AT&T just can't catch a break with their troubled U-Verse service. AT&T has to replace the lithium metal polymer batteries in the VRAD cabinets for U-Verse IPTV because four fires have occurred in various locations. 'Fire' is a bit tame of a word choice since "explosions" have occurred in Houston, Cleveland and Wisconsin. In Wisconsin it was reportedly strong enough to blow the 50-pound cabinet door off its bolts. AT&T has more than 17,000 Avestor lithium batteries in its network to power their VRAD U-verse cabinets. Unfortunately, Avestor has filed for bankruptcy and closed. What's up with lithium exploding batteries and recalls on top of more recalls, anyway? Of course those recalls were for lithium-ion laptop batteries.
Wow, imagine an entire neighborhood with no triple play communications - no VoIP, no TV, and no Internet. After dodging the flying shrapnel, I wouldn't be surprised to see a mob with pitchforks and torches headed down to the local AT&T branch.
Obviously, AT&T doesn't feel comfortable with the batteries which provide backup power to over 17,000 of its cabinets located in neighborhoods across the United States, so they are in the process of replacing them with lead-acid batteries. AT&T has declined to answer questions on the costs of the battery replacement.
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I think U-Verse is a very exciting product, but anyone interested in going into direct sales as a rep; YOU HAD BETTER THINK TWICE. I was working selling cable in direct sales; and hearing reports about U-Verse, was intrigued. But after a week it is simply not possible to sell this product door to door, and make a decent living. First of all the perspective clients credit needs to be good, and I mean really good. If you have bad credit, it needs to be placed on a credit card, or on someone else's name. For clients of lower income, you're pretty much wasting your time. The second problem is the call
center, where you place the order is very time consuming, and the call center agents, are not very compitent.
Some sales reps have been in a clients home for over an hour since you need to call from the clients home in order to find out if they can be approved. If the client is not approved, you have just wasted precious time, you could have used knocking on doors. Many of the glitches need to be worked out,(and that will not be for a few years yet).Unless you have a pretty big nest egg, and you want to try direct sales for the experience of it, by all means do it. But if you're looking at doing this thinking you'll make money hand over fist in a heartbeat, you are fooling yourself; the pay is just no that steady.