Bad moves overall for DTV. How can one justify firing technicians for telling the truth about what one does and does not need? I suppose DTV is probably using a "they disclosed company policy" line. Sucks, though.
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
Sounds like a good company to not work for, and not buy services from.
Whistle blowers are marked for life, though. I don't care how egregious the event they report, or how helpful it is to the company, the public, and so on. Nobody wants to hire someone who was fired for whistle blowing. So my advice is to quickly leave the company, if you find that your company does something unethical. Find another job as fast as you can. Any company that would do stuff like that is not one that's going to be ethical to its employees either. So you need to get out.
Then after you have the security of a new job, you can anonymously alert the authorities or news reporters to what is going on.
The mistake is in employees who see the company treating their customers unethically, then turning around and thinking it's going to treat employees fairly as their response. Obviously, that's not going to happen. If you tried the internal chain of command and got no satisfaction, then your relationship with that company is going sour. It's definitely time to leave.
Posted by raventh1 (Member # 3750) on :
I was thinking about DirectTV. I won't be getting service through them now.
Posted by Evie3217 (Member # 5426) on :
It'll be interesting to see if/ how much their business suffers because of this.
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
Oh, and another important thing is not to tell the people you interview with the true reason why you're leaving your old job. Don't ever say anything negative about anyone in interviews. Always talk about how excited you are about the possibility of working for the new people, and the great opportunities you see there.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
It's a huge assumption that the technicians are relating the story accurately.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
Do you mean these things should always be taken with a grain of salt or that you see some kind of inconsistency in their story?
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Probably neither. I'd guess that: The payTV channels that use telephone-landline-ordering pay DirectTV a set fee per given number of subscribers who have their houses wired specificly for landlines (as opposed to only cellular and/or internet phone service). Plus they would pay DirectTV a set fee per payTV movie/sports/etc sale. So folks landlined into the telephone network are subsidizing those who aren't in the sense that landlined folks are contributing more to DirectTVs cash flow / profit margin while those without landlines are contributing less. So the techs weren't exactly telling the full story. ie They were being paid less by Mastec for customer installations which were less profitable to DirectTV.
A reasonable alternative to their version would be: the techs were not directly told to lie to custormers, but rather felt that they were pressured to lie due to the penalty of making $5 less on each installation on a home without a landline.
Mastec could have avoided this, while pursuing the same objective, with a base payment of $5 less per installation to their techs, then giving a $5 bonus for each house with a landline installation. Same pay, but the techs don't feel penalized for a factor beyond their control. People enjoy bonuses however they come, but hate being penalized for something that isn't their fault.
[ May 08, 2006, 12:32 AM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
aspectre,
quote:The group said supervisors have ordered them to do or say whatever it takes to avoid a deduction on their paychecks, the report said.
"Tell the customer whatever you have to tell them," technician Frank Martinez said. "Tell them if these phone lines are not connected, the receiver will blow up."
"You've been told to tell them that?" Alvarez asked.
"We've been told to say that," Martinez said. "(And say) whatever it takes to get that phone line in the receiver."
They're pretty explicit in what they claim was going on. I've reread the articles, but can't point to anything specific that said to me, "they're lying." I assume that Dag is just advising caution in taking this story in face value. They could just be a group of employess who are pissed about being laid off, though that's quite the conspiracy (40+ people).
Posted by raventh1 (Member # 3750) on :
Dag: Just as it's a huge assumption to assume you are correct, and not just blathering on about laws all the time...
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
"They're pretty explicit in what they claim was going on...I assume that Dag is just advising caution in taking this story in face value. They could just be a group of employess who are pissed about being laid off, though that's quite the conspiracy..."
Evidence should be separated from hearsay when interpreting everyday news items. If Gwen tells you "Bob said Stepanie overheard Jillian say that you are a stuffed shirt", that doesn't mean that Jillian said anything at all about you. All it means is that Gwen made some claims. Between TelephoneGame mangling of original comments, and some folks who tend to reinterpret comments as containing more malice than what was originally said, it doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense to assume that "he said she said" hearsay contains any reflection of reality beyond the fact that the first person told you "he said...", and that there might be some claims worthy of investigation.
Now, lets look at the reporting. "Nearly 40 DirectTV Techs Fired..." Nope, Mastec is a mid-cap international company independent of DirectTV. Mastec fired nearly 40 Mastec employees. There is nothing in the story which suggests that DirecTV had any knowlege of how Mastec employees were compensated, or of the instructions that those ex-employees claim that they were given by Mastec. There aren't even rumors that DirectTV takes part in the employment decisions of their other subcontractors, so I doubt that DirectTV makes an exception for Mastec. So why is DirectTV being slammed? Since Local6.com is demonstrably misleading in its coverage of DirectTV's part in the affair, there is a self-created credibility gap inregard to Local6.com's claim that one reporter-selected bit of hearsay from FrankMartinez about Mastec is an accurate reflection of what is being said by the group of fired employees.
All I am saying is that the fairest thing to do is sit back and watch, instead of going into the default mode of kicking DirectTV for the complaints of Mastec's ex-employees.
[ May 08, 2006, 05:24 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
When I had DTV installed about 4 years ago, they tried to get me to hook up the phone line, and I flat out refused. I don't remember it being that big a deal. They tried to sell me on all the features I'd be missing out on, but once I explained to the installer that I wasn't the least bit interested in pay-per-view events or movies and, furthermore, didn't even have a phone line the guy dropped it.