You are not paid for the sale. You are paid for the install.
This is the structural fact that surprises reps arriving from other trades. In roofing or solar there is a contract with a value attached. In TV, the customer’s yes on the porch is the beginning of the pay event, and several things still have to happen:
- Qualification — the address is serviceable and the customer clears credit. A failed credit check can change the upfront cost or kill the order outright.
- Verification — on most telecom orders the customer confirms the terms on a recorded third-party call. Anything you oversold in the driveway dies here.
- Install completed — the technician actually gets in the house and the service goes live. A no-show, a refused install, an obstructed line of sight discovered on the site survey, an HOA that will not permit a dish: no install, and typically no commission.
- Survival — the account stays active and paying through the chargeback window.
Steps three and four are where most lost income hides. A rep with a great close rate and a terrible install-completion rate can out-sell everyone on the board and out-earn nobody. If your dealer publishes install-completion or 30-day-retention stats, that number tells you more about your income than your knock count does.
Chargebacks: what triggers them, and when
Every one of these is defined in your agreement. Windows in this trade commonly land somewhere in the 90-to-180-day range, and a bundled mobile line sometimes carries a longer one than the video sale that brought it in. Read the actual document.
Two chargeback details worth more attention than they get. First, reserves: some dealers hold back a percentage of each payout until the window closes, which is defensible but means your real earning rate is lower than your rate card until the release lands. Second, trailing liability: at some dealers, chargebacks on your accounts can be collected after you stop working there. Ask that question before your first day, not after your last.
When the money actually shows up
Payouts commonly run weekly or semi-monthly, a pay period or two behind the install date. That lag means your first month in this job usually pays very little regardless of how well you sell, and your last month pays out after you are gone. Reps who do not plan for both ends of that lag quit in week five with money in the pipeline they never collected. Combine the lag with a reserve and a 90-plus-day window and the honest description is this: your income in month one reflects nothing, and your income in month six reflects month four.
W-2 vendor or 1099 retailer? The structure changes the whole deal
Cable operators frequently reach the door through vendor firms that hire reps as W-2 employees with a base plus per-unit commission. Satellite retailers more often engage reps as 1099 contractors on a higher per-unit rate with no floor. Neither is automatically better, but they are genuinely different jobs:
- W-2 base plus commission: a floor under bad weeks, the employer pays half of Social Security and Medicare, taxes are withheld, and mileage is usually not deductible to you. Lower ceiling.
- 1099 straight commission: higher per-unit, no floor, you owe the full 15.3% self-employment tax on net profit, you pay quarterly estimates yourself, and your business mileage becomes a real deduction. Higher ceiling, higher variance.
- Either way: the chargeback window applies. Being a W-2 employee does not mean commission cannot be reversed.
If you are 1099, read the 1099 tax guide for D2D reps before your first quarterly deadline, not after.
