The “$199 Antenna Installation” Cost Offer – 5 Reasons You May Want To Avoid This Type of Installation

So, you have got bad TV reception and you have decided you want to get a new TV antenna installed. You call around the local companies available in your area and one offer sounds too good to be true. There is advertising outlining a “$199 Antenna Installation” cost offer, but all the other companies offer a free onsite quote. Here is what you may experience if you choose the cheap antenna installation price that sounds like a ‘no-brainer’ over the phone.

1. $199 Is For The Antenna Only, Or The Installation Only

Be careful when reading the advertising one-liners, as the advertised price may include only the cost of the antenna (the part) or the installation (the labour) only. When you dig a little deeper, you may realise that if you want the company to supply and install a new TV antenna, the tv antenna installation cost could increase significantly above the advertised dollar value.

2. Once The Technician Arrives, The Upselling Begins

You may get a great price for an antenna installation over the phone, but once the technician arrives, the price starts increasing. Many TV antenna technicians are trained on upselling. In fact, a lot of the training that is provided by major TV antenna franchises when a new franchisee joins their franchise, is not simply technical training, but other sales techniques to upsell customers into paying a higher price for their TV antenna installation.

The upsell can come in many different shapes and sizes, but is normally one of the two outlined below:

• A better quality antenna (the advertised price is normally for a very cheap antenna – see more below).
• More problems are discovered once the technician is onsite, resulting in the need to replace other parts, including the antenna mount, lead-in cable, masthead amplifiers and splitters.

As a result, Install My Antenna provides a free onsite quote for all TV antenna installations and will provide you with a fixed price quote prior to starting any works.

3. Cheap Antennas

In any residential TV system, the antenna is normally the most important product that will provide strong, reliable TV reception for many years to come. If you install a cheap TV antenna that fails, then you can have the best quality cable, amplifiers, splitters, wall plates, fly leads, etc, in the rest of your TV system, but it will not matter as the input source signal has sub-optimal signal quality.

A good quality TV antenna does not come cheap. Many of the best TV antennas available on the market are Australian made, heavy duty antennas. The attributes to look out for are as follows:

• Designed in Australia for Australian frequencies, cut to the size required for your local area
• Elements made out of high grade aluminium tubing
• Rigid design with snap-lock elements that will withstand birds standing on them for many years
• 4G/LTE filter to remove unwanted mobile phone signals causing interference in the TV system
• Made in Australia – many overseas manufacturers will slowly remove more and more metal to save on incremental costs, resulting in weaker product that will not last long in the Australian climate

There are many low grade antennas on the market, and many installers will save costs by installing cheap, overseas made antennas at your expense. Install My Antenna uses only heavy duty, Australian made antennas that have been tried and tested over many years.

4. No Warranty, Or No Callback

Most good quality antennas on the market today will come with a manufacturer’s warranty of 25 years or more. A highly reputable antenna manufacturer, Matchmaster, have even released a range of premium ‘Lifetime Warranty’ antennas. A cheap antenna installation will unlikely mean an antenna with a long warranty, and will probably result in no warranty at all.

We have heard stories from customers that have purchased cheap antenna installations from one-man sole traders, only to have problems within the next few weeks or months. Unfortunately, with some of these antenna installers, once they have received payment, you may never hear from them again. Whilst they may even mention a warranty period for their parts and/or labour, some will simply ignore your next phone call or block your phone number once they realise that there is a problem with the job they completed (or only half completed).

5. Unqualified Technicians with No Insurances

Many technicians on the market that perform cheap antenna installations are very inexperienced and not qualified to understand how radio-frequency or digital reception technology actually works. In addition to this, many don’t even own or carry a field strength meter to measure TV signals. We don’t know how this is even possible. One would have to assume that these technicians are simply guessing how to fix the problem, without measuring signal throughout the system and finding the source of the problem.

It is these unqualified technicians that often do not have insurances in place. Whilst it is very rare that insurances will ever be required for TV antenna installation work, you should always ask any contractor for a copy of their Public Liability Insurance and Workers Compensation insurance prior to the technician starting any work. Most Public Liability Insurance policies these days are to the value of $20m, and can save you a lot of problems if an unqualified, inexperienced technician causes a major problem whilst installing a new TV antenna.

Install My Antenna installs only high quality, Australian made TV antennas. We have experienced technicians local to your area and we guarantee you perfect digital TV reception! You can get a free quote on our website just by entering your address and phone number.