Review of AT&T U-VerseAll reviews of |  about |
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Only real problems are that the install times available are only 8:00-12:00, nothing after those hours, and weekend installs are very limited, so it will be a waste of one weekday. The install only took about 2-3 hours for me, but my complex had some equipment already setup so expect at least 3 hours plus for install. Also the channel changing is slow sometimes, a little bit more lag than digital cable. Also channel lineup is weird, the channels that most people watch are allover the place. The should put the entertainment and local channels is one area. I want my local channels, entertainment channels and news channels all within one area, then the sports and premium channels. But right now the selection is all over the place, and the lag in changing channels gets annoying when all your favorite channels are not near each other. But I have to say that factoring in the price, this service is excellent. I got a special so I pay $55 for U-300, for the next six months then it will jump to around $70-80. But for comparable cable service and internet, I was paying $100+. Also I get one year of Showtime and Starz for free. If the price stays relatively cheap, then I have no intention on going back to cable. Followup comments:
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The internet, well, it's fast DSL and it works. I have the 6Mbps/1Mbps 'Elite' tier, which was a downgrade from 10/1 on cable. One thing that I did not realize before switching to U-verse is that the DSL utilizes interleaved signalling (»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interleaving) for data transmission. This is great in regards to delivering the unforgiving medium of video/television over IP, however it adds a noticeable amount latency to the internet connection compared to traditional DSL service(to put this in perspective, imagine that on ADSL you would ping 10-20 to a local game server, whereas on u-verse VDSL you would ping 25-40). Now, the only reason I picked up on this is because I'm an online gaming enthusiast where I found that my latency was actually a small amount higher than my previous RR cable service. If you are not an online gamer and/or don't care about low response times, then don't worry at all about this. The cost for the service was too sweet not to switch. It cost me absolutely nothing for setup/installation. My monthly bill is actually a few dollars cheaper than what I was paying for base digital programming from time warner, who with I didn't even have a DVR or HD service. What would u-verse have to do in order to make me a completely happy customer? Allow customers to opt-out of using interleaved signalling with VDSL (if this would even be possible). Do I think they will ever do this? Hell no, but that's the bottom line. Followup comments:
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I had to call online support to finish the order because my order got stuck online so I couldn't finish is and waited on the phone almost 2 hours to have the service rep figure out how to get my registered and an install date. Order completed on October 9th and install set for Oct 23rd 12-2pm. Installer calls at 12pm on the dot on install date. So far so good. Installer comes in and runs a series of test which takes about 30-40 minutes and gives me two thumbs up on signal quality and service. He begins testing internal cable lines and cat five cabling in the house. He spends about 2-3 hours replacing older cable connections with newer ones. Service person is very friendly and helpful and answers a slew of questions about the service and seems eager to help any way he can. At 6 pm he finishes and turns on the residential gateway. Gets green light for broadband and service but no connection possible. Calls in and finds out that software for processing service is down and can't complete job till service is activated on other end. Tech leaves and tells me to call 800 # tomorrow. 24th: Call 800# and reach tier 1 support quickly. I explain what happened and why tech left and i am escalated to tier 2. tier 2 takes over 20 minutes to get online but tier 1 stays online to let me know every 2 mins that they are still waiting to transfer. Reach first tier 1 support for day and he puts me on hold for over 40 mins and never checks back. Have no clue what he is doing or if he’s just trying to get rid of me. Call back and wait about 20 mins more to get to new tier 2 person. He doesn't seem to know what he's doing and can't figure out what to do. Looks at my record and tells me he needs to send someone out and he will prep everything so the install tech just has to make sure I have proper connection at hardware end. Later that evening I call back to confirm next day appointment. No record found for dispatch. Support person sets new support date for November 4th. I insist he should try and get one out sooner. No dice. I hang up and call again and get a more sympathetic support person who immediately calls dispatch and says he got a confirmation for next day at 12-2pm. 25th I take afternoon off from work to meet tech at 12-2pm. Call every 30 mins to make sure tech did not call wrong contact number then leave. No record of attempt as of 2:30pm. I call 10 mins before and I am told there’s no dispatch record for me that day. No one was supposed to come out but they escalate me to tier 2 support again. I am on hold most of that day and finally get someone who seems helpful around 6pm. There's nothing he can do but he begins to shift blame to install guy and says he needs to dispatch someone again. This time for Friday 12-2pm. 26th I get home at 12pm and start calling to confirm appointment and also that tech hadn't tried to call again. Same thing as day before but when I call at 2pm they tell me tech just called and left because no one picked up the phone. I say I'm home and no one called so they call dispatch and route someone as an emergency call. Tech arrives around 3pm. He checks everything and says I have no live connection. He calls tier 2 to get assignment and provisioning port at network junction. He checks my port and its dead. Looks at install document and first tech has me on correct port but somewhere in the system it says I should be on a different port. Tech calls MLAC to get port assignment and is assigned new port address. He installs me on new port and gets great signal. Service won't work. He calls tier 2 and after about going back and forth for over 4 hours a tier 2 tech tells him I'm on wrong port which is not even the one I was installed on to begin with. Install guy goes down and switches me to the port the system says I'm on. Service finally works at around 10pm. Install guys was there really late to make sure everything worked. He leaves mission accomplished. 