AT&T "Service" is a joke

[spd2demun ACE - Master]

At this point, all you can do is try mine (& others') suggestion to contact David.  He IS ATT and is on this site for cases like yours.  Give him and his guys a try, they will find out what happened.

[jrb531]

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TreyW wrote:

This is a peer to peer forum, as stated on the top of each and every page.  It is not peer-to-AT&T technical support.  If you wish to speak to to AT&T directly, I suggest you contact the customer service number.  Employees are allowed to post as members as well, just like non-UVerse members are.  What they do on their own time is none of my business as long as they follow the guidelines.  

Everyone here is entitled to state how they feel, AT&T employee or not (assuming they follow the guidelines).  I have never stifled any employee from stating his feelings on any topic regarding AT&T unless they are speaking directly about their employment, a specific customer, etc.  The only thing that is censored is the fact that they work for AT&T, because again, this is a peer-to-peer forum and AT&T does not want people unauthorized speaking on their behalf.  At this point, AT&T does not want employees posting their employment status and I will continue to moderate that.  

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Well I respect that you are only doing what your bosses told you.... I do not respect their decision. As you say this is supposed to be an end-user forum and while "you" may not care what your fellow employees post about AT&T I'm sure AT&T cares

This means that they are not really free to be open and honest with their opinions and makes the rest of us wonder if that post about upcoming features or suggested fixes is coming from an employee of AT&T or a fellow end-user who could be pulling the info out of their backside.

Oh well... I'll drop it. Yet another BAD decision by AT&T. It will be very interesting what happens to AT&T once they lose the iPhone. Sure am glad they are NOW going to spend money doing what they should have done years ago upgrading their infrastructure (for wireless and NOT Uverse) but I'll not forget that they are only doing this because they are being forced to do so as they are about to lose their lock on the iPhone.

Is this any different than Comcrap who sat on their hands for years spending very little on CS or infrastructure because they had no competition (like there was no competition for the iPhone these past few years) and then suddenly were forced to actually compete later?

[Escapee]

jrb531 there is an employee that gives great info on the other forum to customers. He will not post here because he has been warned not too by management. This is just an observation but most of your posts have a negative undertone. You post here all the time should we assume something about your employment. I for one have no problem with someone really really complaining about the service until they start making general statements saying nobody should try the service because you will have the same experience I did. For some people the install and service is perfect for them for others the experience is terrible and a much of what happened should not have happened. The experience the OP had is a case in point his treatment was terrible. At the minimum his calls should have been returned and given a detailed reason for the delay and the possibility his install may not work. I have no problem with him or any one else posting his experience and asking for help. If ther parting shot is If you sign up I hope this does not happen to you but to me it is not OK to say this WILL happen to you do not even try. 

There have been a few employees start posting and they were called on the carpet for their Fanboy posts so a it cuts both ways. 

Just for information Trey is an employee of Lithium  which at&t contracts with to maintain and monitor this site. She has been a great moderator

Message Edited by Escapee on 01-09-2010 02:32 PM

[erazoner]

A certain poster has been warned twice now for labeling other posters as shills for AT&T. Some forums have a two-strike policy. U-talk is apparently more lenient. Just an observation.

[VinnyM69]

I've had to call CS 3 or 4 times in the 6 months I've had U-verse.  They have always been very helpful and courteous.  Never had an issue with them.

Also my install tech's, both inside and outside, were both excellent.  They were here ontime and did their jobs professionally.  

All I can say is the attitude you project when talking to other people will greatly effect the response you get in return.  

I also believe that the install techs vary greatly depending on you geographical location.  I live in west MI and the install and service techs here are great.

[thedefaultusers]

BELLSOUTH ATT:

My DSL service is absolutely inferior. If you check the service record, you will see i have complained about deteriorating service for many months now. The last series of major complaints resulted in a technician's visit to this street (Popolee Road, Fruit Cove, FL 32259) and a bunch of excuses about how Bellsouth-ATT cannot deliver 6 meg service as promised - and that i was: "...welcome to take your business elsewhere Mr. (edited) but we (ATT) will not guarantee 6 meg service." even though i am paying for 6 meg service. (!) I was getting just under 6 meg when that ultimatum was handed down.

