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Review by Stewart See Profile

  • Location: Reno, Washoe, NV, USA
  • Cost: $13 per month (12 month contract)
  • Install: about 17 days
Excellent voice quality; reliable access in emergencies
More than six hours on the phone resolving problems, serious privacy issues
With all the hassle involved, it's not worth it!
Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:

I've been an AT&T U-Verse Internet customer for several years, receiving consistently fine service. When the current promotion was up, I contacted sales to get a better rate; the best deal offered included voice service for which I had little use. Voice would be discounted from $30/mo. to $9.99 (+ ~$3 in fees and taxes), a $20 discount would be applied to Internet, and equipment lease charges would be waived, for a net savings of ~$14. Not great, but they are effectively the only game in town; this semi-rural area has no CATV and the wireless ISPs all suck. An online estimated bill showed all charges consistent with the offer.

Installation instructions arrived by post, but they assumed a 3800HGV-B, not relevant to my setup that consists of an i3812v iNID mounted outside, connected to the indoor i38HG via an HPNA cable. The i38HG has no phone jacks. Though there are jacks on the iNID, I didn't want to run a new cable into the house, so I called support. The first technician was clueless, insisting that the gateway has phone jacks and I must somehow be missing them. A second call, after being escalated to a supervisor, yielded the solution: connect both the phone and the i38HG to the HPNA, using an ordinary DSL splitter.

Calling the activation number indicated in the install instructions resulted in an announcement that the back-end servers were down for maintenance. This occurred repeatedly; after a day, calling support yielded another clueless rep, who had me reboot and re-plug everything, all to no avail. Finally, a supervisor asked me to repeat the registration process (it accepted the same user name and password) et voilą, I could make and receive calls and thought my troubles were over. Unfortunately, it was just the beginning.

Within the first 24 hours, I received nine calls from scammers, debt collectors (seeking the previous owner of the number), robocallers, and live telemarketers. IMO, it was grossly irresponsible of AT&T to reassign a number with such heavy spam baggage to a new customer. (Unassigned numbers are routed to their activation system, i.e. they have accurate records of how many calls each receives.) I couldn't bear the thought of 200 junk calls monthly, so I obtained a new number from AnveoDirect (I was already their customer), being careful to choose one from a brand new block, and immediately attempted to port it to U-Verse.

The rep warned that porting in a new number would cause the $20.01 discount to be lost and suggested that I call the local Reno office and a manager there could re-instate it. The rep there took my Anveo account number and other info for the port and assured me that all would be fine. Unfortunately, a new estimated bill showed that the discount was gone. The next day, AT&T called to say that Anveo rejected the port because there was no account number on the request. I gave the rep the account number again and he called the next day with a firm porting date.

I called billing to complain about the missing discount and was assured that it had been reinstated. I asked for confirmation in writing, but they gave me some BS that the legal department did not permit that; the online estimate would update within 24 hours and I'd see the discount there. A day later, I called again but the result was the same.

As a result of the initial reject, it took ten days for the port to complete, during which I did not receive a single unwanted call on the new number, so I assumed that spam troubles were over. However, within 24 hours of port completion, I received two telemarketing calls, one from ADT selling alarm service and one from a lawn maintenance company. Both had my name and physical address. Worse, I started receiving postal spam! The package from Pottery Barn said "Welcome to the neighborhood." Say what? I've owned this home and used it as my primary residence for more than 25 years. I'm reasonably certain that AT&T sold my information as a "new" customer to numerous merchants. Furious, I called to complain that I had opted out of sharing CPNI with third parties more than ten years ago and they had violated the agreement. They insisted that the 'new' AT&T doesn't sell customer data to third parties at all. I suggested that one of their employees may be doing this under the table, but they replied that without more specific evidence, they would not investigate. I'll file a formal complaint with the FCC on this matter.

Of course, when the bill came, the discount was gone. Even more furious, I spoke with the billing department but was told that they couldn't help and only the 'loyalty' department could make an adjustment. The latter agreed with my position, but refused to correct the May bill. They stated that the June bill would have the proper discounts and also include appropriate adjustments for May. Indeed the online estimated bill for June is negative. I hope they keep that promise.

Notes on the ratings: 'Ease of Installation' was downgraded, not only for serious documentation errors, but also because obtaining and porting a new number was necessary to get a usable service. 'Reliability' in the technical sense is probably excellent (given my history with the Internet service), though I haven't had Voice long enough to confirm that. However, I consider a phone that often rings with junk calls as unreliable. 'Tech Support' was downgraded for long hold times, clueless first-tier reps, and the frequency with which they are needed. Finally, I'd give a low rating to 'Value for money', even if the service were free, because I've spent more than six hours on the phone with AT&T (less than two hours of which were on hold). And, it's not over.



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updated 7.8 years ago