27th Call customer support and tell them of my experience and tell them I ended up taking almost a week vacation time just to get my service up. CS tells me they understand my frustration and offers me $10 per month discount for 6 months and hangs up. Services works pretty good till Sunday when service goes down unexpectedly. I call and told there is an outage. 28th I call back a couple hours later and now am told there is no outage. Only my system is down in my area. Tier 2 tells me my order is all wrong so he deletes my order and starts over. After 2 hours on the phone, he says he will call me back. 29th On Monday I still have no service. I speak with 3 more tier 2 people who don't know what’s going on. Says someone will come out on Tuesday to fix everything for good. 30th I call at 12 and they can't find my dispatch record. I make a fuss and somehow they find it and says its from 12-2 and its only 12:30 so be patient. I call every 30 mins to makes sure tech doesn't call wrong number no record of tech support making their way out. After 2 pm find out no one is scheduled to come out at all. I'm really pissed at this moment and start just yelling at them for being so stupid. Somehow this tactic works and they dispatch the same guy who got my service working on Friday. He arrives and checks everything and the port I'm connected to is dead. Meanwhile the tier 2 guy I was speaking with is the first guy in over a week that seems to know what he’s talking about and he makes the tech come out by escalating the ticket. His comment after reviewing my order, “This is wrong, just wrong! How can something so simple become so bad?" I agree! He also mentions the problems I'm having are software issues and something he should be able to fix remotely but needs time. Doesn't want to cancel tech coming out just in case because no matter what he wants me to be up this day. After 2 hours, tier 2 guy gets my gateway to go green. I connect my services and finally get broadband and TV again. The tech says just in case he will call back next day in case of any other problems. 15 minutes after service is live and I get off phone with tier 2 guy, the service goes dead. The install guy is still at my house and can't believe his eyes. He calls in and tries to see what the problem is. Tier 2 guy reads notes on my order and can't believe how screwed up everything is. Reads final note from OMA who notes that they need to bring down service for short duration to do maintenance and will get order up as soon as possible. That was around 5pm today. As I am writing this no one at ATT can explain why my service is down and explains there would be more delays. Blames software for my problems now. I'm told that I may need to meet tech again. I tell them I ran out of vacation time and can't take any more time off from work. Although this may not represent the typical service installation, I found that when it comes for ATT to show their stuff and in the face of so much screw ups and in competencies in-house they refuse to escalate my order to be handled immediately with the exception of the second install guy (Mike) and the tier 2 guy who got people on the phone while he had me on hold and wouldn't let them leave until he got what he needed from them, no one in ATT seemed sympathetic to the fact that I had to take off 1 week from work and still have no service and despite all that my ticket is treated like any other call that comes in. Not that they can't escalate, but tier 2 to escalate obviously requires a lot of work because they have to file a report and report it to their manager and have manager get involved as well as following through on their tasks. Its easier to make promises and get you off the line as its impossible to get same rep again. After 1 week, I can't vouch for the quality of the broadband or cable service but the tier 2 people are pretty much morons who step all over each other and don't know what the right hand is doing from the left hand. Just pray you get the service up and running and you don't have an issue that requires you to be transferred to tier 2 support. They actually made my problem worse it turns out because no one seems to read what previous tier 2 people wrote and they all want to cancel the order and start it again so at one time they had 7 backordered tickets to cancel my order and restart process and after Fridays success all 7 tickets hit which is why service went down. Followup comments:
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Outages at various levels do occur from time to time. Potentials outweigh this aspect as with any untested and new technologies. Trial and error require perseverance, communication, and endurance. Followup comments:
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The install took a long time, mainly with issues in AT&T's wiring from the VRAD to my house. Out of a 6.5 hour install, hooking the boxes up in the house took less than an hour as I had Cat 5 to all the tv's already. They had major issues trying to get the gateway to talk to the network, it would get service then drop it. After moving my connection to the second card in the VRAD, all worked perfectly and we have not had any dropouts in the past 10 days. The only minor issue we have had is that the dvr in the living room has shut itself down twice. It came back after a reboot, and I believe the problem to be heat buildup in the entertainment center. It should be better now that the Comcast dvr is gone as that was generating most of the heat in the cabinet. Overall a very good service as long as one researches the limitations before hand and ensures that they can live within those limits. Followup comments:
