AT&T U-verse Doomed?

I have AT&T U-Verse and had serious QoS issues until they figured out they had "dirty" copper with lots of noise on the line. Works fine now.

The article is interesting - headline seems a bit off, though.

"Rough start-up" isn't the same as "doomed". See Amazon.com for an example.

I have been a trial user of the U-verse service since last May. I have IP over HD and the service works as described.

See my blog: http://www.3screens.net

There is more to what AT&T is doing than just providing phone service.

Hey Alan,
I actually came across your video review of U-verse a few weeks ago. Good stuff. I'm jealous.

p.s. Love the house furniture, home entertainment system and PC/office setup. Great decor. Looks like an interior decorator worked on it.

Thanks a lot for all the comments.

U-verse just came to my neighborhood (Cupertino, CA -- a Silicon Valley town), and I am trying to google for user experience...

One thing I can't agree more -- cable is a total rip-off, for everything they offer... can't stand cable any longer. (The cable provider here is Comcast.)

I have AT&T U-verse (San Ramon, CA) for a couple weeks now. The picture quality is so good and the DVR feature is so convenient! I like it

I am an AT&T U-verse subscriber. I have both the TV and internet. Initially, I was very happy with the service. The high def line-up dwarfs the options I had with Time Warner. As I used the service more, however, I became very frustrated with numerous small frustrations - all of which add up to a large problem. The DVR does not work on high def channels unless that channel is displayed. Needless to say, only one HD channel can be recorded at a time. If you are not going to be home and don't want to record more than one HD program, it's not a problem. If home, however, the whole point of recording something is to be able to watch something else. That's not possible in high def. The internet speed is fine, but wireless router has no security. The technician worked for hours attempting to get it working, but I ended up with a totally unprotected system. The delay in channel changing is extremely frustrating. Back to the TV service: the "loading" required to move forward across the guide is very time consuming. Additionally, numerous sports events have been inappropriately blacked out. For example, Seattle vs. Boston was blacked out - I live in Houston. It seems to be one thing after another now. Like I said, each one is a nuissance, but all together are a dealbreaker. I am considering having the service removed. Of note, the AT&T customer service department has been excellent. Time Warner had a "if you don't like it - go elsewhere" attitude. I am going to check Verizon and cross my fingers.

I have have a U Verse system for two months now and it is without a doubt the lowest reliability product I have ever purchased in my life.

The DVR rewcording feature does not record my settings about half the time. I have called for technical help many times and still no fix. They tell me that soon there will be a Microsoft fix that will correct the problem.

There are many problems. I have emailed the manager of the local service group and he hasn't even responded with a note that he eceived my message.

The service personnel are very professional and they appear to be well trained. The tech support on the phone is not.

I'm seeing mixed things about U-Verse. On Tuesday I'm having it hooked up and am going to do the 2 week trial. I'm keeping my Time Warner as well so if I don't like it I'll just give it back. I hope I do like it.

I'm not sure how well it'll work with my hook up though. I watch TV through my computer using media center which I think I'm going to loose, but I'll have their DVR. Right now I don't have an HD tuner in my computer, if I see it hooks up ok though the tuner I have now and I like the service I might buy an HD tuner. The problem with recording HD is a problem and hopefully I'll be fixed soon. Lucky I don't watch sports on TV, so there is no problem there.

We'll see if they can get the wireless encryption to work for me, if not I'll just turn the wireless off since I already cabled my house. The only reason I would like wireless is in case friends come over that have laptops or if I buy a laptop sometime in the future.

Also I guess at this time I'll only be getting 6 Mbs download speed for internet access, but they said in a couple weeks it should be raised to 12. Also the DVR has 4 turners, but I can only record 2 thing at a time. I guess you can only have 4 tuners in your house (I only need 4), but they said when they upgrade the internet then that will also upgrade the feeds to 12 per house and also you'll be able to network the set-top boxes together so you can watch all your shows on the DVR on every TV in the house. We'll see how this works.

Only time will tell if I keep it or keep my Time Warner. I like the idea of getting over 1/3rd more channels for about the same price as my cable and also the up in the internet. Right now I have 8 Mbs down and 834 Kbs up, that will be brought up to 12 Mbs down and 2 Mbs up which will be awsome if their good on the time frame of 2-3 weeks.

Thanks for your postings. Your collective observations will help me with my evaluation.

AT&T is coming 5/30 for install U-verse TV/internet to replace Comcast. I was a SBC DSL user in their early days (about 2003-2005) and was extremely frustrated with reliability/speed. They finally admitted after 4 house calls with 3 different configurations (the earlier guys did it wrong) that I am on the bleeding edge of the service line (10,000 feet) and they couldn't make it any better.

So back to Comcast I went, mostly for internet speed. But the deals expired and now 2+ years later the bills are back up over $165/month. If U-verse works, I'm going to be one happy camper.

Reilly,

I'm not sure what type of security you are wanting on the wireless router, but I found it reasonably easy to change. First, you can disable the SSID name broadcast so no one knows your wireless router's name, you can also change it from the default that it came with. The encryption can be changed from WEP to the more secure (not totally, but more) WPA, and a customer encryption key can be used. Lastly, MAC address filtering is possible.

Can it be hacked? Sure. There's no secure wireless standard yet since they all allow unlimited brute force attacks against them. Still, what they have is a decent system to prevent all but the most determined hacker.

As to the rest of the issues with UVerse, I really have two gripes: 1) background recording of HD as was mentioned above, plus the TV ratings on some of the movie channels are not always present - mature programs are broadcast with no rating and are not blocked. I have to lock Cinemax and The Movie Channel round the clock since they have Mature movies on in the evening and early morning (from the west coast feeds).

I received promotional material for ATT-Uverse in mail which offered risk free trial with 60 day money back guarantee. The offer mentioned free installation and setup. I ordered the service. When ordering I mentioned to the sales lady that I already have high speed internet from Time Warner, and TV reception from Dish, and am quite satisfied with both. I will be willing to try their service as long as it does not interfere with my existing ones. After a month or so of trial I will decide wether to keep their service or continue with my current providers. She said, that should not be a problem.

However when the technician came to my home for installation, he said that he will have to disconnect my existing internet and dish connections to install UVerse, if I want both then I will have to pay $75.00 per outlet (That is $225 for three TV connections I was offered for free installation). This was never communicated to me at the time when I placed the order, nor does it mention any where in the promotional post card.

I contacted ATT with this delimma, and was kept on hold and transferred few times between Technical and sales, and had to explain the same problem to at least three different people. I even offered that since I will be using it on trial basis for a month, I can initially live with only one connection for TV instead of three, and if I decide to keep their service I can use existing Dish connections in other rooms. I remained on phone for over 45 minutes, with no resolution to the matter. Finally I told them I do not want to try their service.

With such a lousy response to a prospective new customer, I can only imagine what it would be like if an existing customer needs any service.

U-verse has just become avaiable in my area, but after reading these reviews, I am not sure I want tomake the jump. The issue of recording only one hd program at a time is a major issue. Preasently with Direct TV and Road Runner for internet, it would be nice to vsae some buck though.
Will have to check back later for more info.

I have had U-Verse installed for one week now. An equivalent non-promotional TV/Internet package through Comcast would cost almost twice what I am paying for U-Verse. I greatly appreciate U-Verse offering a realistic all-in-one package that refrains from nailing customers with a bunch of miscellaneous charges. 3 boxes (1 with DVR capabilities) are included in the price. HD included for free for one year - only $10 per year after the promotional period ends... not bad considering U-Verse offers at least twice the number of HD channels that Comcast offers in Indianapolis.

Channel switching is surprisingly fast. Almost as fast as analog cable. On Demand (Pay-per-view) content is nice but far from the selection offered by other services. I had company the night after installation - they wanted to watch the UFC fight, but U-Verse wasn't carrying it. When I called, the Agent I spoke with had received many calls asking about the same event's availability.

Equipment overall works as advertised. Right now, there are only 4 TV streams available in the Indianapolis market. I have only run out of streams once - even after transposing all 42 of my series recordings from my Comcast box! (You can access some of your DVR's settings from your personalized U-Verse AT&T Yahoo! homepage - nice TiVo-like feature). I do not have an HDTV, thus no HD package. Watching an HD channel takes up 2 streams - the remaining streams can only be used for standard definition channels. Apparently, a bump in the number of TV streams is in the works for the end of the summer. In addition, AT&T will be adding the capability to view DVR recordings from any box, not just the DVR.

According to the group of AT&T reps that sold me on U-Verse, AT&T also plans on bumping up the download & upload rates of their Internet tiers. I subscribed to the 6 mbit/sec downstream and 1 mbit/sec upstream package. I frequently reach the speeds advertised. Feels great to be freed from the 384 kbps that Comcast restricts customers to.

I only have three problems with the service so far - First, after a power outage, it takes every bit of 10 minutes for the network to come back online, the 2wire gateway to sync up and the boxes to boot. Second, the more streams recording simultaneously on the DVR, the slower the UI and remote respond. If three or more streams are recording at once, the UI usually hangs for about 3-4 seconds before it responds to the remote buttons I press. Sometimes it completely misses the command, even though the power light flashes to indicate it received a infrared command. Very annoying. Third, I'm not sure if AT&T's consumer network is as pumped up on steroids as Comcast's is. That's the easiest way I could put it. With Comcast, even though I only got 384k up, I got it every bit of it every time I asked. With AT&T, I've noticed that it seems more "jumpy". Uploading via FTP to another consumer grade Internet connection was very unreliable - streaming media via Orb.com (great program - check it out) would buffer every 10 seconds. With Comcast, this never happened. Hopefully it's just some congestion on the Internet and not a lack of "steroid behavior" on AT&T's behalf.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me.

We are in Houston and we did the same thing, we had cable AND hooked up At&T Uverse. Bottom line, is they guaranteed us faster internet service of which cable was giving us 5.7. At&T gave us 4.9, when we questioned them, they said the RANGE is 3.5 - 6., so we were well in the range. Not what they told us in the beginning. The installation took TWO DAYS, when we did get hooked up we asked to be moved up to the next package, of which is done by a simple phone call, we were totally disconnected. Now the AT&T people are extremely nice and apologetic. Once we got back up, but still without the channel upgrate, they promised us faster speed, it has not worked. This is all happening from a Friday to the next Wednesday. We decide to quit, we are averaging an hour a day on the phone with "very polite" people and we can't take it anymore. BUT there is more! We are still paying for cable but they pulled all our line and took our connections and cable can't come out until Sunday to fix us. I told AT&T to not disconnect us until Monday since they screwed us up. The "very polite" people said no problem and that they won't charge us...(duh). The next day which was a Wednesday, tv and internet are gone. When I called to ask where the dispatch was,(we had requested they hook us back up to cable, we are pretty sure they were mad because we were not going to pay for something we never got), the "very polite" people said they have a ticket for us but no one was coming out today. We had been on the phone for an hour and forty minutes the night before making sure dispatch was coming. BUT the "very polite" people were very sorry. We can't wait for Time Warner Cable/Comcast to get here Sunday. Steaming in Houston!!!!

