Review of AT&T SouthwestAll reviews of |  about |
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The last time, they set the service at 8 days out. This time, they set it to 5. We average several of these per year (for 10 years now). In each situation, it was their problem. Nevertheless, even with a report of a problem that is identical to the previous outage, they seem incapable of reviewing the service logs and applying the fix used previously to the new problem. What takes this to the comical level is that complaints about the service delay invariably cause them to say that it would improve if I were to upgrade to uverse. Guess what, with this kind of service, I am more interested in finding an alternative to this crap than paying them more money on the outside chance that things will improve. I am a SW Engineer and have spent much of my long career developing commo code. I have never called them for a problem that turned out to be my own equipment. Most here understand how simple it is to check that, as do I. Still, they parrot the same crap back at us and never try to be proactive by reviewing past service calls. Bottom line - if you have alternatives to AT&T take them. You will be glad you did. Sign me as Fed-Up! Terry Owings Followup comments:
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As to the installation, the tech repaired the problem quickly and easily, in just 30 minutes and had us running 5 minutes after that. (This was after I realized that the 2Wire modem didn't like Firefox for signing up.) So far, excellent service and stable. Eventually I'll switch to a dedicated modem/router. UPDATE: The service was impeccable after having been set up with them. It lasted for six months prior to switching to Comcast at the new address. After that, though, I must say, I'd be happy to have Internet service with them, if I were at the particular area where I'd originally received service. So... to be honest, it was great, all around. ;x Followup comments:
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I have a full T1 (1.5mbps up and down). The price is $350/month, but after taxes and equipment rental fees it's just under $400. The install time was quite long as it took 6 weeks and cost me $1200. $800 for the first 2 months (AT&T always charges a month in advance), $250 for smartjack install, and $200 for wiring. The installation process went very smoothly, although also very slowly. Equipment supplied is a Cisco 1841 T1 router, USRobotics 56k modem (for router management). What most struck me was AT&T's billing rates! $99 for the first half hour and $40 for each additional 15 minutes is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too high. AT&T must make a fortune off technicians. Maybe they'll spend some of that money to expand DSL a mile so I can get that instead of a T1. UPDATE: November 9, 2009 It has been one year into my 3 year T1 contract with AT&T. Here is what I have learned since. The 99.9% Service Level Agreement means nothing to AT&T. I have had 4 instances of extended outages, the worst of which was for 2 entire days. Were this a residential class internet connection I would merely be upset about my misfortune and move on. However, I expect more when I pay such a large amount of money for the express purpose of having virtually no outages. On top of this I have not had any of my bills discounted due to outages as per my contract with AT&T. Having brought this up to various levels of management has led me to believe that a) AT&T does not care that it is in violation of our contract and b) will not release me from said contract without forcing upon me a termination fee of 50% of the remaining monthly payments (at the time of this writing this is approx. $4800). Followup comments:
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[update] Upgraded to 6mb package. Took two days everything went perfect. Followup comments:
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UPDATE: Still use it. Still like it. I wish U-Verse would get here. Followup comments:
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Unfortunately, the experienced soured almost immediately. Upon move in, the MRS was working fine - point in their books. When the 29th rolled around, however, no DSL service. I waited 24 hours before contacting AT&T; on the 30th I called and inquired about my service. This is where the frustration began in earnest. AT&T is currently in the middle of restructuring itself to support its different networks (wireless, wireline, FTTN) - one of the side effects of this massive effort is that the different divisions within the company are almost incommunicado with each other. The one hand literally doesn't know what the other is doing. I ran into this problem many, many times (you have to ensure you dial the correct number; if you don't you can get all the way to the tech support line, speak with a representative and not discover that person only supports FTTN until the very end of the call). Add to this the fact that depending on the time of your call, you are often routed overseas (the quality of service provided by overseas techs is markedly worse than 'domestic' techs). The restructuring also means that the company's own associates often are unable to access your account information without a long string of tedious questions. That all aside, I called support on the 30th. They informed me that the order had never been placed correctly; and created a new order to be completed on the 2nd. I came home on the second, no DSL signal - and lo and behold; the phone service is down as well. Another call to Tech Support (This time reporting the phone outage) and I was told that the 'line is testing good' so it must be a problem with my wiring or hardware. I assured tech support it could not be a problem with either (logically) - because there were no problems with the wiring or the phone service prior to the DSL 'activation.' Tech support told me that they could 'understand how I would think that' but that given our climate, it was most likely damage to my wiring in the house. AT&T would be happy to