Now i am getting service dropouts, (put in a complaint-repair ticket last night) and now on a speed test (speakeasy.net, through Atlanta server) and i am getting 4.5 meg service at a 6 meg price. That is *fraud* "goodfellas".

This is how ATT treats "bundled" customers (I have ATT wireless account too) (!?)

Are you going to provide me with the 6 meg service i am paying for, or charge me less, since i am being *soaked* for high speed internet service i am not receiving?

(ADDRESS EDITED)

[texasguy37 ACE - Champion]

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thedefaultusers wrote:

BELLSOUTH ATT:

My DSL service is absolutely inferior. If you check the service record, you will see i have complained about deteriorating service for many months now. The last series of major complaints resulted in a technician's visit to this street (Popolee Road, Fruit Cove, FL 32259) and a bunch of excuses about how Bellsouth-ATT cannot deliver 6 meg service as promised - and that i was: "...welcome to take your business elsewhere Mr. (edited) but we (ATT) will not guarantee 6 meg service." even though i am paying for 6 meg service. (!) I was getting just under 6 meg when that ultimatum was handed down.

Now i am getting service dropouts, (put in a complaint-repair ticket last night) and now on a speed test (speakeasy.net, through Atlanta server) and i am getting 4.5 meg service at a 6 meg price. That is *fraud* "goodfellas".

This is how ATT treats "bundled" customers (I have ATT wireless account too) (!?)

Are you going to provide me with the 6 meg service i am paying for, or charge me less, since i am being *soaked* for high speed internet service i am not receiving?

(ADDRESS EDITED)

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I believe you are on the wrong forum.  This is a peer to peer forum for AT&T U-verse customers.  It sounds like you have the AT&T DSL service.  The link below is to the AT&T DSL forum.

http://www.att.com/attdsl/

[mibrnsurg ACE - Geek]

I'd say you'll get better help at this forum: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/ilec,bels

Many more users and the same ATT tech help there.

Chris

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Please NO SD stretch-o-vision or 480 SD HD Channels
1-800-983-2811 to avoid Mr. Voice Recognition
YRMV IMHO Simply a U-verse user, nothing more

[spd2demun ACE - Master]

Duplicate.

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thedefaultusers wrote:
BELLSOUTH ATT:

My DSL service is absolutely inferior. If you check the service record, you will see i have complained about deteriorating service for many months now. The last series of major complaints resulted in a technician's visit to this street (Popolee Road, Fruit Cove, FL 32259) and a bunch of excuses about how Bellsouth-ATT cannot deliver 6 meg service as promised - and that i was: "...welcome to take your business elsewhere Mr. (edited) but we (ATT) will not guarantee 6 meg service." even though i am paying for 6 meg service. (!) I was getting just under 6 meg when that ultimatum was handed down.

Now i am getting service dropouts, (put in a complaint-repair ticket last night) and now on a speed test (speakeasy.net, through Atlanta server) and i am getting 4.5 meg service at a 6 meg price. That is *fraud* "goodfellas".

This is how ATT treats "bundled" customers (I have ATT wireless account too) (!?)

Are you going to provide me with the 6 meg service i am paying for, or charge me less, since i am being *soaked* for high speed internet service i am not receiving?

(ADDRESS EDITED)

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[jrb531]

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erazoner wrote:

A certain poster has been warned twice now for labeling other posters as shills for AT&T. Some forums have a two-strike policy. U-talk is apparently more lenient. Just an observation.

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Might I ask how "you" know who has or has not been warned?

Now since I have not called anyone a "shill" for AT&T (I have asked who is representing AT&T on the sly) and I have refrained from using the term "fanboy" because some here find that term offensive... I wonder who you are talking about?

On a side note... are personal attacks allowed here because if the answer is no then quite a few people need their own warnings because the only people that seem to get personal are those who are defending AT&T tooth and nail.... who works for AT&T and who does not is the question and only the shadow knows

[TreyMW]

Warnings are private unless someone does not respond to their messages, in which case, it's public. 

[spd2demun ACE - Master]

And all you have to do is hang out here and read; the regulars have seen it more than once.

