Topic 'Re: New Card In VRAD' in forum 'AT&T U-verse' - dslreports.com

Re: New Card In VRAD

Sun, 21 Oct 2018 13:12:13 EDT

brad152 posted :

I mean, seriously just keep the cards stocked at the local wearhouse, give each tech enough for their daily jobs (or at least 80% of them) and call it a day.

Actually the cards are stocked in the work center PICS room, if a tech needs a card he pulls it off the shelf, scans it out to his truck bin number and then using his laptop moves it from his truck bin to the RT CLLI code, process complete.

Depending on the department all trucks had a "truck stock," ADSL techs would carry modems (which are considered cards) and DSLAM line cards, the same applied to U-verse techs.

DEG Techs carried RT common cards and processors, some of those get expensive.

While DEG Techs had some of the most expensive cards SSI&M techs probably had the widest assortment of cards because of all the different things we did, my truck inventory was around $125K in cards.

That’s a process that makes sense, as long as they actually have the option of doing it

I know when I had CenturyLink they just mailed me a VDSL2 modem with a letter saying if I didn’t install it by X date, my service would no longer work as they were changing out the cards in my DSLAM from ADSL2 to VDSL2 and swapping all of us over (even though I only had 20/.896 at the time) but them doing that enabled me to get 80/40 bonded so I didn’t mind

Re: New Card In VRAD

Sun, 21 Oct 2018 07:18:21 EDT

Well Bonded posted :

said by brad152:

I mean, seriously just keep the cards stocked at the local wearhouse, give each tech enough for their daily jobs (or at least 80% of them) and call it a day.

Re: New Card In VRAD

Sun, 21 Oct 2018 01:47:37 EDT

brad152 posted :

said by cramer:

said by brad152:

I mean, seriously just keep the cards stocked at the local wearhouse, give each tech enough for their daily jobs (or at least 80% of them) and call it a day.

For a DSLAM/VRAD, that would be zero. They don't touch those on a daily basis. (and yes, they are quite expensive)

Expensive or not, field techs should have access to them, as AT&T shoudl proactively be taking those F cards out and getting rid of them (they've had a good life, it's time to go)

All I can say is the AT&T tech's here in Chicago are normally pretty chill with getting stuff fixed, and will usually call and get whatever you need done (unlike my experience in Columbus, whomever their manager is - clearly an asshat who drills just "standard" things into them)

Re: New Card In VRAD

Sun, 21 Oct 2018 01:04:30 EDT

cramer posted :

said by brad152:

I mean, seriously just keep the cards stocked at the local wearhouse, give each tech enough for their daily jobs (or at least 80% of them) and call it a day.

For a DSLAM/VRAD, that would be zero. They don't touch those on a daily basis. (and yes, they are quite expensive)

Re: New Card In VRAD

Sat, 20 Oct 2018 17:16:07 EDT

Well Bonded posted :

said by Tel:

As a repair technician I carried a large selection of cards on my truck. I don't know if the Uverse techs can go into a box but I would guess no. Six or so years ago, the company decided that there was too much money riding around on trucks so they collected all the cards we couldn't hide and gave each tech only a few. That resulted in cards not getting swapped and repair delays, but as usual, the company knows best.

We called them PIC's Nazi's, in my turf they work for Ryder.

And yes they will stop by and inventory everything in a yard, the nice thing was in our case they would e-mail my manager as to when they would show up.

Lots of PIC's went into box's and went home for the night, in the building box's of cards where shifted from the PIC's room to other locked rooms.

A correct truck and building inventory was important to the company bean counters and literally there was a couple of Techs who where taken off the load to make sure that happened otherwise may manager would get a nastygram from his manager.

Re: New Card In VRAD

Sat, 20 Oct 2018 16:25:10 EDT

jsinaiko posted : That easily could be - I think most of the fols in the immediate area use Comcrap.

Re: New Card In VRAD

Sat, 20 Oct 2018 16:24:22 EDT

jsinaiko posted : No this was the Tech's idea - he diodn't make any calls, at least not while he was in the house - he just went across the street to the VRAD and did it.

Re: New Card In VRAD

Sat, 20 Oct 2018 04:32:53 EDT

brad152 posted : Hey, someone at a desk thought it was a good idea, right?

I mean, seriously just keep the cards stocked at the local wearhouse, give each tech enough for their daily jobs (or at least 80% of them) and call it a day.

Garbage like that is why I left telco in the first place, too many queen bees with no actual experience, and not enough actual worker bees handling things.

Re: New Card In VRAD

Fri, 19 Oct 2018 21:33:48 EDT

skinnyJM posted :

said by Tel:

And by "company", I'm guessing you really mean some dipshit who hasn't been out in the field in years (if ever). :D

Re: New Card In VRAD

Fri, 19 Oct 2018 18:10:51 EDT

Tel posted :

said by gadawg:

I didn’t know techs could put in new cards. I had always read they were not a tech level decision. Swapping to a different card already in the vrad sounds more like what a tech can do.

Re: New Card In VRAD

Fri, 19 Oct 2018 15:14:21 EDT

Well Bonded posted :

said by gadawg:

Swapping to a different card already in the vrad sounds more like what a tech can do.

More than likely that's what he did but called it putting in new card.

Re: New Card In VRAD

Fri, 19 Oct 2018 14:03:00 EDT

jsinaiko posted : He did it for us.

Re: New Card In VRAD

Fri, 19 Oct 2018 13:40:53 EDT

gadawg posted : I didn’t know techs could put in new cards. I had always read they were not a tech level decision. Swapping to a different card already in the vrad sounds more like what a tech can do.

Re: New Card In VRAD

Fri, 19 Oct 2018 12:11:00 EDT

chrismeyer posted : I've had similar experiences with verizon and com cast techs

Re: New Card In VRAD

Fri, 19 Oct 2018 11:46:01 EDT

jsinaiko posted : I was shocked - this was such a no-brainer.

Re: New Card In VRAD

Fri, 19 Oct 2018 11:31:59 EDT

chrismeyer posted : Sadly it takes a few tries before a good tech comes and actually gets the job done.

New Card In VRAD

Fri, 19 Oct 2018 11:08:07 EDT

jsinaiko posted : I haven't been on this forum for a long time. Nice to be back.

Over the last few years, every now and then, especially after a lot of rain, I'd lose the IP - Internet would go down, TV would pixilate and freeze. Rebooting the modem wouldn't help. It was very annoying. After a day or two it would correct itself. Must have had 5 truck rolls over it.

The techs would come in and dink around in the NID, once or twice they threw a new modem at me. A couple of years ago one tech rewired the parts of the house that had old Coax running to the TVs - we were the first house on the block to get Uverse a bit more than 8 years ago.

Nothing helped. Lousy bandwidth and the same issues reoccurred over and over. And of course dealing with tier one support was soul-sucking.

So as a last gasp before doing something drastic (going to Comcrap)I had one more service call. The tech looked at the app on his phone and said "jeez, all these calls and nobody has changed your card for 8 years? You still have an F card - we call that the f#&*ed up card! So he threw a K card in there and things have been fine ever since.

It would have been nice if one of the previous guys had thought of that!