>>cable was giving us 5.7. At&T gave us 4.9

Let me get this straight. You cancelled because cable was 0.8mbps faster? Why? Most websites only load at 200-300kbps if that.

Now if you're doing lots of P2P file-sharing then every little bit helps. But it's not the downstream that limits P2P downloading - it's the UPSTREAM. Too long to explain, but I bet UVerse had a better upstream than cable (which is shared bandwidth and often only has 256/512kbps upstream or less).

So honestly, I don't see why you cancelled over 0.8mbps. You're buying into the whole "more bandwidth equals more speed" propoganda. There is a diminishing return once you go past 1Mbps. You won't notice a speed difference when web surfing. I can guarantee you that.

Again, p2p downloads are another story. But I bet UVerse would have been faster since it has a better upstream and only marginally slower downstream.

It seems very odd that you decided to switch back so quickly without even trying the service for a week or so over just 0.8Mbps.

Ok, Tuesday I had UVerse installed, it took 8 hours because they had problems, thats fine, its an old building with old wiring.

Once they got it hooked up we did a speed test and I was getting about 5.4Mbs out of the 6Mbs down and about 880kbps out of the 1Mbs up which isn't bad. My latency seemed a little better with Time Warner, where I would get about 28ms and here I'm getting about 54ms, thats the one thing thats bothering me a little. I do play games and every millisecond counts.

The tv, I wasn't sure if it would work with my media center pc. I knew I'd loose the PVR part of it, which is ok because I got a PVR from them. Lucky I connected the cable to my computer coax and it worked. The people I talked to at AT&T (before I had it hooked up), didn't know if it would work and when the guys came to hook it up they didn't know either but it does so its all good. The set top box is slow, not sure if its because of the internet connection sharing the connection with TV or what, but changing channels and going to different menus is really slow, takes 2-3 seconds sometimes. I'm wondering when they upgrade if it'll fix the problem because people will be getting 12Mbs+ (the people at AT&T give different answer to the speed question too, but get to that in a bit). The picture is very nice. I don't have an HD tuner (If I decide to keep UVerse I might get one...after they upgrade). The picture is clear and very good on my 22in flat panel monitor. The sound seems lower than cable though, I have to turn up the volume higher to get the same results as with cable, but thats not a big deal.

People came to my door and gave me the talk about UVerse and I can keep my present cable during the trial. That is true, I still have cable hooked up to a tv so I know it still works. First I heard it may take a couple weeks to get the speed increase, then I hear they don't know because AT&T is in discussions to see how much bandwidth they can give each customer without becoming a monopoly. First I heard 12Mbs, but now I hear it could be more or less. From what I understand Verizon is giving 20Mbs so they should be able to give at least that much I would think.

If it wasn't for the latency difference and the speed of the DVR changing menus and channels I'd be very happy with UVerse. I like that I get more channels, faster speed (when we get upgraded), a DVR and hook up for 3 TV's for almost the same amount of money I pay for cable. I will ask about the latency and speed of the set-top-box before I make a 100% decision. I know with UVerse if the TV goes down so does the internet, which is the same with cable TV and cable modem service so thats not a big deal. To bad they can't get regular DSL service going through the line as a back up. You know like some broadband services give dial-up. If the UVerse service goes down you can switch to a regular phone line and get DSL.

Conclusion:
So far I'm about 85% satisfied. I have some questions to be asked and I have to see if my roommates like the service (so yes if they hate it then we may not keep it). If the upgrade will fix some of the issues we're having then I'd be happy with the service.

When AT&T does upgrade and we get more then 4 streams of TV coming in (and hopefully can record 4 streams of HD), then I'd get an HD tuner for my computer. Oh I hear the HD isn't as clear as with cable from some people, that I'm not sure. The regular TV I find to be clearer than I have with cable though. You really can't notice it on a regular tube TV but on my flat panel you can. I'll update later on what we decide to do.

If anyone has any comments, positive or negative please let me know. Oh BTW I'm in Valencia, California.

Tom,
Fortunately for me, my life is a lot simpler not knowing all the numbers, all I know is that we gave Uverse 4 days and we couldn't get hooked up,up to speed/channels and the video conferencing we were accustomed to using all had trouble and pixulated with Uverse, we never had that problem with cable. When you start having trouble that quick it usually spells disaster as it did with us. We are not imagining our troubles, even the installer said, "Everyone runs out of patience and if I were you I'd be out."
As far as cable, we did not know they offered 8.0mbps.
Bottom line we are all at the mercy of being cheated by the system. Cable isn't cheap but it does work.
And again, we didn't "try" the service for a week because we couldn't "get" the service, we called for upgrades for more channels and they closed the account. They were very sorry but with business at the house...we couldn't take the chance of waiting any longer than four days. Four days of business being messed up is huge for us, obviously AT&T can afford the loss.

U verse does not offer a triple play; it is video and internet only. You can only watch 1 HD program at a time. Bandwidth is greatly limited because of the use of your telephone wire from the node to your home. Watching HD and using the internet at the same time will reduce your internet speed. The video on demand library has less than 300 free movies vs. thousands with Comcast.
My installation took 6 hours to complete. The number of available HD programs includes the East coast and West coast feeds of the SAME program.

Robert---so you were able to still use the tuner in your PC? I have a tuner and was wondering if I would still be able to use it (TV Wonder tuner that is coax). I just ordered U-verse to give it a trial. I am going to parallel it against Time Warner and Roadrunner.

I am able to use my U-verse on my computer with the tv tuner card I have. The only thing I find a little annoying and its not the fault of the DVR, its the computer, and that is it changes menues, channels and fastforwards and rewinds slower. I also have it hooked up to a regular TV via a splitter and the DVR works fine. I think this may have to do with either the show having to hit both the DVR hard drive and the computer hard drive to view, either that or because the TV tuner card has to capture everything (menu changes, tv, and such). It works though, so thats a good thing.

You get what you pay for with Uverse and a lot of times even less. I originally signed up due to the great offers but constantly had service people over to adjust my connection to obtain the service they promised. The service was great about a year ago but in the past 2-3 months it seems like none speaks to each other. The service continues to go down periodically as well as the DVR self erasing all content. As long as I watch the shows that I recorded within 48 hours, I get to watch them 75% of the time.

The so called fast channel changing feature is slower than I've ever seen. Tech support tells me it is a problem they are aware and are working on it but its been almost a year and the flyers still say "fast channel changing".

Beware, unless you want to spend endless hours dealing with tech support I wouldn't switch. Time is money and I've already spent more than what I thought I would save.

They say that Uverse is available in my area but when you call customer service they say it is not. The city has a 10 foot easement on all properties in the city, so they contacted me and said they were putting a new juction box on my property for AT&T's new internet and cable service. The box has been there for 3 months now. I try and call to get hooked up but they still say it is unavailable in my area. I tell them that they installed a junction box for this on my property and as why can't i get it. THey just state not available in your area. Does anyone have any suggestions. I have comcast now and they are just killing us with the charges.

Well, I'm wondering if anyone here experienced what I did when trying to get U-verse installed. The installers came to the house on my scheduled day. They seemed very lazy and looked at where I wanted my 3 receivers and then they went outside and looked at the AT&T connection. Then they left or drove away for almost an hour.

When they came back they asked me where the attick was and I showed him. He then asked for a flashlight! For an installer I thought this was very strange. Later I noticed the other one was using a chair to reach the cable outside. No latter? Then the other guy again asked if there was a way to get under the house. I showed him that and he walked away for a few minutes and then came back. Here's where it gets really good.

He said he couldn't install the system! WHY? Get this people, because I didn't have grounded outlets in the house. My house was built in 1964 before all the outlets were required to be grounded. I use those 99 cent UL Listed adapters for this but this guy said because they weren't grounded outlets I was out of luck. Cancelled my installation.

Okay, how many of you that have installed units have grounded outlets in the bay area? I live in San Jose, CA.
Is it just me or do you think these 2 monkeys just were to lazy to cable the house which also doesn't have any pre-existing cable? It seemed to me they just weren't ready to do any work period. Needless to say I was on the phone to AT&T for an hour and a half trying to get a complaint in about this. The bay area has millions of homes without grounded outlets in every room because there are so many that are older homes. So finally I got my complaint into the escalation department. They said they would call me back sometime on Monday or Tuesday.

What does everyone think?

My experience with AT&T was pretty good. We were replacing the highway robbers from TimeWarner/Comcast. We were paying $78 for cable plus additional $20 or so for internet via DSL. We signed up for Uverse basic package (100 channels plus cheapest internet - 1.5 Mbps) for $59 total. Installers certainly had technical issues. They had some issues at their facility and had to come back the second day. Then they figured out that they could not use our house phone network (house was built in 1940s and phone wires are probably original). So they had to put in completely new connections. They did all this for no additional charges and it took 6 hours. At the end of the day everything worked. Internet works as advertized (1.5 Mbps - plenty for what we need) both on upload and download. TV is perfect, actually better than TW because switching between channels is much faster. Overall I am a happy camper, just hope they do not yank the service due to poor demand ...

Well Leon, at least your installers weren't lazy to do the work.
The installers I had didn't even get close to wiring anything.
They didn't have there own flashlight or even a latter. They were just looking for an excuse not to do anything. They picked one of the lamest excuses on the planet by saying they couldn't install the system because we didn't have grounded outlets through out the house. I'm surprised that they just didn't tell me that the phone wiring was to old too. But at least the installers you had actually made the effort to get the job done unlike the ones I had. I imagine your 1940's house doesn't have grounded outlets through out the house either unless it was upgraded.

The only way they would have poor demand is if they keep lame installers like the ones I had who were to lazy to do the work and not prepared either with a flashlight and a ladder.
If all the installers make up lame excuses like the ones I had no one would have the service yet.