[JH1974]

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texasguy37 wrote:

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tjkahn wrote:

Yeah, I'm sure AT&T has 99% customer satisfaction.  You must be right.  Glad you're so happy.

Apparently in Texas AT&T operates a little better.  Try looking at a post from someone in Illinois.  This is much more typical of how they operate here:

 http://utalk.att.com/utalk/board/message?board.id=voice_setup&thread.id=2707

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Interesting.  Your earlier statement was "I live in Chicago, pretty big city I'd say, and I don't know a single person who has Uverse."  If this is true, how do you know what the typical experience is in Illinois?

Also, WacoKid is simply too far from the VRAD to receive sufficient bandwidth to support the U-verse service.  Not an unusual situation that occurs in any of the 22 states where U-verse service is available.  His experience is not limited to the state of Illinois.  You need to do further research here on the forum.

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You don't know a single person in Chicago that has Uverse, because the people who live in the city of Chicago canNOT get Uverse.  There's something contractual going on with Comcast and atm ATT cannot bring Uverse to the city.

[jrb531]

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JH1974 wrote:

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texasguy37 wrote:

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tjkahn wrote:

Yeah, I'm sure AT&T has 99% customer satisfaction.  You must be right.  Glad you're so happy.

Apparently in Texas AT&T operates a little better.  Try looking at a post from someone in Illinois.  This is much more typical of how they operate here:

 http://utalk.att.com/utalk/board/message?board.id=voice_setup&thread.id=2707

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Interesting.  Your earlier statement was "I live in Chicago, pretty big city I'd say, and I don't know a single person who has Uverse."  If this is true, how do you know what the typical experience is in Illinois?

Also, WacoKid is simply too far from the VRAD to receive sufficient bandwidth to support the U-verse service.  Not an unusual situation that occurs in any of the 22 states where U-verse service is available.  His experience is not limited to the state of Illinois.  You need to do further research here on the forum.

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You don't know a single person in Chicago that has Uverse, because the people who live in the city of Chicago canNOT get Uverse.  There's something contractual going on with Comcast and atm ATT cannot bring Uverse to the city.

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That's funny... I guess I must not live in Chicago then. I have Uverse and have had Uverse for well over a year in Chicago. If you drive around Chicago with a WiFi device you will see entire areas of the NW side with Uverse - you can tell because of all the 2-Wire wireless networks that show up

So Uverse is in Chicago... the coverage is spotty (one area has it, the other area does not) but it's been here since November 2008.

[JH1974]

I live outside Chicago, my parents live in the city still.  My boss and several coworkers live in the city as well.

I told all of them about uverse and how happy I am with it, and they all looked into it and were told the exact same thing.  Uverse is not offered in the City of Chicago yet.

Maybe they meant their area, but that's what they told me, and my boss even went to a store and that's where he got the contractual thing with comcast from because that's what they told him.

Maybe it is in very limited areas, but I know it's not city wide becase these people live in various areas of the city.

[jrb531]

Due to the 3000 foot limit it can be "very" spotty. I can assure you that it's in Chicago and not just in one area. I think they are cherry picking areas depending on which are the cheapest to upgrade since Uverse requires a new box to be installed next to the local distribution hub. In my case (Harlem and Higgens) the hub was is an open acessable area on the ground in an area that did not need to be hidden - IE it was not in front of someones house

The area was newer (well 40 years old which is new by Chicago's standards LOL) and the wires were all overhead - no underground cables. When I drove to work the other day I left on my Ipod touch on the Wifi seeking page and you could see the areas that had Uverse as all of a sudden dozens of 2-wire boxes were detected and then a few blocks later they would all disappear so it is popping up all over the NW side of the city. Now of course this could be a coincidence and I guess it's possible for entire areas to own nothing but 2-wire wireless routers but not likely as they were all named the standard default with a number after them.

Now how do they add neighborhoods with burried lines and little access to the hub? Neighborhoods with "very" old lines that would need to be replaced? Well me thinks that some areas will take a long long time to build out.

[tjkahn]

Well since I started this thread perhaps I could and should finish it.

