Sunday, January 11, 2009

AT&T drops the ball and Comcast gets some more $$

Meg pretty much summed this up earlier, but I should toss in my $0.02 worth as I talked with the tech a bit more than she did.
Basically, we're steamed at AT&T for telling us we are eligible for U-Verse when they never actually came around to test signal strength at our pole.  So, 6 man hours (they were both male) and two truck rolls later, we don't have U-Verse.  Saving money and manpower aside, it would be better customer service if they didn't get our hopes up, only to be dashed after half a day of wondering.
I know that there are several more neighbors in our neighborhood who would like the U-Verse service, but they're even further down the line than we are.  Solutions?  The best solution would be for AT&T to run new, heavier gauge line from the head end to the poles/homes.  We currently have 26 gauge line on the poles with a U-Verse linear limit of about 4000'.  If they went down to 24 or 22 gauge line we could get up to about 6000' and AT&T could rope in more customers.
So, we're back to square one: analog landline phone service, DSL internet service, Comcast limited basic cable.  Calling Comcast to get up to expanded basic results in more channels than we had, but still costs more than the U200 package from U-Verse and offers fewer channels and no DVR.
Really, we'd dump Comcast in a heartbeat if AT&T would only get their act together.

2 comments:

  1. Here's the resolution after calling AT&T this morning:

    The rep apologized for the problem, claiming he had the same issue when he tried to get U-Verse set up at his home. He offered, without my asking, to put a $50 credit on our account.

    While they can't do anything to get us U-Verse right now, maybe in the future since they are always trying to upgrade service. I also upgraded to the next higher speed DSL while I was at it. At least the regular rate for their internet access has come down a lot since we originally got it, so the bump up was only $5 (it used to be $25).

    The rep was very nice and listened while I told him how disappointed we were, how we had really been looking forward to U-Verse, and how they need a prominent disclaimer that it depends on various factors whether it is true when they say an address can get U-Verse

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  2. I feel your pain. When I first got my DVR from Time Warner cable, it was just a $5 monthly fee. Somewhere along the line they added a $10 "service fee" for the DVR, effectively tripling the total cost of having a DVR. I find TV just isn't worth watching without a DVR, so I'll eat the $15/mo. charge for now. But as soon as there's an alternative...

    I keep hearing that customer service gets better in a bad economy, since good workers are easier to find. So far, I've seen the opposite as companies put greater restrictions on what their reps can do.

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