repair it, for the low cost of $90 per half hour and $40 for each additional quarter hour. I politlely told Tech support I wanted to think about it. Until the 2nd of July, I had only rudimentary understandings of how the domestic telephone wireline network operates. In response to this call, however, I began to investigate more thoroughly. Remembering that I had read something somewhere about the legal importance of the Network Interface Device (NID) with respect to repair responsibility, I took my trusty flat head to the NID. At this moment I ran into my first surprise - there were 2 (count them) Network Interface Devices in my home. This puzzled me, but I ignored it and proceeded to open up the NID's (both) and test my working handset in each. No dial tone was available at either. Another call to Tech Support (same night); I spoke with a representative and told them, "I have connected a phone known to be working into the NID test jack, and was unable to get a dial tone." The Tech immediately agreed that it would have to be a problem with AT&T's network, and told me he would dispatch a representative by Saturday on the 4th. (Another moment of frustration - AT&T wanted me to spend $90 to plug a phone into a jack in the NID?). The 4th rolled around, and I had no service. That evening, I called and was told that they would schedule a Tech to come out and repair the service by Tuesday (the 7th). Frustrated but feeling powerless, I agreed. I received a repair complete notification via e-mail (which I could only access at work) on the 7th; I came home and the phone service was still working - but the DSL modem still showed no connection. I called Tech Support and spoke with an extremely helpful and friendly rep (I don't want to bash the people working at AT&T - there were some unimpressive individuals like "I'll charge you $90 to plug the phone in" but there were also some extremely impressive nad helpful individuals like this person). The rep had me try various tests to determine if there was a problem. We were unable to resolve the issue; the rep told me that a tech could be sent out - but fearing the $90 I declined again. On the 9th, I tested a second modem (this time known to be working) in the NID; no signal. At this point, I was convinved it had to be an AT&T problem - I called second level support (when you call this number you are actually told by the automated system that this line is *NOT* for residential customers - not very helpful) and requested the Tech come out. I explained the situation and my testing; Support actually offered to waive the labor cost if it was an internal wiring problem and bill me only for parts. I agreed (mostly out of despair). A tech was scheduled to come out on Monday, the 13th between 8AM and 8PM. The open-endedness of this time window aside, I agreed. (This support associate was also extremely helpful - he was clear, friendly, made it clear it was important to AT&T that service get restored as soon as possible - more and more it appears to be luck of the draw). On the 13th, the tech came out - he called me 10 minutes in advance of his arrival and asked if I could meet him on premises. I met him at the door, and showed him the NID - he immediately identified the problem as the second NID. Uverse had been installed on the premises, the hardware inside the Telco side of the Uverse NID interferes with the DSL signal, and this was the cause of the trouble. The Tech simply cut (literally) the Uverse NID out of the loop, and signal was restored. All told, the tech resolved the problem in about 10 minutes. I don't want to give the impression that I am dissatisfied, angry, or vehemently opposed to AT&T. There were certainly many missteps along the way - knowing what I know now, many of them appear to have been mine. AT&T has many weaknesses (frustration points noted in the body of the review) - however, I would say that the strengths outweigh these problems. My situation is likely to be unusual - if everything had gone 'according to plan,' service would've been available on the 7th of July. The point I keep coming back to, though, is that the 'diversity' in types of communication led me into trouble again and again. I was intimidated by the labor charge associated with 'repairing' my house's wiring. I was confused by the seemingly contradictory responses offered by tech on different calls. The company's inability to access and reference their own information about my site was ultimately the cause of the problem (per the tech who visited my home); the repair could've easily been completed with a good pair of scissors and a punch down tool. As far as the actual connection goes: I am about 2,500 FT from the RT, 11,000 from the CO. My modem syncs at 5,664 and 768. The connection is very responsive (though it has 'hung' once, dropped out entirely earlier today, and 'hung' once for about 20 minutes yesterday). When the service is working, it is excellent. Low latency, high bandwidth - it works very well for all the applications I have tried it with. For now, I am chalking my problems up to my total inexperience with DSL - the glaring excellence of the connection leads me to believe it has something to do with my configuration choices/usage, and not the service itself. I would recommend AT&T to any users; because they are the ILEC they offer the best prices on the market, bar none. My single biggest recommendation to AT&T would be - assign one knowledgeable person to each account. Have that person walk the installation all the way to satisfactory activation. Don't wait for the customer to reach out through the tangled jungle of Toll Free numbers and automated menus - follow up agressively. You clearly place a lot of value on Upselling customers to Uverse - if you follow this easy method (and close the India and Phillipines call centers) I can guarantee your upsell penetration will rise dramatically. Ratings in detail: Pre-Sales Information: 5 - sales staff is the focus, and it shows. Friendly, polite, helpful, knew the options and what my responses to them would likely mean (I told them I wanted MRS, and they didn't