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Signed up in mid Jan. Had an initial install date while my mom was in the hospital dying of cancer. I had to cancel that initial install date and moved it out to Mar 15. After mom's death I called back and they rescheduled for a week after my call, I've had the service now for about 3 weeks, and have been quite happy. The install was a bit rocky, because there were a number of upgrades to be done to the wires in my neighborhood. I live in an older neighborhood (my house was built in 1925) and there are still houses that have the original MaBell equipment in them here! In addition to replacing the drop wire fom the pole to my house, they've had to rewire and/or replace several junction boxes between me and the central office. With all of that work, I've never had to wait more than ~18 hours (usually less) for the follow-up techs to show up if the initial tech could not complete the install or service request. member for 14 years, 2 visits, last login: 14 years ago lodged 14 years ago
I've had the service for a few days (TV & internet) and I have been nothing but impressed with the service. Much better than Charter cable. The tech had do some tweaking with the twisted pairs in my apt, but he got the 2 TVs hooked up and zero issues thus far. member for 19.1 years, 185 visits, last login: 1.1 years ago updated 14 years ago
Have had U-Verse since the 29th of Jan 2010. In that amount of time (now 3-2-10) Nothing but problems. Loss of service every week. Have had three service techs come out and blame COMCAST for the problem. I had Comcast and will not go back to them either (tired of fluctuating bills every month) thats another story. Anyways as far as U-Verse is concerned.. The service STINKS! Have had nothing but problems and LIES. Out of the 3 rooms in my house, 2 of the rooms have lost service. My living room and my daughters bedroom. Only in the master bedroom do i still retain service. Why? Well this is what i was told by 4 different techs and a representitive. LIE number (1) " Comcast messed with your wires" LIE number (2) : Is that a Playstation3? Sometimes that interferes with the service" Lie number (3) : I don't have a key to the box Ill be back tomorrow to check out the problem" ( He never showed up! ) LIE number (4) "Call this number anytime, we will send a tech out, we have someone on call 24hrs a day" ----------(still waiting for this service) I believe U-Verse is a big lie. They claim to give you a great service while taking your money, but you like myself our nothing more then lab rats to them. They use our money while they experiment with there service. Techs are amateurs.. Can't even make up a good lie. "messed with wires" --Its a cable for crying out loud! And as far as anyone who gives U-Verse a thumbs -up? Your either 3 things..Very lucky, a U-Verse employee or a liar (a u-verse employee) member for 14 years, 1 visits, last login: 14 years ago lodged 14 years ago
Had U-Verse installed 02-02-08, so far very pleased, far better than Comcast both in value and picture quality. internet speed is running 5.8/980 for the 6/1 package and very stable. I am going to be up grading to the 10/1.5 package. The installation was very smooth, the Tec know their product. The tec review the operation of the full system and made sure we were happy before they left. The picture on the older tube TV are far better than they were on the LCD with Comcast. 02/28/10 Have had U-Verse for 2 years now and still running GREAT. I have had a total of a 1hr outage over the 2 year and they were having problems with a up-grade in my area Their is no way I would ever go back to Cable as long as I have U-Verse member for 18.8 years, 3593 visits, last login: 5.8 years ago updated 14 years ago
Ok ,I am going to break the rule shown as I post because this guy was SO good and needs credit! I am waiting for AT&T to call so I can give my utmost compliments on the tech who installed our service yesterday. We got the U200/phone/internet package. We had AT&T land line, Pro DSL and Dish Network. We'd been happy with these but when u-verse came in at 35 less a month we decided to try it. First, the online ordering was easy, the chat window did pop up and I had a great conversation with Mercedes. She answered all of my questions quickly and without the usual "double talk." I scheduled our install and they had the date up within a day, just as they stated. Day of install, I am at work, my mom is home helping with our kids. I had given both home and my work cell number. The appointment was between 9-11. Brian, the tech, called my work cell at 9:30 and stated he was on his way. I told him I wasn't at home, but my was. Also that I left some questions for him. He answered everyone. According to my mom, he was great. Very personable, she said. He called me approx. 3 hours later stating he was done, but he went the extra mile with voicemail and wireless set up when I wasn't home. Left all the info, plus gave my mom a quick course on the remote. I came home after work and every cable was run cleanly, the outlets he changed over from Dish looked great and clean, he put the RG out of site, but easy to get to and the battery back up installed. All set tops are working great, phone is working fine and the internet was good to go. We are very pleased with the service. If you're in Southeast Michigan you will want Brian to do your installation!! member for 22.2 years, 55 visits, last login: 13 years ago updated 14 years ago
