My 771 "fixed" twice in two months...it's back again, and what's a "waiver"?

Check your satellite signal readings on the 99, 101, and 103º satellites and post back the results here. 

I'm guessing you may have something obstructing a clear view of all three of these satellites. The "waiver" may refer to them not being able to fully optimize the readings from all 3 satellites. 

I have no obstructions and both times the techs left, the signals were all in the 90s or 100. 

What DVR/Receiver models do you have?

How old is your dish? How is it mounted?

Genie2 - HS17/100

101:

93 99 95 0 93 82 94 85

94 98 93 73 95 85 94 85

95 0 95 100 95 89 95 87

95 100 94 100 95 87 95 86

103(ca):

66 58 59 59 65 60 60 58

46 42 45 38 34 34 33 39

34 50 46 38 26 51 43 41

103(cb):

64 72 60 70 62 72 60 68

60 68 58 72 53 64 N/A N/A

Dish is 5 years old mounted on roof.

Hi @mrichman, we understand the importance of correct the 771 error, to enjoy your service properly.

Let's meet in a Direct Message to take a closer look on this. Please check your DIRECTV Message Inbox (It's the chat icon next to the bell icon in the upper right corner of the Forums)

Juan, DIRECTV community Specialist

your 103ca and 103cb numbers are terribly low, they should be at least in the 80s, and what about 99?

99(s) 99(ca) and 99(cb) are all either 0 or N/A

@DIRECTVhelp Juan, I have no chat icon on these forums.

@mrichman so basically your satellite dish is not getting 75% of the HI-Def channels being that 99 carries more than 103. You will need to schedule a technician visit or do it yourself. @litzdog911 has a video up on YouTube, very helpful.

@detuch254 Yes I already know this. I have a tech scheduled to come out. I just want to understand why it keeps reverting after a couple of weeks.

Those readings are horrible. Are you sure there's nothing blocking your dish's view of the satellites?  Any decent tech should be able to tweak the dish aim to get all of the readings into the 80-90s. 

The next time a tech comes, be sure to shadow them and check those readings before they leave. If they can't get them any better, ask them why. 

If you have a clear view of the satellites and the dish keeps losing these signals, then something is wrong with the dish. Could be loose dish mount. Or a loose/corroded coax cable connector at the dish. This really shouldn't be that hard for a qualified tech to diagnose and fix.

@litzdog911 They've gotten the signals that high on both previous visits. I have a clear view of the southeast sky. I'm in Florida and it's sunny out. The second tech blamed the first. The first tech gave me his personal cell phone number and said to call him if I had any problems — this struck me as super sketchy. The second tech (Mastech) said techs don't give our their phone number. Second tech said he got the "bubble in the middle" when aligning the dish, implying the first tech didn't do this.

Regardless, same problem about two weeks after each of them left. Both had to get an IV waiver (also seemed odd).

They had to get a waiver because the signal levels were not adequate. The DirecTV system won't let them signoff on a service call with low signal unless they get a waiver. So those techs knew that something wasn't right.