waste my time talking about entry level DSL). Install: 3 - the phone service was well handled; but the follow up was not so good. Reliability - At 3 because I've only had service for 36 hours Tech Support - 5 may be surprising, but when you get the right person they are incredibly helpful and professional. Just keep trying - the good ones are out there. Services - Excellent connection service, excellent online customer service suite. A lot of emphasis is placed on the online experience; the parts of it I have used are very good. Value - Best prices possible. ====Update 10/20/2009==== Since the initial difficulties with the install, this connection has been flawless. I had been a cable user for about 10 years, until I made the jump to DSL. In the time of using cable, outages were out of the norm but they existed, were frustrating and were often as not completely unexplained. This service has not enough so much as looked at me funny in the time since I have had it. The modem sync process has raised by sync rates to 6000/768; I consistently test 'in the range' for those numbers. I'm raising the 'reliability' rating to a five (inhuman). I wish there was more of an upgrade path than spending another 100 bucks a month to buy AT&T's third rate cable package...but their it is. I'll take what I've got for now. Followup comments:
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---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------- I just upgraded to the Pro level of service (1.5 to 3.0). With the other SBC services I get this wil be $36.95/month, 1year initial contract, but it is supoosed to stay at this rate after the contract expires. Upgrade was relatively painless. It was supposed to take about a week. I noticed a speed upgrade on the upload almost immediately (~130 up to ~350). After the upgrade date has passed, I did not notice any DL speed increase. I called and spent about an hour on the phone with SBC techs. The first 45 minutes with a T1 Tech who alked me through all of the standard stuff (i.e. Reboot modem, reboot router, etc). No impact so I was transferred to a T2 Tech. He checked the account out and found that it had not been rebuilt. Took him about 1 minute to do whatever he does. Speed now at 2.5 Down, 350 up! Both techs were extremely polite and friendly. Seemed that the T1 tech basically knew that she would not be able to solve the problem, but had to go through all of the steps anyway. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- I have been very happy with the DSL Service. I installed the POTS splitter (a long time ago) and have a home run going to a D-Link 714-P Router. I get consitent speeds on all my systems (WIN2K Desktop, WIN XP Desktop, Wireless WIN 2K Notebook and Wireless WIN XP Notebook). I have never had any service interuptions (at least that I know of). This has been a rock solid connection for me. Have not needed any tech support. Would be nice to have better Newsgroup Access and have only had one minor Email problem. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- After finally deciding to make the plunge with DSL, I was a bit apprehensive of the installation process after reading through many of the reviews. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones as this was one of the easiest things I've ever done. Going into it I expected to wait at least a couple of weeks for activation. I placed my order for service via the web. The web page had said that I would receive an email with activation date in a couple of days. Never did receive this, but called and was told in would be activated on the 4/09 (order placed 3/29). I thought that was pretty good! On the 5th they called to inform me that it would be activated that evening by 6PM! I'm thinking wow, only 1 week to activation. They had told my wife they like to do it a coupld days early to work out any bugs. This was actually a bit to early in that my POTS Splitter and Router would not be here intil the 8th. Went through the installation anyway using the micro filters and unplugging the phone line on the alarm system. I installed on my P4 1600, with 256 MB Ram running XP. I used the D-Link NIC card provided with the modem. Went through the installation process and about 15 minutes later I was browsing the web! This thing screams! Went to a couple of speed test sites and got something like 1169 and 1181 down and close to 300 up. Broke the 1MB mark on both test sites and was happy that they both told me my connection rocks! I have to agree! Very happy so far. Everything has gone without a hitch. I had read about "capping" on new subscribers with SWB, guess I was not a candidate. I havev no idea how far I am from the telco. Tonight I'll be working on installing my DI-713P Wireless router and see if I have any difficulties hooking up a older WIN95 desktop and my Portable running WIN2000. Also interested in seeing if I get a performance inprovement once I put in the POTS Splitter and have a home run to the router. A bit of clarifiaction on the speeds I'm getting. The official results are 1168/136, at least on theXP desktop. Just got my WIN95 desktop online yesterday. The performance was considerably less, I'll have to do some of the tweaks and see what they do. Also had success in getting the wireless working yesterday. Pretty cool being able to sit on the couch and browse the web. The performance was poor though (albeit still much better than a dial-up). POTS Splitter goes in this weekend. Followup comments:
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Advertised speed: up to 1.5 mbps with dynamic IP Carroll's web is now KITUSA Followup comments:
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AT&T is currently consolidating service centers and you may get exceedingly frustrated while dealing with tech support. Followup comments:
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AT&T Southwest
Leander,Williamson,TX
Contract price not specified. 
"It works for periods of time"
"service is absolutely crap"
"If you have alternatives, look elsewhere"
about 4 days
AT&T
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