I'm still waiting on a call from AT&T's escalation department to see what there excuse will be. I'm happy that everything worked out for you.

I just had ATT Uverse Cancelled! What a piece of crap!

Here are some of the highlights to my experience.

The interface takes forever to search for channels or just to browse through them.

The DVR feature is not very user friendly.

The highlight to my experience was that since the service was installed with a 2wire gateway my ssh outbound traffic stopped working. I know not everyone uses ssh but I can tell you that the interface on the 2wire gateway is horrible. They have gone dumb on us but at the same time they restrict very basic features.

I called technical support, one hour on the phone later after dealing with a number of people that didn't know what they were doing. Including "tier 2" support. Of course the number two refers to the second one from the left on the evolutionary scale.

They finally concluded that they needed to send me to support plus and I started to have hope that was immediately crushed by them telling me that this is fee based and they needed my credit card to talk to them. I don't thinks so caveman!

As a result, I just cancelled this crappy service and I'm going back to paying a little more for cable. Let's do the numbers I bill at 250/hr, I spent an hour on the phone with them and I can't do work from home. Cheap decision to pay more for time warner.

I was told by a sales rep today that U-verse would be installed with a FTTP configuration(fiber optics to the premise/home). Reading through this forum, it appears that everyone who has or had the service was setup with FTTN(fiber optics to the node + 3000ft of cooper cabling to the house), as menitoned in the orginial article. Can anyone speak to the validity of this claim? ...Is this sort of configuration avaialbe here in the Indy area (Noblesville), or for that matter, nationally? Furthuer, how can I verify that I do indeed have FTTP?

Well I did get my U-verse installed and it went much smoother than I expected. I was told to expect a 6-8 hour install and it took only 4 hours. I have 4 sets installed and several PCs (wired and wireless). What I have learned thus far is that U-verse really works better if you have a CAT V Ethernet line dropped to each TV(instead of the traditional Coax). I was using the Coax for a while on two sets and noticed that the channel changing was slower and the set sometimes froze (happened twice). Once I dropped a Cat V line all was just fine and has been ever since. My setup has 3 TV sets going directly to the 2Wire Gateway and 1 though a small switch I hung off of the router (I actually have another switch hung off the router that serves a small NAS and some PCs as well). With all this connected there have been no problems that would make me want to go back to TWC. Also to comment on the FTTP, everything I have heard has been that only new homes being built will have fiber to it.

Does anyone know why I can't get beyond media center saying it can't read my ir signal from the set top box (uverse). I am able to read the signal during set up for composite video, but it won't let me finish set up.

Greetings, all. I have Dish Network at the present time. AT&T received permission to install whatever they wanted from the City of Concord, California. Yet, months later I have only seen the Green Uverse trucks heading for Stockton, the closest they have come to Concord. Essentially, AT&T does this whenever it maximizes their profits. These idiots favor private homes over condominium complexes. Cable and Satellite know 100 units are more profitbable than one. AT&T is a ninteenth century monopoly. I am hoping the Sprint/Clearwire WIMAX gives AT&T and the cable companies serious competition for IPTV, etc.
I hate AT&T and the cable companies.

I have been reading a lot of these comments on here. I have to say that I work for AT&T.. The reason that a lot of these problems are currently taking place is because We are trying to rebuild our system to be able to handle the new high speed internet and IPTV service for which the system was never built for. In doing this we do run into old wire systems and run into a lot of snags along the way. We have a lot of people out in the system reconditioning the wires and equipment to be able to handle all of these new services. As to Tony Cesnik's Comment about picking and choosing area's to upgrade. We have to follow Engineering's design from out Central Office to be able to push the Fiber out and to be able to expand these new services out to as many as possible. After each new fiber 58B box we can only go est. of one Mile in any direction of that box. So there are limitations to what can be done. But as time goes on we are pushing to be the best and to get it out to as many people as possible and hope that everyone enjoys the new services offered to them.

Hi out there...I have had ATT Uverse for 5 days now. I previously had DISH service ($55 /mo) and Basic DSL ($20/mo). Our DISH DVR's covered 4 TV's in the house. 2 remotes were RF, 2 were IR (Line of Site). This worked out really well because even though we had 2 actual set-top boxes (and they were huge compared to UVerse), we were able to watch TV and change channels independently throughout the house without the use of IR repeaters. Here comes the issues: We always had the ability to pause live TV and record a show from ANY location in the house.
1. We can only pause and rewind live TV from one location in the house.
2. We can only watch a DVR recorded show from ONE location in the house.
3. They cut all the original attic cables when they installed UVerse in the house, so going back may cost me $$.
4. I must leave cabinets and doors open to see the UVerse receiver in order to change the channels because none of them support RF (nor do they have any plans from what I have heard).
The picture is DEFINITELY more clear than my satellite, and Internet speeds are about 300k faster (consistently).
Practically speaking... My wife and I have a hard time understanding 'SYLAR' or reading subtitles when we are watching "Heroes" in our bedroom, and the inability to rewind what they have said unless we are watching from the "DVR enabled room" may force us back to Dish and DSL.

I have found myself at this blog several times. As an AT&T Uverse installer i do searches on the product and often end up here. Many of the comments i have read here seem to ring true, the product is not perfect but quickly getting there. The product recently became available where i live, after a few weeks of back and forth debate with myself i dedided to get it. For people who live well below the max distance from the DSLAM (max 3,000ft, best results 0-2000ft) whould be very pleased. If you are considering the product and have been informed it is available to you, take a drive around your neighborhood and look for a giant box slapped ground level on a phone poll, it looks somewhat like a refrigirator (also the nickname given to the DSLAM by us installers). Try and determine the distance you are from that box ,under 2000ft i'd say go for it, more i'd still go for it but realize that techs will be out to your house a few time b4 it works perfectly.
If you do get it i would say to the tech when he comes out that you would like an all CAT5 install. If he/she gives you some cock and bull line about charging you he is just lazy. While it is policy to charge for CAT5 if aceptable RG6 coax is already in place it is very rare for this to occur. If you have had cable in your home for several years with out any major upgrades you likely have RG59 coax and it must be replaced anyway, so you should get the installer to go with CAT5. Also for all you do-it-your-selfers who have run your own secondary locations in the home it is likely that you bought cheap radio shack coax, this too must be replaced, so again request CAT5. As one who likes to take some pride in his work i try and do CAT5 when ever it is reasonable to do so. At a minimum ask for a "CAT5 homerun", the homerun is the main feed into the home which feeds the modem (RG).
I would say that for the most part the delivery system of the product is solid, the biggest problem right now is the "CPE" (customer provided equipment) this includes the set top box (motorola), modem (2wire), and operating system (Windows CE).
At this point many of the "bugs" have been worked out, unfortunatly this product was relased a little early, but many of the problems just could not be ironed out in the lab setting. The product needed to go out in the field to really figure it out.
Just to end this off i have had the product for about 2 weeks now and have had no problems.

Thank you d: I do have a question though. I have Uverse and have had it for a couple months now. I live in Santa Clarita Valley in Los Angeles. I live in a condo and the installers said they couldn't do a cat5 install because of where the DSLAM is located and such and if I were in a house it would be different. Are you saying that they were just being lazy and i could have had them put full cat5? They didn't even say it would cost more, it was just not an option. The place I'm in is old (late 70's). They hooked it up via a phone junction box and I think we have older phone cabling, I remember a red wire and some other wires.

I'm getting pretty good downloads and they said my signal is very high, but when the internet goes down or when I reset the rg box it can take up to a half hour to restart, not sure if this is normal or not. The broadband light will blink red then blink green for a second and then go back to red.

The DVR sometimes won't record what I set up, I'll just get a black screen or I'll get a picture and It'll just sit there frozen until I stop it. I was told if I wanted another DVR they can't transfer programs from the old one to the new one? With the UBS it seems like you should be able to.

I use to use my computer as a DVR and I see the similarities between the Uverse DVR and media center but media center does a few things better for instance search on media center even with the remote was easier, you can use the remote like when you're texting on a cell phone instead of using the arrows to hit the specific letters on the keybaord. Also media center is more responsive going through menues and such which I guess is understandable, I have a much faster CPU than is on the DVR, but I've noticed that Tivo and other set top boxes also seem to be more responsive, do you know if they're going to fix this? Also with media center when you're looking at the menu for a program there is a more button which uverse has but it doesn't have 1 thing and thats to be able to look at future recordings of that program that will be coming up. For instance if I want to see when Mythbusters is going to be on again if it didn't record properly I with media center I could I can (through the more option) when that episode is going to be on again without having to do another search.

I mentioned some ideas that would help performance without having to replace all new DVR's for example if there was an option to take away the effects and give the option to make a single color background instead of the picture background they have currently, basically take away all the bling and leave a more basic looking interface if you like, things would run faster because it would take less processing power. If with Vista you turn off all the bling in the OS you're computer does run faster, its the same idea with the DVR. When I mentioned the ideas they just said "we'll put that in a suggestion box"

Also when watching stuff on my computer and going through menus and fast forwarding there is a noticeable delay. I think I may know why this is happening but wondering if there is a way to get around it. I have 1 gig ram and a gforce 6800 graphics card and a 3500 AMD processor and using a Hauppaug 500 duel tuner tv card. When viewing on my regular tv things are faster, still lag when going through the tv directory and doing a search, its not fluid. If you can help with this that would be cool. I did try and hook it up to my computer via rca cables instead of coax but no luck.

I work for AT&T as a Line Conditioner prepping areas for U-verse. My advise That I would give to you on using Media Center on Vista, is you should upgrade your RAM. Because Vista alone using Aprox. 512 MB to run If you have Premium like I do, It takes aprox 712 MB buffed like mine. I have 2Gig DDR2 with no complaints coming from me... Media Center just running does use Aprox 258 MB or so depending on what task you are running... So with you have only 1 Gig. for it to use, I can see were some lag would come into play. I would recommend upgrading to at least 2 Gig RAM or more if you can afford you can never have too much Memory for your computer.. Another thing would be how much memory does you video card have. 128, 256, 512 I would recommend 256MB or better but they do become extremely costly.

as For the problems with The boxes for U-Verse them self, Definitively call 1-877-u-ask-att (1-877-827-5288) Because we are still finding errors with the boxes, being that it is such a new technology. Just like when anything brand new comes out sometimes there are some problems, an until we can find out were there are coming from or what is causing them we cant fix it. But I would say that It should be up to par in time... But try the recommendations see if they help you any, but do feel free to call AT&T with any other questions you may have. Or if you have an Idea that might be of help, let them know too.

