U-Verse is not as Advertised, Many Regrets

I am coming here today to share with my community a warning about a new service offered in our area. First I would like to talk a bit about myself. I have worked in the technology industry for over 8 years. For the past 5 years I have worked for companies that specialize in web service and web based services. I am by no means a technician, but I do have a general understanding of the inner workings of the industry.

I love Midland, TX. I have lived here nearly my entire life; however, last year we made the mistake of moving to the City’s edge.

We are still inside the city of Midland, but there are no cable service providers where we live. In the past we have had both Grande and Suddenlink and today I am sitting here kicking myself for any complaints I may have had with these companies.

When we first moved we had Direct TV for TV service and AT&T DSL. However every time the weather got bad the TV would drop out and stop working.

The DSL was great, we never really had problems with it back then. Which was surprising because we are heavy web users, at any given point we will have at least 4 live connections to our modem if not more. We have a desktop, a laptop, a Wii, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Playstation Portable, and Two Palm smart devices all connected to our DSL WiFi. When we first started with AT&T we just had the 6Mbps package and it was speedy and reliable.

The Direct TV was awful so we cancelled it and began to use the internet to download our favorite TV programs onto our XBOX 360 and Playstation 3 to watch them. This worked out great… for a few months.

About three months ago our AT&T DSL started to drop off a lot. This is something in the industry that we call packet loss. Even when we were hard wired into the modem/router out of desperation (which it was a mess running Ethernet lines all over the house) we still had the problem.

To better explain packet loss: when data is sent over the internet it is broken down into packets and then sent, just like if you sent a large shipment you would put it in multiple boxes. So if the following represents packets: 1 2 3 4 5 6 that represented Gizmodo.com maybe we would receive 1 3 4 5 6 and the lost 2 packet would be a couple of images on the website.

Occasionally we would lose so many packets that websites wouldn’t load at all. This also made it impossible for us to continue to use video on demand services to watch our favorite shows. It was around this time that we started to get phone calls, mailers, and emails telling us to Join AT&T U-Verse. Offering us these awesome prices, telling us to enter the coupon code and it all sounded so great.

Around that time we were also having problems with our AT&T DSL line at my place of business. When the technician came out he gave me an “employee referral promo code” and some awesome prices on the U-Verse package that were way cheaper than what we had been paying. I also had a promo code in an email that AT&T sent me. I talked to my fiance’ and it was settled. We were going to get U-Verse.

That is where the problems began. We got our promo codes together and called AT&T U-Verse to get service set up. The woman on the phone was not American and it was extremely difficult to understand her. What we did understand is that the promo codes could only be used on the website. So we went to the website. It had a convenient place to plug in the promo codes. The website said that it could not find the promo codes. So we called back and got another non-American that we could not understand. She also could not take promo codes.

That day we just gave up. We discussed it the next day and decided to just pay full price for the service because we really missed seeing our TV shows. So we go to the website and it is very self explanatory. We enroll in the top of the line 18Mbps internet package with the U300 TV package, We added the HD and HD premium tier, and told it that we would need two receivers. I took a screenshot of the final order page. The total promotional price for six months of service monthly would be $149.00. We ordered our service on June 2nd. The earliest they could come install the service was June 20th.

So the waiting began. Finally the day came. When the technician arrived he asked why we were paying signed up for U-Verse if we did not want any receivers. I told him that we signed up for two and showed him the screenshot and he told us that was incorrect and that we must have removed them. He then informed me that if we want TV service on two TVs that it would be $14 extra dollars a month. I wanted him to install it then so I didn’t have to wait another 3 weeks for him to come back so I agreed to the extra $14 bringing our total monthly services up to $163 before tax during our promotional period.

While the technician was here I showed him the problems I was having with the internet and he told me that he had no idea why it would do that and told me to call U-Verse. Shortly after the technician left the problems with the internet worsened. We would have to refresh pages to get them to load all the images or load at all constantly. The TV would drop sound, image, or both frequently. When watching movies two-thirds of the way into the movie the movie would stop and a message would come up saying the program you have selected is not available. We would rest our modem and then reset our boxes and it would not work.

So we called U-Verse, and 3 days later they sent out a “senior field technician” to look into our problems because the people on the phone did not understand what we were having problems with because their English was so poor. The senior field technician couldn’t even be called a technician. He openly admitted that he isn’t familiar with the internet or computers and that he doesn’t have a computer at home. What was even more surprising is that he didn’t even know that the internet service we had was DSL he honestly thought we had cable through AT&T. After walking around the house aimlessly for about 20 minutes he asked me where the U-Verse was located and came in and plugged his laptop into our modem and ran some speed tests showing speeds between 3Mbps and 17Mbps on various websites. He loaded ESPN.com a few times and told us he could not do anything else because we had not had our service for 10 days yet.

More Waiting. Today it has been 37 days since I have ordered service and 19 days since the service was installed. I took the afternoon off from work to come home and deal with AT&T. I spent four hours on the phone dealing with people who do not speak English or know what I telling them. I was hung up on twice because they had to transfer me and instead they would transfer me to a busy signal. None of them could run this special latency test after 10 days of service and they told me that if I wanted the channels I was already paying extra for that I would need to pay $4 more.

I called again and cried and begged to talk to someone in advanced technical support who spoke English but there was no-one. They told me this would be a job for their “senior field technician” and I explained that I have already had one out and he told me I would have to talk to them. It fell on deaf ears.

My internet is so latent that If I load Google.com 10 times it will only load completely 7 out of 10 times and 2 times it will not load at all. Google.com is a simples site, don’t even get me started on youtube.com, gizmodo.com, or any other website I care about.

Why am I writing this? Because a good many of you have cable service through Grande and Suddenlink. I am sure you have seen the ads for U-Verse and maybe even considered it. But what you need to ask yourself is are truly ready to pay more for less? The concept of U-Verse is awesome, if it consistently worked I would recommend it. It goes beyond cable in many ways. But it rarely works. Then, when I need someone to help me, there is no one there. No one that speaks English fully, no one from the United States.

I do not even have the phone service. The hidden fees are killing me, the service is so costly. I am locked into this contract, with no way out, no help. NO ONE WILL LISTEN OR HELP ME.

I wish I had Grande or Suddenlink as an option. Literally a block South of me they are available, but we live in a new development where we have no choices. For those of you that have a choice. Do not choose U-Verse, if you do not regret it now you will when you see your bill or when you have your first problem.