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Note the $89 is for U200 + Elite Internet (6/1). No contract, and 1 year of movie channels for free. I live in an apartment and couldn't get "Elite" DSL before - the lines just couldn't handle the speed. FIOS was not an option, and Time Warner was fast but so unreliable I didn't want to have to depend on it. AT&T's U-verse DSL is clocking in around 5.5Mbps download and .8-.9Mbps upload. (compare that to the 2/.4 approx I was getting on "Pro" traditional DSL) I can VPN into work and RDP to my desktop, and it's just like being there - no lag at all. The TV portion leaves something to be desired... Actually the programming, channels, VOD, etc. are all really good - much better than what I had with DirecTV previously, but the DVR pretty much sucks. I've had a DIrecTivo box for years, so I'm spoiled. Unfortunately the UVDVR feels like an alpha or beta product. I've gotten one software update since my 8/3/07 install and that did seem to speed the menus up, but it's got a long way to go. The sales guy that signed me up told me several lies... No "whole home DVR" yet - hopefully sometime next year. No interactive U-bar yet - I've heard maybe next month but I'm not holding my breath. Several other features he told me were available right now but aren't - that's why I rated them low on the pre sales info. My install was problematic. Initially they didn't have my particular apartment building in their system, so the girl that took my order just stuck it on somebody else's apartment! They showed up the first time and had a different phone number - and didn't even have my apartment number. So once they fixed their back end system they put in a new order and came out a second time for an install. That went mostly fine, except for one STB we tried to get up and running on HPNA (via the phone line). Any time the installer touched a wire though it would knock the other TVs and internet offline. It took him nearly 10 hours to get us up and running (ended up with coax to that one TV). Thus the lower rating for install. Followup comments:
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Overall I am very pleased with the service thus far even after taking into consideration the few limitations the service has. The programming packages are great and priced quite well. SD channels are a huge improvement when compared to what I was receiving with TWC and Dish Network. Now, HD is a different story. Even though the channel selection is pretty ample (and solid), the bandwidth limitations associated with this service results in a bit too much of compression on U-Verse's HD offering, but the big deal with it is that there's only one HD stream available, so only one HDTV set can tune to an HD channel in any household. I know many households only have one HDTV set, but that trend is changing incredibly fast now-a-days and this may become a deal breaker for many. Rumor has it that AT&T is working on raising the bandwidth early next year, but until they do, this is their Achilles' heel. The internet part of the service is great and I have nothing to complain about (though having faster speeds wouldn't hurt  ). It's quite fast, extremely stable and well, it just works.For the price (and the lack of contractual commitments), it can't be beaten. Followup comments:
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The kicker to all this is the $206 bill I received yesterday, turns out the internet was never "free" and because my wife asked for the U200 which turns out is not part of the promotional program only the U300 and U400 are free for 2 months, that would of been good to know when we switched. The other down side is the phone number they give out, it does not connect you to Uverse it connects to AT&T phone services and they want your AT&T phone number to be able to assist you. You really mess then up when you give them your phone # and don't have a AT&T phone they can't pull up your account not to mention its a real hassel to have to mess around trying to get someone on the phone and then having to be transferred because your not in the right place. The one nice thing is it does seem when I express my frustrations and state I am not even sure if I want to keep the services they seem eager to cancel the services all together so I am sure when I do call back once I get wow up and running it should not be a problem canceling. Followup comments:
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I was told by WOW that i would get HD programs for my HDTV. but when installed i was told i had to spend another 30.00 month for the HDTV box and HD package. So far It has worked great..I had a couple times this weekend where my programs froze,so i had to reboot the gateway. but that has been it so far.. you get alot for the same price as the cable..i have recommended it to several people so far. Followup comments:
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Overall I am very pleased with the service thus far even with the few minor picture/sound issues I have had. Standard definition channels are a 100 fold better than I was receiving with Comcast, but he HD compression is a bit to much. Lucky for me at the moment I only have 1 HD TV, but that is changing soon, and hopefully multiple HD streams, and whole house DVR will be here sometime early next year. For the money it is a great service for me, but it you are looking superior HD on all your TV's at the same time, and crazy internet throughput then Uverse is not for you at this time. Followup comments:
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AT&T U-Verse
(64)
(41)
(16)
San Diego,San Diego,CA
$55 per month
about 7 days
"Great service, reliable, lots of channels, free DVR, Lots Cheaper than cable"
"Channel change is slow sometimes, Remote is IR and not Radio, channel placement is annoying"
"Great Service for 2/3 price of cable, free DVR, but some issues"
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U-Verse is not Time Warner