Thanks and I do check this from time to time so you can reply again if i didn't quite answer you. If I can't answer you I can ask around the shop at work and see if someone knows more then I do. And again Thanks for your concern.

U-Verse was promised to be the long awaited embodiment of Cable HD DVR's and Tivo taking the best from both and leaving the rest behind. I was hopeful that the marketing was true but it turns out, it's just marketing.

Lets compare the different mediums (minus satelite because I don't have it) Cable, Tivo & U-Verse.

Record 4 channels at once!
...as long as none of those channels are HD, if they are you will only be recording one show, and you will be watching that show because it wont let you change it. Cable DVR's or at least Comcast has two tuners and two hardrive's which means two HD channels recorded at the same time, and you don't have to watch either of them. Tivo does the same thing.
Advantage---Cable & Tivo

Lightning fast channel changing!
...Sadly I find it slower to respond than Cable and much slower than Tivo
Advantage---Tivo & Cable

Lightning fast Internet with constant speeds!
...I've done several bandwidth tests with both, guess what, it fluctuates and the speed is about the same.
Advantage---Even

Super clear mega beautiful all digi picture!
...Some HD channels look worse than cable. There are more channels but if they don't look any better, why bother.
Advantage---Even (leaning towards Cable)

Watch stuff on your DVR on any box in the house!
...This doesn't yet work and they don't know when it will. Tivo Series 2 can view shows from one box to another.
Advantage---Tivo

Lots and lots of channels!
...There are more channels but you will find yourself watching the same ones you always did, nothing to write home about.
Advantage---U-Verse (I guess)

Events on demand, Video on Demand, Blah Blah!
...Disney on demand is missing in action, the on demand selection is dated and limited. Video on demand does not support live Pay Per Veiw...No UFC, No Boxing, and No Wrestling.
Advantage---Cable

Super reliable, bullet proof boxes, load pictures, view them on internet and TV.
...These features don't yet work. The boxes are crap, especially the DVR. When installing they went through three. Two days later they had to come out and replace it and I lost everything on the DVR. The tech told me it was a very common problem. This is part of the reason installs take 5-8 hours, and I have fiber to my house, the best possible option to make it work well.
Advantage---Cable

You can program your box from On-line and from your mobile phone!
...You can do this but this technology has been available on Tivo for several years. This U-Verse feature is also not reliable and works some times and not others. I haven't tried it from a cell phone so I don't know. My guess is that it isn't yet available.
Advantage---Tivo

Works just like cable but much better!
...U-Verse seems to be a delicate system and does not play well with others. Tivo doesn't seem to work and I'm not sure who is to blame. Tivo has added their channel line-up but for some reason the IR blasters don't seem to work with it. Each one seems to point the finger at the other. My guess is U-Verse is to blame as they want their system to be a Tivo replacement. Cable has always worked with Tivo. Well surely you can add another U-verse DVR to a different room. Spin again, only one DVR allowed on the system.
Advantage---Cable

It is cheaper than Cable!
...This is the one area that U-Verse takes the lead. Though the tech told me that it will be cheap at first but as added functionality is added it will likely be at a cost, wich will eventually cost you as much as cable.
Advantage---U-Verse (for now)

Well hopefully this comparrison has been informative. I really wanted to ditch my Cable and find the next big thing that had it all. U-Verse is just not ready for prime time. Perhaps in a year or two when they get all the bugs worked out it will be better. If you are considering on making the switch, I would wait. When I called tech support and they told me it would be six months to a year before they would offer live PPV it was the nail in the coffin for me. I will have them pull it out immediately. Cable is more, but for now, you get what you pay for.

Addendum: (Reliable Service)
I have yet another problem that has cropped up of late. Periodically when watching TV it will just freeze. So much so that the remote doesn't even respond. It's like it appears be be waiting for more signal or there is a bandwidth slow down. Eventually it will let you change the channel and wake up. This translates over to the DVR and the internet as well.

I was watching a fight on the DVR. It was a close match and there was about one minute left. The screen froze briefly and then jumped ahead to one of the fighters hands being raised. It appears that it froze while recording then when it caught up it missed everything while frozen.

The internet periodically does this to. You click on a link, and it sits there like it is trying to load but it isn't loading, it is frozen.
Advantage....Cable

Just had uverse installed. It took hours of phone support and two technician visits to figure out that Uverse isn't compatible with ANY personal antivirus or firewall s/w. I am using Trendmicro PCCillen 2007 and had to uninstall before I could get reliable internet service. The techs admit that Uverse doesn't like firewalls other than it's own. I am now running unprotected; they told me to use the AT&T virus s/w.

I have had Uverse for a couple of weeks now. I have had a lot of problems and if I could shout from the roof tops watning people away from the product I would. My problems as another writer stated have been small but numerous and my greatest frustration has been with the service provided by the company. In combination these are definately a deal breaker for me.

When trying to get Uverse I got a variety of misinformation. I was told I could have a DVR in each room then I was told I could not. I was then told that one DVR would communicate with all the tvs int he house, then I was told this was not accurate. The individual I was speaking with clearly did not have adequate knowledge about what the service provided but tried very hard to present as though he did. Eventually I became very angry with the many inconsistencies in the information provided. I spoke with the manager who assured me that I had proper information of what the service was. I could not beat the price with Time Warner and they promised that a whole house DVR system off of one DVR was coming at the end of the year.I went for it.

Now I have it and I notice taht the box is slow to respond to the remote commands. Also, the fast forward button does not have any snap back feature to account for the lag of human response and the slow reaction of the box to the remote. The searching for programs is tedious and the guide feature is ridiculaously slow. Once you select a program it snaps right back to the current day and time. Also, you cannot search by channel and time. I have Tivo and have been spoiled with all sorts of user friendly and effective features if you can't tell.

Most recently however, my husband planned to have a large gathering at our home for a pay per view event. I bought tons of food, spent lots of time preparing and cleaning etc. Then we went to order the event. The day went to crap from here. I was unable to locate the program through the box then I called AT&T. 2 1/2 hours later I was informed that they did not have pay per view service. yes 2 1/2 hours later. My complaints here are numerous. First of all I spoke to three different employees and was disconnected once before this was confirmed for me. The first employee gave me lots of instructions to turn the box off and reboot etc. The second fianlly after much holding came to the conclusion that there was an outage in my area. I told him this did not make sense because my channels always appeared the same away on the guide system. He went to go confirm the information he gave me and then returned telling me that the service was not available yet. At this point I was very angry and asked to speak with a manager. The manager came on the line (again after much holding) and she confirmed that service was not available. She empathized with my frustration and confirmed that the sales people for the product are on comission and do promise services that are not available. I asked her about the whole house DVR system that was promised early next year. She informed me that was actually anticipated for early 2009! She was also unable to tell me when they would have Pay per view available. She was aware of the significant amount of misinformation surrounding this product and that the quality of services is lacking, and that the employees are not well trained in the issues regarding the product.

Bottom Line if you don't want to read all of my griping just read this DON'T DO IT! UVERSE IS HORRIBLE!

Miguel, you can use Avast or AVG anti-virus, their both free and they both work. I'm using windows firewall and the firewall thats built into the rg box and I have no problems. I'm not sure what at&t uses for anti-virus, if its Norton or Mcafee I would just stick with Avast or AVG.

I too have U-verse, for the next few days, anyways. I was enamored with the faster dl speeds, and the supposed ability to watch dvr stuff from any room in the house. Unfortunately, the service has been incredibly frustrating. The DVR has a very poorly designed UI and is quite slow in getting around. A lot of simply features, like "keep until manually erased", aren't easily found until you actually have the show recorded. The hardest part has been the last few days though... our service has gone down intermittently since we got it. We've had 3 different techs out to look at it, and finally the last one figured out it was the DSLAM that was bad (despite the fact that I had been telling them this for a while, as a network engineer I was able to backtrace the problem to the box). Our service dropped out at about 9pm Saturday night, and we were told that no one could come by until Tuesday. After enough pressure (and putting up with BS suggestions, like buying a UPS for the house(!), someone came out Sunday. He was the guy who figured out the DLSAM was hosed and said that someone would be out the next day, 8am. At 1:30 I called and found that no ticket had been placed at all for this! After a few more phone calls (so far up to 7 hours of cell phone time to tech support) someone will "hopefully" be out between 4pm-9pm today. Who knows what he's going to do. I am genuinely hoping that he can get even a minute of connectivity going; our DVR, since it can't talk to AT&T, now just shows a big red "X" when we turn it on. I'd be much less pissed if I could at least watch the stuff I've already recorded, but I can't. Say nothing of missing the Simpsons and Family Guy season premiers last night, and football all day. Today I'm supposed to be working from home, and I'm sitting in a corner of my back yard hogging on a neighbor's wireless just so I can look like I'm working and not be forced to take a day off thanks to AT&T.

The best part? We had been given two supervisors' phone numbers to call and complain to. The first one didn't pick up, and we found out why when we called the second one... they had both quit several weeks earlier, as did most of the other supervisors there. His quote... "As a former AT&T supervisor, well, I'm sure Time Warner would love to have you back."

We've done the cable thing though, so DirecTV is coming out here on Thursday to set us up for TV and TW will be doing our internet.

I posted my completely rediculous and sad story on My3cents but the AT&T launch of U-verse in my neighborhood in Mentor, Ohio has cost me hours and hours of phone calls and the internet service is down from 2 to 30 minutes or more at a time (won't load pages) and they try to tell you it is your firewall and virus program and guess what -- when you disconnect your firewall and virus progam -- you can't load pages. Something is obviously wrong with their network and router obviously because it just keeps on happening. It takes me longer than dial up to accomplish anything waiting for it to come up again. The only reason I've been trying to stick with it is Time Warner doesn't offer all the sports channels my husband is enamored with but I find the cable also cumbersome and slow while searching and it has frozen several times but fortunately recovered on its own after several minutes.

No pay per views!!!!!! This really bites. I was told before I switched to Uverse that Pay Per View was available. They lied. NO BOXING. BEWARE

I have a 37" Vizio flat panel, the setup booklet does not include the 4 digits code for this name brand.
If you happen to know the code, please share it with me. I really appreciate it.
Thanks

We live in Cupertino, CA (in Silicon Valley). We switched from Comcast to U-verse last month. Supposedly, we have the fiber optic cable from the box to the house. Installation was a breeze (two hours), and the technician was very nice and knowledgeable.

