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Lightning vs panamax


McMiRA

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Does anyone have any experience with making a claim with panamax? I had an incident yesterday and now have two malfunctioning receivers and possibly a projector. If you don't want to read the story skip to the end for the full issue heres the storylast night I come home late from a day on the boat down in st Augustine and see the top of my cable box out in the yard. Initial thought was neighborhood kids kicked it off again, no big deal, ill look at it in the morning. Get in the house , flip on the tv, and it greets me with an error stating i have the wrong cabling or tv to watch hd channels. decide im too tired to mess with it and go to bed. Well morning comes and as always i flip on the weather channel and same issue, then i decide to walk out side and check out the cable box. the first thing that I see is a clean spot where the wife's truck parks( it was home all day yesterday and now she's at work) and the rest of the driveway, sidewalk, and yard covered in dirt and bark including the spot where my truck parks since that's what we drove yesterday. Go out to pick up the top to the cable box and its full of cracks and burned. The ped itself is on it side, and there is a crater in the ground beside it. At the bottom of the hole is the root to the pine tree that shows a new battle scar from a lightning strike. Obviously it wasn't a rodent problem, so I get on the computer to look up the number to comcast and there are no pretty lights flashing on any of the devices. Modem, router, and printer are all off. Reset the ups unit and everything comes back on but the modem. Things are adding up quickly. Go back to fiddle with the tv and that's when I considered that the coax lines in the attic for the directv and comcast run together so the lightning must have taken both boxes out. Spend 2 hours on the phone with comcast to press one for English to speak to someone that doesn't understand it, just to be told that i should bring the ped in for a swap. Im sorry im not digging whats left of this thing up. If you understood what I was saying you would understand this is your issue, not mine. After a few more transfers ( and hours) I spoke with "Barbara" from India who informed me the soonest appointment is Thursday. more wasted time on the phone went by and i finally got it escalated after three transfers that resulted in a convenient dropped call. since its a home business and there's equipment damage at the curb thats a possible liability they said they would rush a tech out today to fix the ped and have another tech still come Thursday to check the wiring of the house. I was then instructed to take the modem, not the ped, to the nearest service center for immediate replacement . The entire time this is going on I am texting with a friend that works on the other side of town for these evil ***** , and its his day off. So he sends a message to his supervisor to try to push things along since I'm a glutton for punishment I decided let's get the call to directv out of the way next. WHAT'S THAT YOU SAY? YOU CAN BE HERE IN 30 MINUTES. Wow that's a nice change. Tech shows up in no time and tests the dtv box. PASSES ALL TEST WITH FLYING COLORS. plug it directly into the tv and bypass the receiver and there are no issues. Now I'm starting to worry. The tech follows me into the theater room and there's no video. The day is getting worse. He makes his report stating the dtv equipment is fine. I load up the cable modem and run to the nearest comcast office. GPS has be driving in circles. I can't find this damn place. Turns out its not where it shows on the map. Spend another 20 minutes on customer support just to get a valid address. Now just to add to my day i find the place , walk in and they are going to offer me the old style crap modem that I got rid of two years ago because it was painfully slow. They call over to the next nearest office and get no response. All they can say is run over there and see if they can help you. Now they have me crossing town to the main branch that turns out is a huge place with horrible parking, definitely not making things any easier when your driving a Dually. Finally get the equipment swapped and get a little slip of paper that gives instructions on how to activate it over the phone. Get home, plug it the new box in and make the call. 45 more minutes of battling the language barrier and they decide they are going to escalate it since the modem won't work..... . This is after I have given "Joan" the entire story including how they wanted me to activate the box the second i got home. Even taking into account the ped is still damaged. Well after all the words lost in translation I finally get told that they are going to get this taken care of immediately for me, and I now have an emergency call to get the tech out on, wait for it, Thursday. REALLY?!?! Then to add to the frustration they never put in a call to get the ped taken care of. Blood is boiling, I decide it best to close the call myself and send one last message to the friend that works for the evil empire. He puts another message into his boss. And tells me to call him first thing in the am if a truck doesn't show up tonight THE RESULTS: The panamax has everything running through it, including the network LAN feed to the switch in the entertainment center and the coax for the dtv. Over the course of the last 8hours i Unhooked everything. Test each component. And then reconnected Panamax seems to be working tube amp good wii u and ps3 good tv looks to be fully functioning, less an issue with the ARC that might be receiver related dtv box and blue ray are working but now I cannot use the hdmi and component outs simultaneously as I did before the issue . don't know if this is receivers or the individual devices causing the problem projector is not receiving a signal, do not know if the input is fried or the baluns fried. Will have to take the projector down and try a short hdmi tomorrowliving room receiver was reset and I cannot get hdmi 4 to display nor component ins. theater receiver was reset. lost monitor 2 output, no video on the component ins, cannot get zone 2 video to work. Sound issue with the ARC on the tv. pioneer receiver in the garage came back on after I let it sit unplugged for a few minutes. Works fine. cannot test any Internet connectivity due to the lack of Internet. THANKS COMCAST! the part I'm not understanding is the only thing they really have in common is the network cabling that the panamax should have protected. THIS MONTH JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER AND BETTER. I'm going to bed