After my last post on January 8, I figured I'd try customer service one more time.  I called once, was put on hold for 20 minutes, and disconnected.  Called a second time, put on hold for 15 minutes and disconnected.  Each time I was told that they needed to put me on hold because they needed to speak with engineering.  Next time I called, I immediately asked for a supervisor.  To this woman's credit, she did put me on hold, but kept coming back to me to tell me to hang in there.  After 15 minutes she said that it was too late in the day for someone to answer her questions, but that she would call me back Monday.

Friday night I got home and there was a message on my machine that I was being credited for a month of DSL service for all of the frustration and the fact that DSL was not working very well.  OK, this was a nice step, but I still had no reliable internet service - I was frequently getting download speeds of .33Mbps or less, and upload speeds even slower.  I took me over 1/2 an hour to download a 300MB TV show, and about 2 minutes to upload a 3MB photo.

Monday came and to the supervisors credit (her name was Cara and she should be commended for being the first person to get back to me) said that she was told by engineering that the issue was there was "no conditioned pair for the wiring" and that the estimate to complete the project was Jan. 22.  Finally, I at least had a specific problem, and a timeframe to complete - although I was extremely skeptical they would get the work done by then.  Cara was a little bit skeptical as well - she suggested rescheduling my for Jan. 30, just to provide a little cushion from the Jan. 22 date.

Now, what I really find bothersome, is that from my layman's perspective, they have not completed wiring in my neighborhood, thus they are trying to sell something to me that they are not yet equipped to offer.  More on that in a moment.

I decided that I really didn't trust AT&T to get the issue resolved, so I decided to get Comcast installed.  The issue is that even though there is no contract with Comcast, they charge installation and make up for it with a very low teaser rate for 6 months ($19.99), so that by the end of 6 months, the installation fee is essentially recouped by the low monthly charge.  So I'd be somewhat locked into Comcast, but I really didn't see any other choice.

Indeed, my instincts were right - AT&T called again today to inform me that they could not install uverse tomorrow.  Well, fortunately I had Comcast installed a few days ago, and it's working great.  I'm sure uverse is as good or better, but of course I have no way of knowing.  They are hooking up my phone tomorrow, internet has been active for a few days.  I called AT&T to just cancel my uverse order once and for all.  Of course when you do that, they immediately put a supervisor on.  The conversation was laughable.  I told her I had already installed Comcast, and she asked, "If I could give you the first month free, would you consider changing?"  I then said, "you can't tell me when you'll be ready to hook me up, can you?"  to which she admitted she didn't really have an answer.  So I said a month of free service you can't provide at this point doesn't do either of us any good.

To show you how messed up things are, she asked me if the phone number I was installing with uverse was a new number.  I've had this number with AT&T since I moved into this house 5 years ago.  I told her it was not a new number, it was an AT&T number already, and that I would be porting it to Comcast despite trying everything I could to keep it with AT&T; I had just gotten tired of waiting.  Of course she had to agree that was completely understandable.

I continue to get mailers from AT&T offering uverse.  This is extremely deceptive and misleading in my opinion.  It was also a bit troublesome, although predictable, that the first time someone from AT&T seemed even remotely interested in keeping my business is when I cancelled my installation order (other than the service credit I got from the DSL department).  What would concern me as an AT&T employee or shareholder is that AT&T had no reason to lose my phone business.  This was never about phone, I just wanted internet that worked and basically whoever provided me with that would get the phone business since it generally comes bundled with lower prices when purchased together.  So because AT&T, a phone company, could not resolve a wiring issue for 6 weeks, they lost my phone and internet bill.  Not a ton of cash to just lose me (and my next door neighbor, who left AT&T 3 months ago), but if it keeps happening, the impact will be felt - and infrastructure improvements for existing customers will be slow to come.

As a service, I'm sure uverse is fine.  Comcast appears to be fine as well (I'm sure they have their own service issues); this morning I downloaded "The Colbert Report" from itunes in 3 minutes - it used to take over 30 with DSL.  I tried my best to get uverse, but the whole experience left a really bad taste in my mouth, and AT&T will have to give me some really good incentives to ever come back.  I suppose I should be happy because if they ever do wire my street for uverse, I'll have a lot of leverage when my promotional pricing with Comcast ends in 6 months.

Message Edited by tjkahn on 01-29-2010 12:27 PM

Message Edited by tjkahn on 01-29-2010 12:29 PM