Man, its all about the ability of the guy who shows up at your door, regardless of whether you are talking about satelite, cable or dishwasher repair !
I recently went through an amazing scenario with Time warner at my new house. The HD signal would breakup bigtime, my cable internet would fail etc. A whole year and three different modems later the story is comical.
At least 10 servicemen have been here with all kinds of gear. Eventually, I went down there to that fancy depot of theirs, yelling and screaming so bad that two service vehicles and four service guys beat me home! They measured everything and replaced the cable from the street underground and still no better !!
I went down there again and demanded their best technician. When he shows up, he is a pimple faced kid about 20 years old and I'm about ready to kick him out if he even trys to step inside my house - BUT - he figured it out!!!
There was a faulty $3 splitter inside an interior wall and together we dug into the wall and replaced it !
The right guy is hard to come by !!