At&t u-verse: my horrible review

[chittychittybangbang]

If anyone is thinking about getting at&t u-verse, it's a good choice only so you can switch back to the other guys and renew your promo deals with them. I'm extremely ticked off due to their horrible operations.

I signed up for a promotional deal months ago for TV, phone, and internet. It took months to install it because they were having trouble porting over my old telephone number. I was disconnected from customer service about 25% of the time. For almost a week straight they called me every day requesting my old account info claiming I never gave it to them. Once they called me two hours apart.

When they finally did install it, the installation tech found out I never had my old telephone number switched over and he spent over an hour trying to figure out what happened. He said everything was straightened out, gave me a temp number, and said I would get my old number at the end of the week. The conversation was on speaker phone so I know what was said.

It turns out my temp number was used by someone who had really bad credit and debts. I get a few calls every day from auto dialers advertising credit repair services and debtors trying to contact the number's last owner. It is extremely annoying.

I call to complain and I find out that At&T only had 1 order to switch my number and it was canceled months ago, despite speaking with them at least 20 times about my phone order. To add insult to injury, I'm still paying the cable company to hold my old telephone number.

About the actual product:
Internet bandwidth is the same but hi-def TV is greatly compressed compared to my old cable. My 1080 TV looks a little worse than 760! Standard def channels are better but I didn't buy a hi-def TV and pay $10 extra/month to watch standard def channels. I don't give a rat's ass about the 100 music only channels or channels on how to use u-verse, couldn't they cut some of those and save capacity at the station? From what I understand, signal strength has something to do with how far you are from their station. U-verse is part fiber optic to the station and then copper to your house. On the bright side, the menu/interface is better and channels change instantly instead of having a 1 second pause with my old cable box.

/pissed off rant.

[Redrocket]

Ask for a comp.

[chittychittybangbang]

I did but I haven't had my own telephone number for 2 weeks and 1 more week until it's fixed (supposedly). Meanwhile I'm paying for a dead end phone number and I'm getting lots of obnoxious calls for the previous owner of this number.

[tutstye]

If you have VIOS in your area it's supposed to be fiber optic straight to your house. Consumer reports rated it high.

[karl1]

A post to get my first post (so I can read another post) -
Had uverse for 30 days, dumped it for lack of hd content, took five months to get my bill straight after cancelling.

[Seatman]

I don't suppose you guys have a good trading standards company that you can put in a complaint with? We have a few different things over here, one of the better ones is watchdog. They do a program on tv and are very good at getting to the bottom of this sort of issue but we also have the box standard trading standards agency who can investigate companies like that. Sounds like a right wind up.

[chittychittybangbang]

Not really. In the US if you have a problem w/business you can complain to better business bureau. However, there are lots of shady businesses with A rating and they are self regulating so the rating system is a joke. It's kind of like the restaurant health department ratings they have in some states. The best food is often at the C rating places! Hey, as long as the rat droppings are deep fried they're sterile right?