My installation experience:
10-31-2010
Placed online order for UVerse DSL ("dry loop" with no phone service) with self-installation and basic modem. I selected Nov 15th as the start of service date, thinking the modem would take 1-2 weeks to arrive.
11-2-2010
Called the support number when I realized that they were putting the DSL on my home phone line. I requested that they put the new service on the second circuit to our house (We had a second phone line 5-6 years ago) as I did not want it UVerse on the same line with our current phone service. (I already have DSL on that line from a different ISP, and I wanted to get the UVerse working before cutting over. I often work at home and wanted to avoid an outage.) They said they would call back on it later that day.
11-3-2010
No call from them. I called them back. Again requested dry line DSL on my second line. They cancelled the original order, and re-entered it as a dry line order, without modem, (since the modem was included in the earlier order.) According to UPS the modem should be delivered today. (Surprisingly they shipped the modem 2nd-day air, not ground.) They said I should call back once the modem is received to ask about moving the start date sooner than the 15th. Call time 19 minutes. The modem was delivered at the end of the day.
11-4-2010
Called them back. She can't change the service start date. Transfer me to a specialist who can do it....he filed a stop on the existing order so that the start date could be changed. He can't reenter the order until the cancellation on this order goes through. Said to call Monday and ask them to restart the new order with an earlier start date.
11-8-2010
Called again as requested. Spoke to someone for a several minutes. No one knew what was going on. Was placed on hold and after a long delay, a new person came on. Call was eventually dropped. Call time 27 minutes.
11-8-2010
Called back. Need to create new account. No guarantee that service start can be moved up!!!!
Said a technician will call back with service start date in 1 or 2 days. Call time 31 minutes. Said they would send an email confirming the new order. I never received it.
11-9-2010
Called because they entered the new order with Pro installation...$149. Now in order to change that they have to cancel the order AGAIN! They should send out a notification later today with a new service start date. Call time 13 minutes.
11-12-2010
Called to see what was happening. No email received. He said a technician would be here between 2-4 to check the line quality, then the service should be enabled by 8.PM. Call time 13 minutes. Waited around for 2 hours. At 4:00PM, still no word from any technician.
11-12-2010
Called back. Transferred to dispatch. Looking something up. His system was slow. He said he would call back in a few minutes. Gave a fake number to call back if I did not hear from him. ( A number in area code 188 that incurs charges if called. ) He never called. Call time 20 minutes. Not only did this guy blow me off, but he gave me a callback number that would have created a whole new set of problems if I had called it. This guy should be fired.
11-12-2010
I called back again. Transferred to a tech in Dallas. He could not get the order to go through, and could not get it working. He sent some kind of request to the orders department. Said to see if it starts working by Monday, otherwise to call back. Call time 55 minutes.
11-15-2010
Still not working. Called back. They said to try it again after 8:00 PM, and if it was still not working to call their support hotline. Tried after 8:00 PM. Still not working. Called the hotline. On the phone for about 40 minutes, during which time he tried various things. He asked the local CO to do something. Said the check it in the morning. Gave me another hotline number to call in order to follow up if it did not work. I informed that I would not be able to work on it until 11/19 due to travel.
11-19-2010
Still not working. Called the hotline. They dispatched a technician. Gave them my cell phone number for the tech to contact me. The tech tried to contact me on a different number so I almost missed him when he arrived. When he looked at my setup, he said they sent the wrong tech, he was not trained on my type of equipment. He tried to call his dispatch using his AT&T cell phone, but they could not hear each other. I loaned him my Verizon cell phone so that they could understand each other. They talked for 20 minutes then he said he was leaving and another tech would come, definitely today some time, out to check the line. Called back to his dispatch to try to find out when someone would arrive. He said he would send someone ASAP. He actually called back after 20 minutes (Wahoo!!!!! A first!!!!! Someone actually called back!!!!!) to say that a technician would arrive in the next 1-2 hours.
11-19-2010
A guy arrived who seemed to be capable of making things happen. He plugged something into my line, then went down the street and changed some wiring in a box over there. When he came back it started working.
Finally, after more than three hours on the customer support line, and over 6 hours waiting for various technicians to arrive!
This experience has been quite similar to many others I have had with AT&T. They are a humongous, bumbling, lumbering, inefficient, parasitic dinosaur which is sapping American productivity, and at the same time bleeding themselves to death through their own incompetence. I am sure that they have spent more money in trying to establish this service than they will collect from me for several years. Meanwhile I have spent many hours either on their support phone system or waiting for their technicians to arrive for appointments. I have probably lost $200 in productive time, and much more where I was able to continue working while on hold with them.
I feel sorry for the rank and file employees, who are generally as polite as can be, but too impotent to actually solve problems. They are trapped inside the beast. I am sure most of the people I talked to were making minimal wages, although I also spent considerable time on the phone with people who were obviously quite technical, well paid, and audibly frustrated.
Contrast all of this with my recent experiences with the California Department of Motor Vehicles. In the past year I have renewed my drivers license and two vehicle registrations, including one smog test. All of it was done quickly, usually online, with no screw-ups or do-overs and no support calls. When a major US corporation is many times more incompetent and inefficient than the DMV, you know something is seriously wrong. Maybe the state of California should take over the delivery of telecom services from AT&T!