I am not too techno-savvy, but I agree with many of the preceding comments. We have experienced pixilation, freezing (strangely, this always seems to happen at the climax of a program), and slow response in channel changing.

Some of the freezing problems were resolved when a technician (via the phone) led me through the process of changing the channel on my U-verse connection so that my phone line was less disruptive to the TV and computer connections.

I, too, hate the onscreen guide. It does not allow you to "page" forward or backward through the channels as did Comcast. With the onscreen U-verse guide, advancing one channel at a time is cumbersome. Further, the U-verse guide does not allow you to skip ahead a-day-at-a-time in the program line-up (or skip back one-day-at-a-time once you have moved ahead). I hate scrolling forward in half-hour increments to find and record one program in a series when I don’t want the whole series. And, I hate waiting for the program guide to load the programs when I’m advancing through the line up of a particular channel.

I'm not impressed with how the internet connection is performing compared to Comcast either, but I hope that I'm at least getting a dedicated line (as opposed to sharing a cable with lots of Comcast users). I have experienced slow downloads and freezing in my internet connection. I was told that although the U-verse connection was slightly slower than Comcast, it would be consistent and would not be slowed at peak times. However, I think my connection IS slower to respond at peak times. Also, I have been unable to download virus software which came free with my new laptop (via my wireless connection).

On almost all issues I prefer Comcast. However, I DO like the cost of U-verse over the cost of Comcast.

The jury is still out on whether or not we will switch back.

Just signed up for U-verse in Dallas.
Anyone in Dallas have it yet? Thoughts?

In the D-FW area. AT&T hooked me up with the U-verse system. From about day 2, the TV screen would freeze, and stay frozen, and/or would pixillate. At the same time, of course, my computer would freeze up. The computer speed was NOT improved from my regular DSL. They sent a tech to work on the freeze/pixilate problem. He spent 12 hours the first day, 5 1/2 hours the next day, thinking he had it fixed. One hour later it froze up again. They sent another tech, who worked (?) 5-6 hours, spent most of his time on the phone (with his manager?)still couldn't get the problem fixed. We had him call and cancel the service. They called back almost immediately with the cancellation info, but WE are going to have to return their equipment to them as they did not disconnect the gateway, or the router for the computer. Consequently, the computer did not work, would not go back to my reg. DSL, they had CUT the wires to my Dish (which I had cancelled), Cut the antenna wire to my local channel antenna (completely off) I now have to pay someone to come rehook my antenna. "Very polite" lady on the phone said "we don't re-hook up any equipment you had previously connected".
Yes, all the people and techs were "very polite" - ingratiating even, but obviously they are not up to speed on what their system does or does not do, or how to correct such problems. My recommendation to anyone, especially in this area, would be DO NOT subscribe to this service. Maybe in a year or two they will get the "bugs" out of it. The picture on the TV was beautiful, but 99% of the time, said picture would freeze up, and nothing we could do inside with the remotes would correct it.

To Mitch in Dallas -- DON'T. I had it, I cancelled it only two weeks into the deal.

Deb H. You can skip, in the guide. When your in the guide and want to go up or down a full page press ch up or down and if you want to go a full 24 hours press rew and ff (they should have made it replay and skip which is closer to the rest of the nav buttons).

This service is horrible half the time i only get four channels. I try to get through to the tech support and i get nowhere. Screw this crap i am cancelling.
Garbage

I have this service apperently, and plaese dont get it they have "riped us off". we have the supposable "U-400" which is all the channels exept adult tv and spanish. first week was perfect and unbelivable! But later it was freezing, the internet shut down,and now we dont have the channels we had! right now we can only watch 1 channel. Any who, the video quality was really bad. It would pixelize in any fast video movement. Point is, dont get this really bad service, its: Bad quality, Bad service, Bad internet, and bad anything that they provide you with

I am interested in simple 100 base T Ethernet TV box that works with any network. Forget all these lock-in business models!

I have an Apple TV box and watch movies and podcasts on it quite often. I would consider dropping my DirecTV. My high-speed Internet options are Wireless Satellite (Which just set a 200 MB daily limit on downloads.) Verizon Air Card or T1. I am considering T1 but the $400 per month is a killer. I am unhappy with slow upload speeds of my Wireless options.

Anyway - Apple TV is watched in my house as much as DirecTV. Perhaps with higher speed Internet, I simply will say bye to the standard channel mentality and choose to watch by URL via quality podcasts and buy pay per view on the iTunes store.

I'd read through about half the posts here. Thanks, everyone, for sharing. Here's my story, as it is still unfolding right now:

I live in San Antonio. I've had AT&T U-verse tech(s) come out to my house 6 times in the past 3 weeks, spending a total of maybe 25 hours, simply trying to get my U-Verse service WORKING! This is not an old house with a complicated wiring system. In fact there's a centralized On-Q box to make things simple and clean...

To his credit, the latest tech to frequent my house DENNIS JOHNSON (give him a raise), has been much more personable than the others, and even took care of a wasps nest that was growing under the edge of my roof. Oh, and he also wired my house to have LAN outlets on the walls! Other than that, he's been spending hours upon hours sitting around my house or in his van just waiting on hold for some other network guy to flip a switch or splice the wires, or whatever the hell they have to do to get my service working. I'm not angry about it, mostly because I don't mind having the guy around. I'm really just amazed. At least they work around MY schedule and come for service calls after 6:00 pm and on weekends.

I can't stop wondering wtf is going on at AT&T...
BTW, anyone considering service with AT&T should really watch this Frontline episode:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/view/

Thank GOD I decided not to disconnect my Time Warner internet before hooking U-Verse up. Now I can spend my time waiting for AT&T just cruising blogs and sharing my story... lol

Hi, A guy from AT&T just knocked on my door today and selling me the AT&T Uverse. Currently I am paying $240 a month for Comcast Triple PLay. I see mixed up Reviews here.
PLEASE HELP me if it is not a good Idea to get the UV400 plus the phone service.

Thanks. Please e-mail me at [email protected].

What do you think of the Verizon offering?

Those interested in a temporary whole house DVR solution for AT&T's Uverse.

Please visit www.thedigitalvault.net

I will have the site updated later with a detail diagram with a brief explanation.

~Daniel

Was supposed to have Uverse installed this past week and when they didn't show, found out the order had never been written. So, now I'm scheduled for this week. After reading all this, the missed appt should have been my first clue as to what I can expect. I am in the Ft Worth area and will be the first person on my street to get the service. I HATE cable and am looking for an economical alternative - I only got cable when I bought an HD big screen - so we'll see how it goes.
Anybody else in the DFW area with experience?

You might want to wait a bit, TE. If you read all the postings, my earlier one should clue you in to what you have in store.

Okay,

A word of advice here: This is if you are basically happy with your current Cable service, but don't like the price. Since you DO have other options... use that to your advantage. Many companies have a loss retention division. Don't be rash and run to something new, when you are basically happy with what you had, if the price was right. Perhaps you can get (Supposedly) more and better for less with U-verse. Talk to your cable companies loss retention department. Explain to them how you like their service, but AT&T is offering more for less. What person would not switch if being offered more for less? The ball is in your court when you have the advantage of a competitor. I stuck with cable, only because they offered to meet the price of AT&T for a year. We will see where things are after that year. You have much more of an advantage to bargain if you haven't left the company.

One must remember AT&T, Bell Labs invented the transitor in the 1940's, and they didn't utilize it to the max until years later..Japan took the transistor and created high tech equipment for consumers around the world, including communication. The fact that a lot of Bells patents were public domain was because they were a public utility. Had they
incorporated as a company like the cable companies are now, they would of had even more patents safeguarded. At&T at one time was ahead of world electronics and communications. Their worst fear was people setting up shop and stealing their bread and butter. The national telecommunications industry, which they controlled for years.
They had wireless communication (handheld handsets way before people even dreamed of it)..they had fiber optics, multi and time division frequencies channels usage way before other companies even dreamed of this transmission. Their next step in the 1980's was developing a dial tone on demand remote boxes freezing up tons of ciruits not being used by customers and less cable pairs needed. They knew that on a 50 pair cable, not all 50 customers were not going to be on line at the same time. So if your set was on hook..no battery or dial tone, until you went off hook. They have computers that are amazing now. The 5ess AT&T switch can scan
all electronics within that switch 50,000 times within seconds..
I think once Bell figures out many of their Uverse problems..and most of them are going to software/hardware and some outside shielding in their network, they will make headway on the televison platform.
I used to work for this giant. 34 years.
I was their when they were disbanded into baby bells and I was their when the "Empire Came Back"...I wasn't in mangement but as a special ciruits technician..
one thing this giant implements is quality service to the customer and it is high priority, high on their list of meetings,, high on their list of expenses...they want to know anything and everything employee's input on customer service,,,,regardless of what the negative things people are saying on the internet, magazines etc...many negative remarks are driven by cable companies and some people that can't be satisfied no matter what.
At all big companies are bad.

AT&T TV and Internet was installed Nov 7 in Dallas by a non AT&T contractor. He connected the fiber optic cable to the TV
through a coaxial cable. We had variable
audio output: not audible, then very loud.
It took two weeks to resolve this with hours
wasted on the phone to tech service. And three different AT&T tech's before we got a
competent one. Replacing the coaxial cable
seems to have work. Our neighbor has had
AT&T since April and still has issues.
There have been times when three AT&T are
at his house simultaneously.

Let me just say this about cable vs satellite: I too am NO fan of cable, however, I have spent several days comparing channels, prices and services, between both cable and Dish and Direct TV and here is what I have found.

First, let's look at the channels. My standard digital cable has 100 channels plus 100 music channels plus what is called on-demand channels, about 50, where you can view programming from movies to local events when you want. Dish and Direct have 100 channel packages with music, but no on-demand channels. Price to follow.

Second, Internet. Right now, not counting ATT Uverse, cable Roadrunner cannot be beat. Satellite is no where near in speed.

Third, phone service. ATT wants to charge for long-distance, called All-Distance. With VOIP why charge anything??? Most people use their cells for long distance and long distance charges are obsolete - so 80s.

Fourth, pricing. TimeWarner has a package called All the Best. Well, it may not be all the "best" but it beats satellite. The price is $129 plus tax and DVR equipment.