AT&T Customer for over five years, DSL for around the same time and no trouble then. We moved, however, and needed to transfer DSL. Application finished over the phone on January 29, saying internet will be available at the new address on February third. No internet ever came and after two weeks and many, many, minutes spent on hold to speak with a customer service rep, AT&T realized that they no longer have DSL in the area we moved in and recommended us for AT&T U-verse. I agreed. By week three, still no internet and a new problem came to light. We need an U-verse modem for internet to work! Well, ATT Reps INSISTED and CONFIRMED that we did not need a new modem, yes, they are 100% sure. I was very frustrated at this point and was given the number for their Retention center. It was confirmed that we DO need a modem, and it will arrive the following week, week 4, thank you for my patience. Week 4 was yesterday, Feb. 24. We had someone stay home from 1-3 PM to wait for the technician with the U-verse modem. Internet at last? NOT! No one came. So, I called the retention center again today, Feb 25, skipped lunch break at work, spent the whole hour with a rep and a tech that told me NO ORDER WAS PLACED FOR A MODEM on the 19th. None. Nada. Zero. I was about ready to combust. WOW. Ensuring a modem was sent, either with a tech or by mail (they ship from TX and I'm in CA), was exactly what I spent two hours on the phone for on Feb 19. The earliest AT&T can have someone come with modem to our house? March 4. That is a whopping 34 DAYS after the order was placed. I asked if the modem can be shipped, and we can install it ourselves. No, it can not. Their system won't allow it for a reason the poor tech can not explain himself. In the end, I wish I didn't try to stay with AT&T. I called Comcast less than three hours ago. Comcast arranged for a self-install kit to be picked up from a local office, installed the thing, modem included, and now have internet up and running after less than three hours. member for 14 years, driveby review (so far) updated 14 years ago
ordered the service online, no hassles. I pay ~40/month for dsl internet _only_. ATT no longer requires a home phone service to get their DSL. the gear came with a motorola MSTATEA DSL modem I currently use it in bridged mode with my wireless router handling the PPPoE. member for 21 years, 28 visits, last login: 12.2 years ago updated 14 years ago
I live in a townhouse in Carlsbad and I initially wanted to be able to get both TV and internet from the same company. This ruled out Dish and DirecTV for TV service even though several of my neighbors have that installed, leaving me with either Time Warner North County (ex-Adelphia), or U-Verse. I have had personal experiences with TW, and they were generally not pleasant. Being in ex-Adelphia territory makes things even worse as they get fewer and slower TV channel updates than the rest of San Diego county. This essentially sealed the deal for me to go with U-Verse, and I signed up and got it installed on August 2009. I chose the 12Mbs down/1.5Mbs up internet package and the U100 TV package with HD service. As I did not bundle telephone service (I pay for CallCentric VoIP separately for $3.50/mo, purely as a backup to my cell phone), I didn't really get any monthly bundle savings, but I did get free installation. The "Max" broadband package costs $55/mo, U100 TV costs $54/mo, HD service costs $10/mo, after taxes/fees and a promotional discount, my total bill comes out to be about $110/mo. The townhouse I live in is a somewhat old building (built in 1982), and previous owners of the townhouse have done various strange things to it when hooking up satellite TV, so the installer was a bit confused as to how all the coax in the house was wired. As I only care about getting TV service in the living room, I had the installer just run a coax line there so I can hook up the 2Wire router that is supplied by AT&T. I had the contractor who was remodeling my townhouse run CAT6 from my living room to all other rooms in my house because I run a HTPC in the living room (1st floor) connected to a file server on the 2nd floor. Wireless would not cut it for uncompressed HD streaming. Were it not for the fact that I had a contractor run CAT6 everywhere, however, the installation would have been much worse as I would not be able to use a wired connection for my 4 computers. Please note, I don't really blame AT&T here as the installer did try to figure out how all the coax was connected, even once crawling into the attic, but it was to no avail as the coax lines in the house have been rerouted rather strangely by previous owners. Aside from the coax line situation, the install went without a hitch and I am syncing at 32200kbps down/5040kbps up. This is higher than what I paid for for internet service because U-verse uses the extra bandwidth for TV/VoIP service. The router supplied by AT&T, and that I am forced to use, is the 2Wire 3800HGV-B Gateway. It does not support QoS (at least not in an easily configurable way like all other routers I've owned that supported QoS), and it only supports wireless up to 802.11g, not n. The router is not all bad, as it is able to support port forwarding in conjunction with DHCP. Sadly, the router gets finicky with how it detects computers on the network, so this functionality is somewhat hit or