Why I am not an AT&T U-Verse Customer

First off, let me admit my biases. I worked for AT&T back when it went by the name of SBC. Yep, SBC, the baby bell that grew up to buy its mother and take its name. I did multimedia and network research at what was then called TRI. So, I am well aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the company.

Last summer I sat down and added up the total amount I was paying for wire line telephone, Internet, and cable TV. The total was a shock. My household is not your normal TV household. I have two college age "kids" saving money by living at home and going to local schools. Plus, my wife and I really like a variety of TV and lots of movies. That translates into 4 televisions on cable with 3 Time Warner Cable provided DVRs and way to many premium channels. The total was over $300/month.

Both AT&T and TWC offer great looking bundle deals with all three services. So, I called both companies to see if I could save any money by combining my services. I was surprised to find that going with TWC would save me about $50/month, but AT&T would save me nearly $100/month. TWC was not willing to meet AT&T's price, so AT&T got the business.

The install went fine and then everything went to hell.

AT&T told me on several occasions that I would be able to watch TV on all 4 of my TVs. They said I would have full VCR functionality on all 4 TVs. And, they said I would be able to record 4 simultaneous streams at one time. Sounded great. Would have been great if it had been true.

OK, we could watch TV on all four TVs at once. That is, if you don't mind resetting the little TV boxes every half hour or so. They would just freeze up. The show would stop. You have to go power cycle the damned things and wait for them to reboot. And, of course, you couldn't go back to where you were in the show, you just lost what your were watching. This only happened with the remote boxes, not the main box. When we called about it they scheduled someone to out in a couple of weeks. Not so good.

The Internet connection worked very well and I really miss the wireless router they provided.

The DVR didn't work. At least not the way they said it would. We could not schedule a recording from any of the remote boxes, only on the main box in the living room. We could play back a recording on any TV. But, there was no ability to pause live TV on any of the remote boxes. Nor could you decide to record a show you were watching on a remote box. AT&T's claims about providing DVR functionality on all boxes was a lie.

When I called to complain about it AT&T'a representative first called me an idiot and then they called me a liar. Yes, they claimed they never could have told me that because it wasn't true.

OK, I can see that when I asked if I U-Verse provided full DVR functionality on all TVs their representative might not know what I meant by that. But, when I called I got a lot of abuse. No solution, just abuse. Not a good way to treat a customer.

Oh, and the claim to be able to record 4 streams at once? Well that was true. Except they didn't tell me that the system can only handle a total of 4 video streams. That means that if 4 TVs are in use, nothing gets recorded. U-Verse does not warn you that you are going to lose a recording.

Then there was the little trouble with the telephones. Pick up the phone, no dial tone. Lots of weird chirping and beeping, but no dial tone. Then dial tone. So, you pick up the phone and start dialing, and even though the phone is trying to dial nothing is getting through to the phone company. You finish dialing, nothing happens. I called about the problem, they scheduled a service call for a couple weeks in the futures.

It turns out the problem was that they had turned on their voice mail service even though I told them I didn't want it. The weird noises were their voice mail system trying to tell me I had messages waiting. Of course, I never got any of those messages because they never told me how to get them. And, their customer service representative didn't recognize the problem either.

So....  my family got very upset because we effectively had no TV, the telephones didn't work, and  AT&T wanted weeks to get around to the problem.... I called TWC. As a win back customer they were now willing to match AT&T's price. And, oh by the way, would I be home tomorrow for the install? By 5:00 p.m. the day after I called I had my TWC service back.

I went from a telephone and Internet customer of AT&T to being a U-Verse customer, to dropping them completely, in 5 days.

But, that isn't the end of the story. You can't just drop off AT&T's equipment at a local central office. You have to send it back via UPS. They send you a box with a list of things to put in the box including the serial numbers of the equipment. They sent me a box. I filled it with what they asked for. I drove it over to the local UPS store and sent it off. The rest of their stuff I put in a closet. There was a lot of stuff left over. They specifically tell you not to send back any cables or power cords. They didn't ask for their router.

That was in November of 2009. In December I got a bill from AT&T. It looked wrong, I called them, and it seemed to check out, so I paid it. In January 2009 I got another bill from AT&T. I called and asked what I was being billed for since I hadn't had service from them since November. The very nice lady worked out that I still had their Internet service. I said, no. She checked and saw that indeed it had been canceled. She said they made a mistake and that I was owed a few dollars and they would get it to me as soon as I sent back their equipment...

They sent me another box asking for their wireless router. I sent it back.They did not send me a check.

In February, I got another bill from AT&T. I called and asked about it. (Again, I got a very nice lady. If any of the people in U-Verse customer service had been a tenth as nice I might still be a customer.) The very nice lady checked things out. Said, that yes, they had all their stuff back. She did some more checking and said that because I had canceled the service so quickly I was owed even more money. I was assured I would get a check for $135 dollars in the mail ASAP.

In March I got a bill with a nasty note telling me I own them CR$135 that I must pay them immediately, or else. Yeah, that's right, a threatening letter telling me I owe them a negative $135. Its May now, I have not seen the check they promised... I am waiting. I do not expect to ever get that money back.

 I learned a couple of very interesting things. The AT&T installers bragged about the fact that I had 67 Mbps coming into my house over their network on 2 telephone lines. When the TWC installers were checking out the connection to my DVR I saw that they were using DOCSIS 2.0, 750 MHz using QAM 256 downstream and QAM 64 upstream, which means that TWC has roughly 4 Gbps coming into my house and a gigabit going back out.

Interesting.

One wonders why TWC doesn't switch to DOCSIS 3.0 and offer a 100 Mbps Internet service for about $50 and watch AT&T bankrupt themselves trying to compete.