(Sorry, I can’t think of a witty title, because this just isn’t funny…)
About a month ago, a representative from AT&T called round offering me their Uverse service free on a couple of month’s trial. This is a combined cable TV and internet service, and although I already used AT&T’s DSL service for my internet connection, I’d shied away from the cable TV service as a friend of ours round the corner had had bad experiences with AT&T. The rep told me that they had since upgraded their network to fibre-optic, and I’d have an optic cable running right into the house, so everything would be blisteringly fast and the TV quality perfect. As it was free, and as I’ve been distinctly unimpressed with the TV picture quality from Time Warner, I took him up on the offer.
Two weeks later, the tech support person called round to install it all. I asked about the fiber optic, only to be told that we didn’t have that in our subdistrict yet. The fibre-optic cable stops at their interchange (a mile or so away), after which the signal runs over their old copper cables as far as my garden, and then over the standard coax from there to the TV. Ho hum. Not a good start, but I gave them the benefit. They connected everything up and got it working in a couple of hours, although we then found out that I hadn’t been subscribed to any of the promised HD channels, so I had to request them again. “You’ll have them within 24 hours”, she promised. It took four more calls, and two weeks, before I finally got them (and even then the HD channels don’t come in at a full 1080 which kind of misses the point of having a 1080i HD TV).
Now, with the Uverse service, your PC gets wirelessly connected to the box under the TV. In the process of installing the (USB) wireless card and requisite software, the techie screwed something up (which I only noticed once they’d left) that kept throwing up error messages every time I opened Internel Explorer. I had to download a patch from the Microsoft site to fix this, but at least I could connect to the Internet without having to click “OK” thirty or forty times every time I accessed a page. I was also getting other odd (and uninformative – “Server is busy”) messages every time I rebooted and at random times during the day, but I just clicked “OK” every time, and continued.
The next day the PC hung entirely. After a long call to tech support, I got it going again, but then the next day everything (TV and internet) stopped working.  I called support again, and they told me they’d have to send someone round to investigate, and the earliest they could make it was the end of the week (five days away). After I politely pointed out that this was unacceptable, they managed to find us a slot two days later. That’s still a long time to go with no TV and three kids, so I decided to switch the cables back to Time Warner in the meantime. When I went to do this, I noticed that one of the connectors coming out of the AT&T junction box was loose. I tightened this up, and voila! TV again.
Over the next week, we had maybe three or four outages, where I had to unplug everything, count to thirty, and then plug it back in. That usually did the trick, although the set-top-box in the bedroom just refused to come back, so we were down to one TV. And on the one TV that did still work, the signal would just lose the soundtrack for 10 seconds every so often – normally at crucial points in the plot, or just when the punchline was being delivered. The PC also developed a nasty habit of locking out, then refusing to boot up again. When it did boot, it rarely found an internet connection, and I had to go through the Windows troubleshooter to get various settings reinstated before I could even get on to check my mail. Eventually it died completely and I had to take it in for repair – the Geek Squad ran some diagnostics, did some tuning, and had to remve all of the internet connections (i.e. everything AT&T installed) – before I could get it to boot up again.
Eventually, less than two weeks into our two-month free trial, I decided I’d had enough. I called AT&T and asked them to cancel the Uverse and just reinstate my DSL (as they said they would do if I wasn’t “completely satisfied”). They said they could do the TV immediately, but the DSL may take “up to 24 hours”.  As soon as I hung up from them I called my wife to forewarn her that the TV would probably go out sometime later that day. “It just did”, she replied. Fast work! When I got home I reconnected the Time Warner cable, and we were back in business (albeit with a cruddier picture).
Of course the DSL wasn’t back within 24 hours. I called again, and this time they told me that they needed to send someone out to the interchange, and it would be “seven to ten days” before they could schedule that! No matter how much I insisted that this was unacceptable, they refused to back down. So I asked them to just re-connect the UVerse in the meantime. “Oh, you can’t have UVerse and DSL on the same line”. “But currently I don’t have either!!!” In desperation, I asked them to cancel the switch back to DSL and just reconnect the UVerse until I had the chance to make other arrangements. But apparently that would still take three or four days – to reconnect the thing that took them mere seconds to disconnect! Somehow I get the impression that they are screwing with me just for the fun of it (presumably in retribution for me daring to cancel their service).
So I’ve given up with them entirely. I’ve told them to cancel the DSL and the Uverse, and I’ve asked Time Warner (who changed their name to Comcast in the meantime) to come round and install a cable modem. Ironically, they are also saying it will be a week before they can connect me (although they do have to run a new cable to my study), so I’m still without internet for a week. Actually, I’m still able to access from work (although having to come into the office this weekend instead of connecting via VPN from home was a pain) so I’ll survive, but the kids are going up the wall with worry at the thought of their Webkins having to survive a week without their loving care and attention…
14 August 2007
In a final twist, AT&T tried billing me $84.55 for this ‘free trial’. I called customer service to complain, and they tried telling me that my service had never been cancelled (but as it was a free trial anyway I don’t see what difference that would make…). Eventually, they conceded defeat and cancelled the bill.  Which is all well and good, but it does demonstrate that they really don’t have their shit together as a company. Don’t use them!
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