miss. I have had to go to the hidden diagnostics page to reset the device list on the router to force it to recognize all the devices connected to it. Because of this problem, I just reserve the first 100 addresses of my local subnet for static IP, leaving DHCP on for just my laptop, a Wii, and the Motorola VIP 1200 cable box that comes with U-verse. As far as the internet service goes, it has been rock solid aside from a couple of router resets and a problem with U-verse's DNS servers (I had switch to different ones than the pre-configured DNS servers for improved DNS performance) in the 6+ months I've had the service. TV service, sadly, is another story. It, too, has been rock solid in terms of stability, but in terms of picture quality, it is quite simply horrid. At first, I could barely make out some compression artifacts on my old 32" 720p TV (but I did notice that it was already worse than the Cox Cable that I used to have before I moved into the townhouse). When I upgraded to a 55" 1080p TV, the results were painfully obvious. I don't ever watch SD, so I won't comment on those channels, but for HD channels, the quality ranges from mediocre for many programs to unacceptable for sports programs (70% of what I watch is sports). On non-sports programs, the picture is soft but otherwise devoid of compression artifacts unless you look very closely. All in all, non-sports HD programs are acceptable and not that annoying to watch. Sports fans with a big TV or projector, though, will need to steer clear of U-Verse. Compression artifacts are rampant and constant. Watching the Winter Olympics allows me to find all the ways that snow and ice can macro-block that I never thought possible before. For NBA and NFL games, you will see a decent picture only when the program is doing a close-up of somebody's face because U-verse's compression algorithm can apparently only handle low-motion/low-detail scenes at an acceptable level. During high-motion scenes, AKA not during a timeout, edges of players blur significantly, and edges on the field or court also blur quite a bit. The overcompression is so bad that even the static score overlay on the screen is susceptible to macro-blocking. Changing between the TV box's 720p and 1080i output does not change a single thing about the poor quality of sports programs, nor does changing between component and HDMI connections. The most memorable scene I had was the at end of the Super Bowl when confetti was raining down on the stadium. Well, at least I assumed it was confetti because literally every single pixel on my TV was part of a macro-block. I tried calling AT&T's tech support to see if they can improve the PQ, but their answer to everything seems to be resetting your cable box multiple times. I was even told to do a factory reset of their TV box because they had reset their connection to my house. After all that fiddling about, the only thing that was different was that their resets nuked my router's firewall settings so I had to go and configure everything on it all over again. The AT&T tech on the phone offered to send out a new cable box (during which I would have to stay at home to wait for an installer to replace it), but after having checked out posts by very knowledgeable folks over at AVSForum, I concluded that I would get a new cable box, but from DirecTV instead. I have not cancelled U-verse's TV service yet, so I will be able to do a direct PQ comparison of DirecTV and U-Verse next week once the satellite installer is done. I will update this review at that time. UPDATE 2/24/2010: I just got DirecTV hooked up today, and the difference in picture quality is incredibly obvious. In sports programs (Olympics hockey and NBA game), the picture on DirecTV is still somewhat soft compared to non-sports programs, but at least it does not exhibit the extreme amount of macro-blocking that occurs on U-verse. Gone are blocky and blurry edges when players are moving fast, and gone are the blocks that appear when the compression codec adjusts the background level of detail. DirecTV does have its disadvantages, such as not being able to preview programs in the guide (with the HD21-200 PVR) and slower channel switching. I won't delve into the various issues as this is not a review of DirecTV, but the picture quality improvement in both sports and non-sports programs is clear. It's time for me to cancel U-verse TV. member for 14.1 years, 15 visits, last login: 13.1 years ago updated 14 years ago
Here's the text of the letter I sent AT&T: Gentlemen, Not that you care (as Ive learned to my sorrow), but Im going to tell you a story of what it feels like to be one of your customers. Early in the week of February 15 (I didnt take note of the date or time), I was reviewing my monthly AT&T bill and noted that I was paying $7.57 a month for long distance access. Since I never use long distance, I called your billing department to discontinue that access. While I was on the line with your customer service representative, she asked me if Id like to switch my AT&T DSL access to a new fiber-optic service called U-verse, newly available in my area. I said no. She proceeded to sell me the service, promising me that Id pay $5 less per month for a year, that Id need no new equipment and wouldnt need to be visited by any technician. All Id have to do, she assured me, was to turn off my modem at 5 pm on Monday, February 22 for 30 seconds and then turn it back