My example: $129 + $15 for HD DVR + $7 for 2nd DVR = $151 + tax, about $160.

Satellite: $60 (dish) $90 for Direct TV for 100 channels + $40 for land-line phone + $45 for high-speed Internet = $145 - $175 + taxes. PLUS you have to BUY your equipment with DirecTV - even more costs.

Moreover, cable, at least around me, has gone out once in three years - a friend nearby has lost Satellite transmission that much in the past couple of months.

Satellite is close, but for now, even though I don't like 'em, cable is still the winner.

Like it or not.

This month, switched from AT&T DSL to UVerse. There's been some hitches, but it mostly works. The problems:

The DVR takes forever (well, about 2 minutes) to boot up. If you turn your stuff off at night, you'll have a wait in the morning before you can start watching TV again.

The remote control is a little confusing. You'd think that if the button to change channels works, the remote is set to the correct device. Maybe not. So I was able to change channels, but not view Info or record programs. Even mashed the AT&T button on the remote, which is what you're supposed to do, but it didn't work the first time. Wasn't until _after_ I'd called customer support and at their suggestion tried the AT&T button again that it worked and I could view Info and record. Hmm.

The DVR is a little flaky. You record something live and it works. Record while not watching, and it works but only after a reboot. Before a reboot, the recorder lists the show, but you can't play it back. Just sits there showing a black screen while the little progress meter at the bottom stays stuck on 0:00 time into the show. Have to hold the power button for 5 seconds, then wait 2 minutes (forever) for the thing to reboot, and then you can watch your recorded show.

They replaced all the music channels, but didn't do the best job of informing people. About 50 channels from 5000 to 5099 were replaced with a slightly different selection in channels 5100 to 5199. Until you find this out, you could be wondering if there's a problem with the service. They should have put an explanation in the older channels.

Took quite a while to restore connection to my website, as apparently some 2wire modem/routers have this bug that prevents them from port forwarding to a static IP address. This one is a model 3800HGV-B. Unlike the old router/hub I was using with their DSL service, you can't just surf to your own website using your external IP address. (Many ways to find out what your IP address is. One is to go to http://checkip.dyndns.org) So, use a proxy to check whether your site is working. (I used http://freetoview.net). I still have to work out how to keep dyndns.org updated, as unlike my old router, the 2wire device doesn't have such a feature built in.

This message is for anyone who is considering acquiring the AT&T U-verse service.

Now, before you dismiss this message as an advertisement by AT&T, I can assure you this is a genuine message by a real AT&T U-Verse customer because with AT&T I had experienced the biggest turnaround from the worst, most frustrating service I've ever experienced to the best resolution I've ever seen from a company the size of AT&T.

Getting U-Verse installed was by no means easy. It actually took two months to finally have service up and running. During those two months, I had three appointments lasting more than 15 hours of waiting while techs fail to complete a proper installation. In between those three appointments were several weeks of waiting for techs and project leaders to make sure the lines to my condo were able to receive service. (Note, please forgive my technical ignorance here). Folks at AT&T advised my condo was having difficulty receiving a signal but were determined to honor their promise to install service. I was losing patience.

After the aformentioned third appointment I advised the folks at AT&T I was working with that I would not be installing the U-verse service, that I was extremely frustrated by their inability to setup service in my home and that I would NEVER be an AT&T customer again. I was furiously upset and frustrated. I was ready to post my disappointment to the world online. I was also ready to share my disappointment with my circle of friends who were all awaiting my experience before they dove into the process.

They responded by asking for one more shot at setting up the service. I reluctantly gave in. On the fourth appointment, they were successful.

I'm three weeks into the service and it's been wonderful. The variety/quantity of channels is awesome and the DVR & Menus are pretty cool as well. It took some time getting used to and I lost some functionality that I had with TimeWarner (Picture-in-Picture notably - AT&T folks take note). I've had one DVR crash - which in my experience is not uncommon with Time Warner and the wireless internet has been nearly flawless. I'm now reccomending this service to everyone I know. Note that I rarely get on the web to praise a product but this service is worth talking about.

In terms of customer service, even though I was frustrated and upset at AT&T prior to my succesfull install, their customer service was stellar. Aside from a few low-level customer service and sales reps I dealt with on the phone, once I got in touch with the associates with decision making capabilities, I experienced a level of customer service I've never seen before, not with Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, Cox or Time-Warner - all companies I've dealt with in the past on some level of customer service. Everyone was respectful, curteous and were true customer service pros. I had to call tech support a couple times for some minor computer connectivity issues that I had (turns out they were problems on my end, not AT&Ts) and the tech support was very easy and nearly a pleasure to work with. I almost felt like I had called a friend on the phone. Wait time for phone tech support was minimal. Even the techs that came to my house were extremely friendly, respectful and did a really clean job installing the hardware. These guys are true professionals.

Overall I'm extremely impressed by how AT&T handled the situation, how they handled my frustration and their ability to resolve the problems and deliver on their promises.

I'm now a very satisfied customer.

We are having U-Verse installed tomorrow. There are no big node boxes on our side of town. This neighborhood is only 4 years old and only some underground splicing was done so I'm under impression that we have fiber optic cable to the corner of our lot....about 75 ft. from the house.
Big objection is the one HD program at a time. My wife often records two programs at once and we watch a 3rd with the HD TV connected directly to the cable. But if the HD capability is expanded in '08 perhaps that will suffice.
Frankly, we have had so many problems and so many issues with COMCAST...plus...we just received notification of their rate hikes....we are absolutely saying goodbye to COMCAST and switching to U-Verse. It's cheaper and we'll save an additional $25 a month because our AT&T DSL will be thrown in with U-Verse and removed from our phone bill.
I guess nothing is perfect but this will be a fun trial.
By the way, they're giving $25 per month discounts to retired folks now.

Our family has always given people the benefit of the doubt. Everyone is entitled to a bad day. We keep reminding our seleves this with our AT&T experience. However when you add things up it appears more than just a bad day. The install lasted over 10 hours. the installer asked for my assitance, tools and lifting more than 2 dozen times. I have two hole drilled into my front facade with out caulking or permission,huge eye sore. I have cables running under the middle of our carpeted room plus tworn up carpet. I also have two spots of blood on my carpet and also had to administer first aid to my installer. OK bad day, however it just dose not end there, DVR unit bad from the begining, and customer service takes for ever to navaigate voice promts and then you get hung up on. Bad day, NO, day and a half to finally talk to a human. Jump through all the hoops to reset unit, no follow up after they were made aware of difficulty of contacting them. Bad day no, NO service SAT, SUN, maybe Mon. by 2pm. Recap, very bad install, equipment failure withn 2 weeks, nearly impossible to find personal help and when you do do not count on any follow up. This kind of service and product makes you really appreciate the radio. Waste of Time and Money, do not let these hacks mess up your house!!!!

Got a call today from a U-verse sales guy. Very interesting stuff, lots of bells and whistles for about the same total price I'm paying now.

Cannot justify the time and folks running around in my backyard for marginal differences. Have seen the AT&T trucks around my area so maybe the fiber optics are installed underground here. Local regs require underground service.

Also, I really do like my DirecTV. Their customer service folks sound like English is their first language and this saves a lot of time when I need help. However, they need to bundle the Adult channels and sell a package like HBO/Cinemax. I would buy that.

I would not advise anyone down the AT&T uverse path. We are waiting for our fourth DVR unit in less than a month. Customer service is very busy and responce time is long. We are now proud members of the 3rd tier customer service and they are overwhelmed. Two to three day wait ot replace equipment. We are 1300 feet from vrad. and are told we have great signal. Sounds like they have equipment issues. Plus NO one at AT&T wants to step up and make things right, lost service, hours on the phone. THIS IS A BAD DEAL

I am very happy with Directv, just not their prices for about 7 years. Uverse sent me a letter saying avail in my area. I signed up online after being told congratulations, your # qualifies. Technician come out today and says too risky, we're 3,000 feet way from their hub or computer. No thanks. Sounds like dsl all over again.

In reading through all of the past comments, I detected a trend in what AT&T is promising its customers - those promises are 1) an upgrade to the internet speed and 2) number of HD channels that can be recorded at one time. I really don't think that they are seriously working on these issues. Sure, they may be upgraded someday, but all of the above postings are from a year ago and they say the same thing as a posting from one week ago. I wouldn't suggest buying into Uverse in hopes that these issues are going to be fixed. Buy the service for exactly what it is advertised as or keep your current cable company (which I bet is only around $30 more). Is $30 (or $360/yr) worth the DAYS and DAYS it takes to straighten out a bad cable service switch?

I have read all the comments listed and I must say, I have not experienced any quality or service problems with U-verse whatsoever. The picture quality is crystal sharp in HD, the channels change quicker than TW, and browsing, recording, and viewing is much easier than TW ever was. I am completely satisfied with AT&T's quiality.

There is one minor, minor problem...I just had all my compenents installed in a closet out of sight. IR repeaters were used on all the components so they could all remain hidden. When the IR repeater was installed on the U-verse DVR box, the signal wasn't recognized. So, I would either have to bring the box back out in front of the TV which I do not want to do or do a trick custom install to have it in the line of sight of hte remote.

Does anyone have any suggestions to what I might be able to do?

We were ready to switch from Time-Warner and Roadrunner in Canton, Ohio. I signed up two weeks ago and was confirmed as being available for the service both through the website and several technicians. Last night, AT&T called to say our home was not ready for service because of "distance" between the nearest lines and our home. Why did they not have the sense to confirm this before I wasted time signing up and getting pumped up about the switch? Why did they wait until the night before to let us know after several e-mails confirming installation, time, etc. Why did they say we weren't eligible, and then said we were and called back to say we weren't, all within the space of an hour? Anyone else experience this garbage? If they are going to be this inept before the service is even installed, what can you expect thereafter???

Just had U-verse installed on Jan. 30... we
previously had AT&T phones and DSL. The new
system is phenomenal! Replacing Comcast, the
U-verse is head, shoulders, and belt-buckles
above Comcast, Dish, TWC, or DirecTV. AT&T
has led the way toward the 'future of TV'!

I've had the Verizon fios for some time and it is incredibly fast 15/2, and fios tv is crystal clear-I had to choose fios over the uverse from what i've been reading and ...imo i don't think it will last for very long. And whats with the hybrid? shortcut $$ ? Good job Verizon with runnig it right up to the ont at my house.

