17 months of horrible service!!

Question

We had dual installation with DirecTV and AT&T Uverse Internet and Voice on 1/30/2014. Instantly there were problems. DirecTV had constant signal errors or lost signal as often as the wind blew and rarely would stay connected to the internet. In order to download or watch On Demand movies, we had to manually connect the internet and hope that the connection remained during the download. Several calls were made before a DirecTV technician came out on May 25, 2014. At that time the dish was repositioned because it was out of alignment. The realignment stopped approximately half of the lost signals. We continued calling about the inability to connect to the internet and from May 25, 2014 to September 30, 2014 each call that was made to either DirecTV or AT&T would result in the one company referring us to the other for resolution. On September 30, 2014, it was decided that we would pay the early termination fee and have DirecTV removed. This prompted their technical support to escalate our complaint and we were then forwarded on to a case manager who sent a technician to our home on October 2, 2014 to hardwire DirecTV to our AT&T modem. The technician that came out on October 2, 2014 told me that he could replace the DirecTV receiver and/or do the hardwire, but that the AT&T modem was not working properly and could not handle DirecTV’s demand. He hardwired DirecTV to the AT&T modem as he had been instructed by the case manager and left. DirecTV stayed connected to the internet, but by hardwiring it highlighted the Uverse internet connectivity problem.
After the DirecTV technician left, I contacted AT&T (10-2-14 at 10:34 a.m.). Ron told me that they have been having problems with DirecTV on this very issue for months and that our internet service was more than enough to run ANY DirecTV application. He stated he would call DirecTV and call me back around 11-11:30 a.m. He never did. At 2:15 p.m. I called AT&T back and spoke to Kenya who tried to get me to upgrade my internet service before transferring me to Mercedes. Mercedes said she was going to fix this and began reading Ron’s notes but could only put me through to a manager (Paul who was on the phone with DirecTV technical support). Once it was discovered that our account had been escalated to a DirecTV case manager, both AT&T and DirecTV ceased any further attempts at a resolution. All the DirecTV case manager did was verify that DirecTV now stayed connected to the AT&T modem and then credited our DirecTV account with $64.35 for the months that we could not fully utilize the On Demand and other internet related features.
Meanwhile, intermittent Uverse Internet and Voice continued. Some days would be fine, other days the service was out every few minutes. During the before mentioned calls from the installation date to October 2, 2014, AT&T would simply put the connection issues on to something faulty with DirecTV. We continued making calls and in addition to the September 26, 2014 and October 2, 2014 calls, calls were made and/or technicians sent on October 14, 2014; February 12, 2015 (we were told by Yasmine that our internet speed was not high enough to support all devices, etc. and raised from 18Mbps to 24 Mbps for the same rate as we were paying for 18 Mbps); April 9, 2015; April 15, 2015 with a technician sent on April 16, 2015; April 26, 2015 and technician sent on April 28, 2015 because it showed there was a problem with the line servicing the area; May 29, 2015, a foreign technician attempted for 23 minutes to help me change the channels by accessing the modem internal settings, who was also very degrading because he felt I was not typing the modem access number correctly or in the right place even though HE could not access it either because it would continually time out. Nothing was resolved on that day; June 3, 2015 a call was placed and the technician with his supervisor came out later that same day. The modem was replaced and outside lines were checked; and June 6, 2015 a call was placed where Sheldon said there was 1 outside line showing open and would definitely cause the service issue so he scheduled a technician to be out on June 7, 2015. This technician said that the line Sheldon was seeing did not exist, but he checked ALL of the lines running from my house to the poles and each and every pole until it went into the ground. Actually this is the same statement from each and every technician that came here. I believe it was the April 17, 2015 technician that came inside the house and checked to make sure the issue was not inside. On June 8, 2015 manager Aaron Salem came by the house to review the work of his 2 technicians from June 3, 2015 and June 7, 2015. I was given his card and told to contact him or the technicians if we have trouble again instead of contacting AT&T. I had to do so on June 12, 2015 reporting the same issues. If he sent a technician they did not make themselves known. Intermittent service continued on from June 12, 2015 to July 25, 2015 when we terminated services. A log had been kept from late evening June 28, 2015 to July 3, 2015 since the internet and voice had been going out approximately every 5-7 minutes for 4 minutes at a time. This log showed that of 28 hours and 53 minutes our internet and voice was down 6 ½ hours. The modem was “rebooted” 4 times in 1 day, the modem was moved to waist height as suggested by ufixatt.com – a picture had been taken of the connections and placed back exactly as they had been since the original installation (the technician on June 3, 2015 placed them back as it had been when he replaced the modem), and the DirecTV hardwire was even removed for a period of a 2 hours (it was replaced after the internet had been down a total of 61 minutes during that time). At 9 p.m. on June 30, 2015, the modem was rebooted, the DirecTV hardwire was replaced, and in an attempt to see if the 2 wires had been placed in the bottom 2 slots incorrectly during the original installation, I put the white wire and the blue DirecTV hardwire into the top 2 slots. This proved ineffective and were replaced to their original spots during the 9:18 p.m. to 9:21 p.m. service outage. It is felt that, as the CUSTOMER, we have done everything possible to rectify this situation ourselves: modem resets ad nausuem, moving the modem to waist height, checking connections, changing channels, etc. An email was sent to Mr. Salem on July 1, 2015 notifying him of the increased service interruption so that he might be able to send a technician out to catch it as it happens, but that at the beginning of the week, we would no longer be AT&T UVerse customers. Mr. Salem replied rather quickly and sent a technician out to observe the service disruption. The technician came in and saw the disruption as it was happening, asked if the modem’s power supply cord was changed on June 3, 2015 when the modem was changed (it had not) and then went outside to look at the lines. After some time, the technician came back inside, changed the modem supply cord and said that he changed our profile from 24Mbps to 18Mbps because the loop length did not support 24 Mbps. From July 3, 2015 to July 10, 2015, our service interruption was 3-4 minutes per day. When I awoke on July 10, 2015, our service was down for over 2 hours solid. Since July 10, 2015, our service is back to intermittent.