on. Voila! Id have faster service at lower cost, at least initially. Well, I couldnt pass that up; faster service for $5 less per month, and all I have to do is flip my modem switch off and on? Okay, I said, Ill take it. Id give anything to be able to take those four little words back. Anything. Because, as youll see when you read on, they sparked a nightmare, one that is ongoing as I write. One of the conditions under which I agreed to sign up for U-verse was that my online access would be uninterrupted by the switch (which was to take place on Monday, February 22, remember). AT&T promptly disconnected my DSL access on Friday, February 19 at about 4 pm. My partner, who teaches online classes for a university here in the city, was thrown offline at that time, as he was working with one of his online students. I was out of the house that evening so I called in on Saturday morning to find out what was going on. At that time I was told that my DSL access had been turned off because Id switched over to U-verse. I explained that the DSL turnoff was supposed to be seamlessly coordinated with the U-verse turn-on on Monday afternoon, and that the Friday turnoff was obviously in error. I asked that either the U-verse or my DSL access be turned back on right away. The customer service representative couldnt do that. After a bit, when I realized that continuing to talk to the customer service representative was a waste of time, I asked to speak with her supervisor. Thats when XXXXXXXXX came on the line. XXXXXXXXX and I spent the day together. He called periodically throughout the day to provide me with progress reports as he was trying to figure out what had happened. Thats right - your supervisor was unable to figure out what was going on at your company despite pursuing it all day. I dont say that to fault XXXXXXXXX, who was clearly trying his absolute best to help me. But, as Ive now learned, your company is so monumentally screwed up that he simply couldnt. My last chat with XXXXXXXXX took place at about 5 pm on Saturday. At that time he informed me that, yes, my DSL access had been turned off early in error but no, he couldnt get it turned back on. There was no way to reconnect me to my online access until my U-verse order had gone through on Monday. You keeping up? Because I just told you that a mistake that your own representative admitted had been made by AT&T that deprived me of access to the service Ive been paying for for more than six years couldnt be fixed by your company until Monday, after Id have been deprived of online access for 3 days. You broke it, but couldnt be bothered to fix it. Got that? What could I do? I waited till Monday. Meanwhile, my partner couldnt do his work. His livelihood was put on hold because your company couldnt be bothered to fix its mistake in a timely manner. Monday came, and with it my new user packet from U-verse. When I opened the packet I saw that the turn-on time for the service was not 5 pm, as Id been told by that original salesperson, but 8 pm. Having experience of what Id get if I called you, I didnt bother. I waited till 8 pm. No service at 8 pm. So I called again. I spoke with a customer service representative (XXXXX), telling her the whole story. She couldnt do anything, of course, so I asked to speak to a supervisor and was eventually connected to XXXXXXX, right here in San Francisco. I told him the whole story, again, and he eventually told me that the turn-on time on the order was 11 pm and that there was nothing he could do; Id just have to wait till 11 pm. He promised to call me back at 11 pm to make sure our service had been restored. I told XXXXXXX that I didnt trust anything he or anyone else at AT&T had to say at this point; he swore, repeatedly, that hed call me back. The service wasnt turned on at 11 pm, of course. Shocker: XXXXXXX never called me back to check. I couldnt sleep; I was worried sick about my partners inability to do his work. At 4 am I called again and spoke to XXXX in Texas. He did some research and told me that there was nothing he could do, and that Id have to call U-verse when they opened at 8 am in order to get the U-verse order canceled and my original DSL restored. He also told me an interesting fact: the modem I had (a SpeedStream 5100) wouldnt work with U-verse anyway, despite my having told the original salesperson the name and model number of the modem and having been assured by her that it would work. So even if the U-verse order had been turned on properly I still wouldnt have had any online access. Thats right. The salesperson who originally sold me the U-verse service lied to me in order to get me to switch. Just plain lied. At this point I was getting desperate to get my partner back online so he could perform his job duties, so I phoned my own job and told them Id be in late after I dealt with this. I then called the U-verse people to tell them to cancel my order for U-verse and restore my original DSL service. Again, it was clear that no one had even bothered to enter the details of my problem into your customer service database; the person that I talked to had no record of any of the many calls I had made previously, just as none of those Id talked to before had. So I went through the whole story again, first with XXX (who put me on hold after I finished and then disconnected me 10 minutes later) and then, after waiting for 20 minutes on hold when I called back, with XXXXX. XXXXX