U-verse sounds like a potentially good competitor to the local cable service, as well as satellite.
This is exactly what our communities need,
COMPETITION.

Cable started with small companies, but soon became large companies buying small ones, then controlling what got on cable and how much it cost.Even though our government attempted to intercede on the citizens behalf, that cable had somehow become a "monopoly", all that really happened was the government found a way to extract even more taxes from it's citizens while providing NO added value for the added cost. Cable continues to have a "take or leave it attitude", along with crazy pricing, and questionable service.

States had to give telecom companies a chance to compete, not just so they could improve their profits, but so that we the people could have some viable choices so that we could have potentially lower costs for multimedia needs.
Yes, it's taking a bit of time for the phone companies to get up to speed and lay the infrastructure and work out the software, and train tech and support staff to give great service.
Have that many of you forgotten how BAD cable service was in the years it took it to get to the point where they are today? And, they still don't get it right all the time.

We the people need to support and welcome competition for the betterment of our needs, wants, and desires. I thank those of you who have taken a chance on the phone companies foray into the world of providing multimedia access to all.
Those of you who have and have tried these services are providing all of us a great service in that you can test the offering and offer suggestions on what needs to be improved, so that eventually these choices can be choices for everyone in the US, and not just limited to 1 cable company.

I also want to comment on choice between Verizon or AT&T. The problem is that that choice really does NOT exist, mostly. Why? Because, most states control phone service areas by allowing exclusive franchise to 1 phone company over another in a given area. In my county for example, in Indiana, the regulatory commission has given nearly all of Lake Country to AT&T. Verizon, nor any other land/line based service can compete in an area allocated to another provider.
I live in Lake County, but in a small portion where Verizon is allowed to operate, no one else.
So, it may seem to be a good thing that at some point the fiber lines that were laid through my yard will someday be used, right? NOT SO FAST.
In fact, due to my geographically challenged location, Verizon will not spend money to improve and move to newer technology in my area.

It is 2008 and can NOT get any better than dial up, 56k, connection to my home for internet from Verizon. I called and asked why I can't get DSL, let alone the new high speed broadband offered by Verizon in fiber areas. I was told the cost to install DSL equipment was too high to put it in my area.
Why I asked? They didn't really have an answer.
The answer is because I live too close to the AT&T boarder, and Verizon doesn't want to invest money to service my area beyond dial up as it serves no monetary gain for them to do so at this time, 2008.
Yes, I have fiber in my front yard, and to my home, but Verizon won't connect it, and they won't put the needed DSL switching station for our area to get that service. So, our only choices are Verizon dial up or Cable broadband at about $50 EXTRA per month over the basic cost of cable TV.
I have very limited choice due to the lack of competition, mainly setup by my state government and exclusivity agreements with the phone companies and cable companies.

So, I WELCOME the phone companies into the TV service arena, just like I welcomed the cable company into the phone service arena.
That will give even more competition
Bring it on!

Hello everyone,

I am scheduled to have Uverse installed tomorrow. I was very excited until reading th posts above. It seems for most of 2006-2007 there were a lot of complaints.

Since 2008 it seems a lot more satisfied customers? Maybe they have worked out the kinks? They have a promo for the first month free so I am going to try it. I am going to keep my TMC (San Diego) for that month in case is doens't work out with ATT. Anyone have this service in the San Diego area?

After spending 4 days of my time (including a full sat/sunday) 16 hours of techs actually at the house (not to mention 8+ hours of waiting for someone to show up - late every time), and a total of 7 techs at my house. They finally got the u-verse (DSL) service working. It was great for the 1 hour I used it late sunday night. The next morning I wake up and its down. Call tech support, someone new comes out tues with a trainee. the trainee bluntly stole my Ipod after asking to sit in a nearby chair.

Then had to go to the trouble to call the cops and write a report. The amount of cell minutes I have used in the past few days (between their service not working in the first place and then having to deal with my stolen item) is absurd. Comcast does indeed cost more, but would have been a by far cheaper purchase at this point even if AT&T had offered me their service for free for a year or 2. Customer service via phone is very friendly, however if you live in the Chicago, IL area I would not order any service from AT&T as their techs are not knowledgeable and untrustworthy.

Service was canceled with AT&T which I have been told I will still receive a bill for, for the month as I was told by customer service. So a month from now I'll still be dealing with this crap.

hey i work for uverse doing tech support. its great...just give it some time to work out the kinks. It truly is an EXCELLENT service provider. as soon as it becomes avail in my area. im going to get it! not just because its cheap for employees either!

We drove to the AT&T U-verse store in Dallas to get a look at the product, really liked it, so we signed up. We specified an early morning start for the installation (8:AM), and had to wait an hour in the store for that to be confirmed. The day of the installation, no one showed up. Called the extremely polite customer service people-- they kept saying the technicians were "almost" there. That went on for hours, with no one arriving, so at 3:PM we rescheduled for another day.

That day a tech arrived at 8:30. He fiddled around with the phone box outside for over an hour, then told us he couldn't install the service because the "cross box" was more than 3,000 feet from our home. He put in a ticket to have a cross box installed closer, suggesting I call AT&T back in a few days to see if the new box was installed. While he was still there, I checked our phone, and there was no dial tone. He had somehow disconnected our phone lines. He tried to fix it but couldn't-- had to have another tech come out (and even that tech screwed things up, we found out later, by disconnecting our second line.)

A week later I called customer service. I was assured the new cross box had been installed, and we were good to go. We take a third day off work. The same tech as before comes out, fiddles with the phone box again, then tells us even though the new cross box has been installed, it hasn't been hooked-up to AT&T's system yet. When will that happen? He has "no idea." Why didn't customer service tell us that when we called? He has "no idea."

I spoke to someone I know at AT&T (a REAL technician, not someone just given that title), and he said AT&T doesn't have the manpower to have experienced techs install U-verse - they're too busy with regular phone line maintenance - so AT&T hired a bunch of newbies who are clearly out of their depth.

We were both wildly enthusiastic about U-verse, but after experiencing the complete ineptitude of how installation is being handled, we're going to stay with our existing providers (Comcast for broadband, Dish for TV). Hopefully, Verizon Fios will be made available in our area. From what we hear, they're much more reliable.

FYI, we're located in Dallas.

We're in Broadview Hts. OH (Cleveland suburb). We signed up to have an installer come out in a few weeks, so I thought I would do some homework. After the guy left, I thought to ask whether they had 24/7 tech support when I verified the order with AT&T.(e.g., tech support for those who are already installed) I waited over 45 min just for that answer - (which never came, I hung up the phone). Should I take this as an omen? Any other Ohio experiences?

WOW! Is any technology really ready to hit the street when it does? Of course not. Cable has had the market for years.

Just think about how telecom is reinventing itself... AT&T is delivering ~26MB of voice, video and data over the same 24 & 26 gauge twisted pair that served your Grandma. In my U-Verse gateway it shows its ready for ~64MB. So, as technology advances the once thought of copper backbone continues to breathe.

I have U-Verse and it's a fine alternative to paying too much for cable and it does what it promised me. Last time I checked I couldn't stream my music to my old cable box. I couldn't even configure a ticker to show the information I wanted to see instead of what the broadcaster wanted me to see. Oh, and the plethora of HD channels on U-Verse smokes TWC and Cox.

Cable (this means you Time Warner and Cox), you can kiss my a$$ because you've already taken too much of my money.

And to all of you early adopters of U-Verse, don't think for a second Microsoft is going to abandon this market. It's just one more medium they plan to dominate, something they do all too well.

I am cancelling. I got it in July 07. The freezing problem is so annoying and random that TV is unwatchable.
It might randomly freeze for 5 minutes. It might do this constantly (ruining any show you're watching), or it might not. And you never know when it will start.
It's the worse piece of sh!t service or part I've been sold in my life.
I figured they were selling me something slightly different, and I bit.
It sucks.
It's a mess.

I work for a local cable provider in the Columbus Ohio market (not Time Warrner). Just to let all the people out there actually look at who broadcasts most of the channels out there they would see that it is AT&T. I know that it sounds like i was trying to promot them, but, I was explaining why the price with them is so cheap.

If you really want to know how the company is going to treat the consurmers you should read the Terms Of Service (T.O.S. as AT&T has on the website). There you will find out that if anything goes wrong with the R.G. (Residential Gateway) that they mount on the side of your home you will pay for a tech for $50 per hour then $100 for the R.G. itself. So that $150 that they promiss you for signing up for thier service, guess what it is for?? Replacement for the service that They installed. I personally have a friend that works on installing it that is how I know this. Now if a company installs service into my home I better not have to pay for anything except the service itself and if I have to wait on a tech to come out and fix it. I should not have to pay for him. If you loko at the T.O.S. for AT&T copy this to your web browser. https://uverse1.att.com/un/launchAMSSNotAuthenticated.do?target_action=SelectOffer&categoryId=WEB1. If that does not work then go to the site and find it. takes to long to explain how to get there and find it(wonder why??). but in there it states that they do not credit anything on the account, BUT WILL BE HAPPY TO GIVE YOU A FREE MONTHS OF A MOVIE CHANNEL!!!!.

I deal with a lot of people saying that if they have to pay for a tech to come out and trouble shoot anything they will discontinue servie and switch back. Guess what they will not credit it back and it will be posted on your credit if you do not pay for it within 30 days of disconnection. Line backer only covers the wireing for the phone service not the R.G. If you have any questions about At&t installing ion your area just look up the diffucalties with it such as exploding nodes in WASHINGTON, WEST VIRGINIA, WISCONSIN, WYOMING, ALBERTA.urrently

I have been working on At&t uverse now for a year(8 years with the company total).I have not once heard of a customer getting billed at all for an RG, or inside wiring. We replaced 4 RG's in a subs house that she had burned up because of electrical (A/C) wasnt grounded properly, then we gave her 6 months of free service. I wanted to bill her but the company let it slide. The RG costs over $400, $1600 total lost, no bill. The uverse installation is free for the wiring, set top boxes, and RG. The only reason we would bill for wiring is if you move the tv to the other side of the room and we have to install a new line. I know that you work for the cable company, but why are you explaining how At&t's products work and what our billing policies are. The user agreement is a legal agreement to cover us and the customer, but rarely is it used, and we usually always credit the customer when they have issues. I'm sure that your company has the same exact contract too.