I contacted AT&T on July 6, 2015 and spoke with an Anthony for the purposes of getting confirmation on exactly how many times a technician has been called to our house since the original installation. He could only see back 30 days. The second purpose for the call was to verify that our contract did not renew with the change back to 18Mbps. This is when I was told we were getting 12 Mbps. He asked if I wanted to put it back to 18 Mbps and I declined since I didn’t want to have that start our contract over even though 12 Mbps could not handle even the most basic necessities. Lastly, he offered $63 for our inconvenience and I asked if he felt $63 for 15 months of constant service interruption seemed fair. He agreed that it did not, but advised that he himself could not make an offer any higher. Anthony also told me that I should have called each month prior to paying our bill to request compensation for the connectivity issues. I explained to him that does not work since every person I speak with first checks to see if the bill has been paid, and if not, they want payment arrangements. I get the feeling of “I don’t care what problems you continue to have, you have to pay us”. During this call, he advised that he would create an email so we could be contacted by an AT&T manager that would be able to better serve us. Since I denied the $63 credit he placed that in the notes in case we changed our minds. No manager ever contacted us from July 6, 2015 to July 27, 2015 (the date we terminated all Uverse services). To further my point of how little AT&T values their customers: while we waited for weeks for a manager to call us, I received a call on July 24, 2015 to be REMINDED that a bill is available and due soon (which was paid earlier in the day). When we terminated our Uverse services, we were told that a manager tried to call on July 22, 2015 at 5:50 p.m. and could not leave a message. The claim was that he called my cell phone. Call logs from AT&T’s website for my husband and my cell phone numbers AND the house phone show that no such call exists. Either the manager called someone else’s number or he called the house phone while services were down. While these issues were happening, there was an AT&T billing error where AT&T sent February 2015’s bill before getting DirecTV’s billing information. Supposedly this happened because DirecTV bills 30 days and February has 28 days. None of this made sense to us since February has had 28-29 days for thousands of years. It took AT&T 3 months to fix this problem. As all accounts were linked, we were unable to pay DirecTV directly and were at the mercy of AT&T to correct this issue. Payments were made to AT&T though it only resulted in our AT&T account being credited. Despite not being billed, our DirecTV was on limited service until we contacted a manager with DirecTV. He did agree that since we were not billed that we had not done anything wrong. Finally on our bill for May 6, 2015 to June 5, 2015 (received probably around June 8, 2015), the full amount owed to DirecTV was on the bill due on June 26, 2015. During my many transfers at AT&T on June 18, 2015, 1 customer service representative insisted that I make payment arrangements for our bill that was not yet due and no balance was outstanding from previous months. She was curtly told I would pay the bill when the bill was due and not a second earlier. Again, AT&T was more interested in getting their money than actually helping their customers navigate around their shoddy service.July 15, 2015 we received an email stating that our order placed on June 18, 2015 had been completed. We had not requested any new services and during the June 18, 2015 call the only topic discussed was the DirecTV billing fiasco. After learning that AT&T paid then removed payment from the DirecTV account, along with the absurd amount of time it took for AT&T to fix the billing problem, we asked to have the bills separated. According to the order information online at att.com it shows that we requested Uverse Internet Turbo Max. This is wholly incorrect. We were tricked into a new 12 month contract in February 2015 when convinced that we needed more internet speed to stop the intermittent service and went from 18 Mbps to 24 Mbps. That speed was supposedly put back to 18 Mbps on July 3, 2015, but when I contacted AT&T’s customer service on July 6, 2015, I was told we had a 12 Mbps speed. At no time between February 12, 2015 and July 3, 2015 did we request to change our internet speed. It was changed on July 3, 2015 ONLY because the technician stated we did not have the loop length to support 24 Mbps. I called to see what changes had been made. Andre confirmed that our contract date was still February 2016 and that after July 15, 2015 our ETF would be $90. He also confirmed that we are only receiving 12 Mbps. The only change that counted as an order had been requesting DirecTV be billed directly to us. When we terminated our services on July 27, 2015, we were told the early termination was back to $120 with the explanation of “that’s what it says”.
During a review of all of the bills, for 12 months we received the Max Plus for $56.00 per month. We were to receive Max Turbo for the same price for 12 months (January 2015 to January 2016) otherwise we would not have upgraded due to all of the trouble we had just receiving the internet speed we had been paying for. The 1st bill after the upgrade shows the charge to be $57.00 and states that it was for a 6 month promotional offer, but 1 month later (February 2015) the charge was $67.00 so we did not even get the promised amount at all before the technician lowered us down to the Max package at $52.00 in July 2015. Unfortunately this was not noticed until we had already terminated service and I was reviewing all of the notes to file complaints. This had happened during the time when DirecTV’s billing was not being added to the entire bill and we were more concerned with getting that problem fixed.
When I was able to access the modem internal settings, the Cumulative Seconds with Severe Errors is extremely high. On July 1, 2015 it was 10,528 days 9:11:18 (nearly 29 YEARS) and on July 20, 2015 it was 4,294,945,490 days, 429496721:4294967265:4294967288. The modem had been rebooted several times between those dates and we’ve not had 11 million plus years of AT&T service. After this experience we will never have AT&T again.   

Answer 1

The sad thing is that if he'd come here sooner, we probably could have helped him not have such a terrible experience.  The call centers seem to have trouble handling anything out of the ordinary at all.