put me on hold for 62 minutes (thats over an hour, youll notice, though she did at least have the decency to check back in occasionally to let me know that she was still working on it) only to come back on the line to tell me that my original DSL could be restored but that it would take 24 hours. Thats right; turning on a service that has been set up for over 6 years would take a full day. But what choice did I have? With my experience of your company I knew, obviously, that it wouldnt happen but I told her to go ahead and then left for work. That morning spent on the phone with AT&T cost me almost $150 in lost wages. This is all in aid of saving $5 a month for 12 months, remember. Thats $60. I probably dont even really need to tell you the rest of the story. As Im sure youve already guessed (you work for this company, after all), 24 hours and more passed and my service still hasnt been connected. I called AT&T again just a few minutes ago to find out why. Guess what they said, at the end of an hour-long call (mostly spent on hold, natch)? Even if we cancel your U-verse sign-up its not possible to restore you to the service that you had before. Ill repeat that, cause even you, who work for AT&T, probably cant believe what youre hearing: Even if we cancel your U-verse sign-up its not possible to restore you to the service that you had before. I gave up at that point, of course. I told the customer service representative to cancel any and all online access deals, new or old, that I had with AT&T. I still have phone service through your company, but that will be canceled too as soon as I nail down an alternative. Im looking very diligently, because it galls me to think that I have to give AT&T even one more penny. Oh, and I immediately went to att.com (on my work computer, of course) and canceled my online bill payments. It makes my blood run cold that I ever entrusted any personal financial information to AT&T, and when I reflect that I gave AT&T permission to access my funds, well, I feel faint. Given the lying, incompetence, indifference, contempt and disdain Ive experienced over the last few days, Im frankly surprised that AT&T hasnt embezzled my money, too. Now that I think of it, it might be a good idea to review my bank records for the last six years. Then again, the company Ive been dealing with for the last six days probably couldnt embezzle its way out of a wet paper bag. So, to sum up what that simple billing adjustment call cost me and my partner: - Six days of online access to email, news, etc.; - Six days of work for my partner, work hell have to make up on his own time and at his own expense with whatever makeshift online access he can cobble together in some internet cafe; - At least six hours of phone time, nearly all of it spent in fury and frustration; - A full day of my weekend which I had to spend at home after canceling my plans for the day in the vain hope that I could get my online access restored; - A mornings wages, wages that amount to two-and-a-half times the amount I would have saved if this service switch had gone as promised. Now, I realize that, having irrevocably lost me as a customer forever, youll probably just chuck this letter in the trash. AT&T, after all, has millions and millions of customers, and most of them probably pay you more than the $75 a month Ive been paying you for the last six-plus years. Whatever. Youve done everything you can to me, and Ill soon be entirely free of your clutches. No, it wasnt really for you that I wrote this; I wrote it for posting on my blog, on my Facebook page, on Yelp, on DSLReports.com and on any other blog, review site, tech forum or other outlet that I can find. And Im highly motivated to look long and hard. Because the delirium I feel at being free of AT&T, despite the annoying and tedious work ahead in replacing your services, is akin to the freedom an alcoholic might feel at finally, finally being free of booze. Its the very best feeling Ive felt in a long, long time and if what Ive written here can bring that feeling to even one more of your customers, or prevent even one person from ever starting down the road to AT&T hell, it will have been worth the time spent writing this a hundred times over. Oh, one last thing. On my last call to AT&T, when I canceled any and all orders for any kind of online access, I told the customer service representative that I was going to cancel my phone service too, as soon as I could. Then I went to lunch. When I got back I had a voicemail from someone at AT&T checking to see if I wanted to cancel both online access and telephone line. She didnt leave her number (would you, if you were working customer service for such a wretched company? The number of raging people who would be calling you would be enormous), but she promised to call back by 2 pm to make sure shed gotten the cancellation right. Its 3:30 now. Sincerely, XXXX XXXXXXXX member for 14 years, 1 visits, last login: 14 years ago updated 14 years ago
Had problems with installation of phone service. Took 3 visits by service techs to resolve wiring issues. Once system was successfully installed, it has performed above promises and expectations. 5MBit speed checks out well (however I'm only about 200 ft. from gateway switch). I have HD TV access and U300 service with the package. member for 14.1 years, driveby review (so far) updated 14.1 years ago
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