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GPS has be driving in circles. I can't find this *** place.

Par for course. [:@] Just moved here form WI, and we're 10 for 10 on Google map errors. It's as if the coordinate database for the entire state is FUBAR. [N] Haven't been routed to a single correct point yet...been resorting to street view before heading out, and crossing the fingers. [:S]

Sorry to hear about the strike. Probably best you weren't home for that one.

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I can feel your pain. It sounds like a lot more back and forth over the phone is in the future. Sometimes leaving everything unplugged for a day will allow the equipment to reset. I had this happen to an avr. I disconnected everything to take the avr to the shop and the next day at the shop everything worked and I have not had any further problems with the avr? I can't explain it. Good luck with everything!

I don't know if this is true but, I heard the power/surge conditioners can only take so many hits and then they will no longer protect the gear. Sometimes there can be undetected hits. Take this with a grain of salt.

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After more extensive testing I initiated the claim with panamax. So far their end has been very helpful. I explained to them the circumstances and the remaining issue that I cannot test network connectivity until comcast decides to show up. They asked for me to send in the panamax, take the damaged and unsure items to a repair facility of my choice and get a repairability letter written up as to repair costs or if full replacement is needed, and then to draw up a full diagram of the system. OH BOY! I'm going to néed a lot of paper. Will update more as it happens.

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After more extensive testing I initiated the claim with panamax. So far their end has been very helpful. I explained to them the circumstances and the remaining issue that I cannot test network connectivity until comcast decides to show up. They asked for me to send in the panamax, take the damaged and unsure items to a repair facility of my choice and get a repairability letter written up as to repair costs or if full replacement is needed, and then to draw up a full diagram of the system. OH BOY! I'm going to néed a lot of paper. Will update more as it happens.

Good to hear, they are maybe cooperating.

Did a service call to a friends house here in Florida, A surge strip(not Panamax) they paid $100.00 for had blown to smithereens. They sent him a new surge strip. It did it's job though of protecting. Ended up installing a Quick Disconnect for their big dish. Only problem was, remembering to disconnect.

Panamax did have an unlimited connectivity warranty as may recall at one time. Would be nice for them to follow through.

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If it was lightening strike did you if fact check every appliance in your house. I say this because as a former alarm installer I saw what a direct hit can due to a house and ALL it's internals. 1st hit was a roof skylight which blew out then it traveled looking for gnd along the electric or Romex runs in the house. Microwave,garge door opener, tv,every contact and alrm panel just fried. The fire dept was there w/ thermal cameras to see if there was anything in the walls burning .Lightening is no joke.

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There is a definate scar in the tree and then the entire crater/ burnt ped kinda gave it away. We were not home when it happened, in fact we got home late that night so if there was a fire in the walls the house would have been a pole of ash by then. We have checked everything else in the house and haven't found anything other than an audio glitch on the ps3 and it could just be that one game. Comcast never showed, in fact they called twice today to push back the appointment and then told me they would have to reschedule for next Thursday. Your @-$:!; kidding me right! I sent a txt to my friend and he made some things happen when we were gone this evening. Now we have a temporary line running across the yard from the ped and our internet is back. It's not pretty but it works. That gave me a chance to test all the connectivity on the devices. Everything works surprisingly. Including the apple airport timecapsile that was first in line after the modem. Go figure on that one. Now to send the receivers off to get tested.

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