We got U-verse about 3 years ago. We started with TV, internet, and phone (Mrs. RWA wanted phone). We had a major outage on the average every 4 months or so. We were the only house affected.
I went through the excruciating service people on the phone every time. They all sound like they come from some other planet. I could give you a long dissertation on that but not now.
After farting around for a half-hour or more of unplugging, plugging, rebooting, moving router, etc. they always told me, “We need to send a tech out. We got appointments five days from today.”
(At this point we dropped the phone since it went out when the internet did. We also dropped the TV since we didn’t really have the time to sit and watch.)
Each tech came and scratched his head each time, called the mothership, ran tests and eventually told me one of the wire pairs was bad and he was going to use another.
Another time we had an outage the guy replaced a plug. Another time they said they switched the wire pair again. Nobody ever thought to find out why the wire pair was bad. Seems like a logical thing to do.
Finally, after over a year, a tech tested the wire and said there was a problem, just as everyone else said. This guy actually LOOKED at the wire from the interface device all the way to the router. The first guy had run about 100 feet of cable on the outside of the house. The new tech found a staple through it. One wire appeared to have been almost totally severed and eventually broke. The insulation was compromised on all but one wire in the cable. Water was getting in and causing big problems.
He ripped out the long wire, installed a short one, and put the router in a better location.
Bingo! Good service since then for about a year.
I hate the AT&T company. Until recently, they had THE worst online bill paying system in the developed world. We have uverse internet, a land line, and DSL that we provide for our daughter at another house. It took forever to get these three bills paid. I explained the problem to them about three different times in increasingly sarcastic emails to them. Finally, one day, they actually made improvements! It’s still a bit strange, but it goes a lot faster. Instead of having one user name and one password for the whole company, I ended up with three different ones. At least it feels like you are talking to one company. Before if felt as if there was a separate company for each account.
Another thing I hate about them is that about once a week I get an offer in the mail to add services. The ones I dropped some time ago.
We use AT&T (nee Pacbell, BellSouth) for POTS (yep!) and DSL. WORST customer support ever. But we stick with them because I hate switching.
1. May years ago, we used to have two bonded B channels on ISDN. When DSL was installed, we switched over. Network came up, but no email. POTS people pointed the finger at the DSL people who pointed the finger at the Internet people who in turn pointed the finger at the email people. It took a MONTH to get email service restored. We must have spent 25 hours on the phone with them. They finally dispatched one guy to the house who knew something and was able to talk to the right people to restore email service. It wasn’t network related, but they couldn’t figure that out.
2. Our internet service stopped working about three years back. “It must be your DSL Modem; here, install this new one.” My wiring closet is not very accessible, so that was a pain. No luck. Several truck rolls and tech visits, but no Internet. Tests showed the problem was in the outside plant, but they kept insisting it was inside. Finally the ONE right guy came out and found water in the pedestal at the end of the block. He cleaned that up, replaced some damaged equipment, and resealed the box. Bingo, back in service after about a week-long outage.
3. Our internet service stopped working about 6 months ago. Several visits from techs said the problem was in the outside twisted pair wiring from our house to the pedestal. They said they had to rewire the entire neighborhood — no more pairs available and the wiring was dated! A week went by and nothing at all from them - no returned calls, brand new CSRs on the phone every time we had to re-educate from ground zero. Drove us insane again. Finally got the ONE right guy out who knew how to trouble shoot and he found squirrels had gnawed through our pair on the pole a few doors down. A simple splice and we were back in business.
My advice? Well, I’ll leave that up to you to figure out.
POF