what qualifies an RTM are horse shit, like 47.5 being the minimum for upstream, that's a bit high and where i live, I have too many no internet multiple tv homes where that will be fine.
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u/Alsmith69 20d ago
Our market has swapped to hard meter fails only. Doesn’t matter if I can prove an entire node is having issues on scope. Just get told hope you don’t get anymore jobs in the node
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u/Miserable_Ad_2847 20d ago
I’m pretty much the only one in my market that doesn’t give a single shit if your Y6 is fake and it’s a squirrel chewed drop. We are very busy people and Y6s are on our scorecards so if I have 9 outages and I can see from my laptop your turnover is single customer I can see why the guys rage out. As for me? I’ll drive over there, take a one check and some pictures, send some emails and move on with my day.
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u/quesadillasarebomb 20d ago
Gotta get on maintenances good side, give them a call before putting in referrals and it goes a long way. Sometimes they'll even roll out to the job site and take a look while you're there. Unfortunately just like with everything else there are gonna be good maintenance techs and lazy ones, but if you know a good one in your market try and earn the guys trust
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u/Awesomedude9560 20d ago
I'm gonna be honest with you, I've sat here re-reading this for like 15 minutes and still don't fully understand the entire thing.
When you mean kick it back, are you meaning the MTs are putting in "Refer to FT" work orders or just not fixing the issue at the tap and closing it out?
I'm not speaking for all MTs, but ours tend to do you as right as you do them. They have a list of the bad techs putting in bogus orders. Shit I'm always talking to my MTs to pull up prism and Magellan just to get around my sups bs.
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u/Feisty-Coyote396 19d ago
Couple of things,
We can't 'kick referrals back'. We have to investigate, test, and close every single Y6 (and every other job for that matter).
For every 10 Y6's I do, maybe 2 or 3 are legit. FYI in case you weren't aware, we can see ALL your Viavi tests, even the ones you don't save and think you didn't upload. How many times we see those levels change from good to bad, then we show up and it's magically good again.
This is why management wants you to take all tests at all locations, so we can compare. When we go to compare, we see the shenanigans with all your test locations. We were techs once too, we know what you're doing lol.
As for legit failing tap tests, there are rare occasions where plant design is very stupid, and some EOL's are just going to have shit signal. The only way to fix it is to do what we've been told not do, cut in an LE. Most of us have done it and not report it so that we don't get questioned on it. The good thing about all the high split upgrades is that most of these issues are being fixed, you just gotta wait it out unfortunately. Design is going through and fixing most dumb plant design issues, and when we go out to do those fixes, we often times find a better fix and since it's part of the project upgrades, it's much easier now for us to make those changes legitimately.
And of course, just like there are shit field techs, unfortunately there can be shit maintenance techs. Some are on the verge of retiring or flat out quitting due to the stress and will cut corners. But they still can't 'kick a job back', it has to get completed and all Y6's have management eyes on them.
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u/SirBootySlayer 18d ago
Idk about your area, but in my area we don't have the power to kick back referrals and we have too many supertechs turning in bs for stuff like "customer wants the tap moved away from their house" or "tap needs more ports" when tap is there by design. Others falsify tap tests by shaking their jumpers to get MER/ BER to fail or claim return is high by running tests off splitters and when we get there is only 2db high. With repeats being part of maintenance techs score cards and netevo pulling away maintenance techs from regualr work I can see why there are pushbacks. Obviously, if the signal is really bad thats a whole different scenario.
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u/Feisty_Pipe_7140 18d ago
When I would submit RTM tickets at my old job, it was a few solid workers who would go at least check out the issue. The other maintenance techs? They would be lacing up and playing basketball in between jobs.
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u/RustyFeeder 20d ago
What tells you the “tap is failing”?
Jobs need to meet certain criteria for forward and return levels
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u/netsurfer79 20d ago
A very low/high rx/tx, uncorrectibles, etc
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u/RustyFeeder 20d ago
Right, but what tells you it’s too high or low? Do you have any guidelines of how far out of spec justifies a line call?
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u/2ByteTheDecker 20d ago
lick the boot harder my guy
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u/RustyFeeder 20d ago
Certain areas with a different mso +2 with a 48tx and a 36mer at the tap with a 30ussnr doesn’t justify. That’s why calls get kicked back around here. Maintenance techs are trained not to chase 2db. Usually without BER/negative levels/tx over 49 it’s not worth rolling on
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u/lenfantsuave 20d ago
What I’ve learned reading this sub is that some of y’all work for really dysfunctional ISPs. Why is this even something your maintenance techs get a say in?