I have just had Uverse installed in my home. It was supposed to be a packaged deal on phone, TV & Cable - but now I am getting 2 bills and they don't add up to the price I was quoted! I've been on the phone with them many times to try to resolve this issue. Now I want to write to somebody, but don't know who! I am in Illinois. How do I find out who to contact at a Headquarters?

I work for AT&T In Construction Doing the Re-build for the U-Verse products and I'm sorry John, But Why would you get on here and and Bad Mouth AT&T when You have had no interactions with them. I am sure that You have a Code Of Business Conduct that you signed with your company, And What your doing on here Does Violate that COBC. On the other hand It sounds like you are loosing Business because Of us being in your footprint and taking your customers. But I do Know that We do not Charge for the RG unless it is found that you are the cause, Exp. Drop kicking it or throwing it Etc. If something such as Electrical, other Malfunction occurred we will replace it for free and credit the time that you are out of service. Also yes that is in the T.O.S. For Legal Matters. If you are the cause that does then allow us to charge you for the RG. But as the other Tech. Noted before, and I do agree that I have yet to see someone get charged for an RG. As far as Being charged for wiring, If you simply go the The U-Verse website and read threw the terms you will see that ALL Inside wiring related to U-verse TV Service is 100% Free, the only time you would be charged is for Non U-Verse Wiring. Thank you for you time and I am sorry for the confusion that Has occurred for you to post your blog.

I had Uverse installed on January 30 after being sold by telephone. I noticed an instant improvement in picture quality but I do have problems with sound variation from channel to channel.
The construction folks had to put a temporary line from my neighbors yard to my yard hanging it over my fence. After numerous calls to Customer Service questioning when they would bury the line,a contractor came out and dug a hole on February 27th and hasn't been back since. I now have a hole with about 20-30 gallons of water and the line is still draped over my fence.
I've made several calls to Customer Service and recently had conversations with a field Manager from AT&T. He advised me it was a Uverse problem and someone would call. Still no call and I had to call them back today. I was told it would be solved on Saturday or Monday.
To say I'm upset is to say the least. I've taken pictures and will posted them wherever I can. I'm also going to send to AT&T Corporate. I'm really torn now whether to go back to Comcast. I won't be suggesting Uverse to any of my freinds or relatives. All it takes is one upset customer to speak negatively to another and soon you have many prospectives customers who aren't interested. To me it's about quality and service.

Remember guys this is a new product or at least somehwat, I am a installer for uverse as long as the technician does his job correctly and follows all the gudelines like not using rg 59 cable or old rg 6 that does not pass hpna testing you should not have any issues. If you want the most trouble free install request cat 5 be ran through the home if possible and minimal a cat 5 home run to the rg or residential gateway. I apologize personally for any of you that have had issues and those of you who have bad install experiences but just stick with it this will soon be an awesome experience to have uverse tv any questions please feel free to post them.

Hey Ed,

Depending on where your living, they will not bury cables in the winter time due to the frozen ground. Also, ask the field manager for his bosses number, that should get his attention, and if it doesn't call your local public utilities office.

Justin Is Right. Always ask for a cat 5 home run, and if possible ran everywere. It does take a few hours more to install, But at the chance to have the best possible service it is well worth it. This signle that we are placing needs twisted copper to travel on, and about 90% of homes have old strieght pairs and the signle dies very fast causing trouble. even some newer cables that are twisted the have a very light twist, If you have ever looked at Cat 5 it has a veavy or tight twist to it... Long story short, If you are wanting to try this product make sure to till the tech or techs that come out that you want Cat 5 Home run and all over if possible for them to do, If they give you any problems DO ask for their Manager's number or for him or her to come out on the job. It is their job to do it. Any questions feel free to post and ask, I do try to watch this thred here and there..

AT&T UVERSE.
I have to cancel this product as of today. It is no question this services is not ready for prime time in my eyesite. I have already spoken to two others and they are not please at all. My installers took about 6-8 hrs to do the initial install the first day and I think this was normal, but the tech took about 8-12hrs when he had to come and try to fix the freezing of the screen and the internet.
We both work from home and we thought by going to this service it would be better. What a mess this is? We both need the internet to get on with our daily work lives. We are going back to previous provider.
I have made numerous calls to at&t an got a different answer everytime I spoke to a second line support person. I do understadn this servie is new, but I know one can tell me when they are going to have a fix on the screen freezing.

I spoke to some folks in Indpls in today who were with the midwest region exectuive office. Was she helpful. No not to me.

I have worked in customer service for over 15 years and I have never seen this before. A lot of the staff, both field tech, customer service, level one and level two support have no answer to questions.
I think this service will be good in the future when they can get a fix for the minor problems.

For you guys that are tech reps. You only can the best you can do with what you have.

For Justin:

Just a note... My u-Verse has been running since January 30 without problems.. 4 boxes,
HD, DVR, and all on RG-59 prewire. 20 year
old home, prewire all stapled to studs, finished walls... Hence, no Dish or DirecTV since RG-6 couldn't be installed without tearing up walls. I'm a happy u-Verse camper!
And, I agree with you. Customers and prospective customers... stick with it. I believe you'll be glad you did!

~ Steve

Mr. Outlaw,

Your right. This service does not work all the time. Most of the time, it's in an older neighborhood (which means the aerial cable may not be in the best of condition), or the distance is at it's limit. The "office" is always trying to push the service out further, even though they know it will not work properly. Quit, and maybe in the future we will be able to condition your lines to the acceptable levels and we can try again. Thanks for trying, hope to see you again though.

For years we have Cox's Premium Bundle (phone, Internet and Digital cable). It is a little costly, but reliable. One day a guy came to the door and explained about AT&T U-verse U-400 package and assured me it was risk-free and that I could keep Cox as a backup. He gave me a date and approximate time that the installer would arrive. The installer arrived 10 minutes early. (unheard of!) He said it would take about 4 hours to install. He was done in about two and a half hours. He sat down with me and explained all about the features and programmed the remote. He gave me his card and said to call him directly if I experienced any problems. He showed me that he installed all new cable to the pole. Cleaned up everything. I was so excited. I had no problems with the internet, it turned into a disaster with the Digital cable. I don't watch TV often, but it seemed to freeze and pixelize right when I was absorbed. It would take 2-10 minutes to return to normal. I called the tech and he came right away. Reset everything, tested the lines, and we tried it again. It continued, the fourth time I called and told him that I was definitely not interested in the service and would be cancelling it and he explained how to. Honestly I am convinced it was the Motorola DVR box that was the problem. I called the number that he gave me (which was the same as the service book). 1-800-288-2020 Those customer support people are horrible!) They transferred me to U-Verse which is in the 714 area code. I have never been transferred and often dropped in my life! I hope they work out that problem, because I think it is their biggest annoyance.

Finally I got the cancellation. Then they sent me a bill for $55.38. On the bill it said that I would be charged if I did not return their equipment promptly. I called them and explained that I was waiting on the return box they were sending. She said, "oh, yeah - we are sooo backlogged on boxes it could take months. Is that many people unhappy? This was 3 month's ago. I finally received the box they sent and out of fairness, they stuck true to their word and removed the $55.38 amount owed. I am trying to locate the tech's card because he truly was and outstanding professional that you rarely come across.

I have the U-verse, and I got to say I'm quite unimpressed. It's cheaper, ya, but with constant freezes it's really ticking me off.

Whew.... after reading all these blogs, I have to comment. In Columbus, Ohio I had U-Verse installed last Thursday and that very evening all 4 TV's has screen-freese (pixalitaion) and the DVR went out. Friday I called and talked to the (Very-polite) Customer Service people.
I was ready to tell them to rip it out, but I held off.....I even measured how far I was away from the Dslam, which is about 2,000'
The Installer came early on Sunday (yes, sunday)and looked at the crappy instal of the 1st installer. His manager told him to take pictures of my wires and hook up boxes at the back of the house, for referrence.
The 2nd Installer ripped out eveything and started from stratch and using CATV (Cat5) wire re-ran the entire house.
This job took him from 9AM until 4PM on a Sunday. I have to tell you that everything is GREAT now. Lesson learned that not all Installers know what they are doing. Be sure you have them rip out all the old RG56 and RG6 wire, for the best performance available.
Additionally the Installer was only suppose to be here for 2 hours and he had another service order (Customer). He actually called his next customer and told them he was running late. This is totally unheard of, usually AT&T Customer Service just tells out that the Work Order got lost.
So the lesson here is not to believe everything you read on this Blog. Is it the authors perception, sure is......but not necessarily the truth.
Again , I am very pleased with the picture quality, Service level and the overall response of AT&T people. If, for whatever reason I have another issue with U-Verse, I'll certainly return here and comment.

I have left on here once But I will repost for those that may not have seen it pior.... But for anyone who is thinking about having U-verse, It is worth the experiance. BUT, Make sure you tell the technician the you want CAT5 therw the whole house and that you do not want to use exsiting RG wire left over from the cable companay. Some yes will work for those of you that have had sucesuss with Old Coax, However, the majority of problems comes from this, so Please do ask for Cat5 all over to get the best possible experince. (sorry for the bad spelling Not much for spelling). Thanks for reading

I've seen posts about this "Residential Gateway" that is installed outside and other posts about running cat5 "homeruns" to the RG. Question - are the cat5 cables actually being run outside to the RG? Or is it more like a network interface to something inside the house and the cat5 cables stay inside the house? Can I assume cat6 is acceptable? I'd actually like to pre-wire my house with cat6 before U-verse becomes available so the install doesn't take as long and I get it wired the way I want.

I'm a U-Verse installer and I have to say we run into way to many problems with the old wire system we are trying to run this service on. Once we get the signal to the home with good numbers though I think it's a pretty solid offering.
As for the all Cat 5 installation being the best way to go that's not always the case. I like to use it where I can but if you have to run a line absolutely anywhere near a light fixture or power lines through the home your far better off with the coax cables. Without shielded Cat 5 (which they don't stock in my garage, I doubt anyone has access to it) your going to get pixelation and screen freezing. I've had to go out on so many repairs because techs think the Cat 5 is better and they run the stuff right by lights. There is a reason coax has the braid and foil people. The twisted pair only protects from so much interference. If the coax ends are all properly changed, the splitter is swapped out and grounded and everything passes HPNA testing your not going to see massive advantages in twisted pair.
The "home run" being cat 5 though is definetely my preferred method. Also allows for easier VOIP add ons later.

From many of the experiences I have read here I can firmly say that the majority of your problems are caused by inexperienced technicians, and they can not really be to blame. There is so much pressure from stock holders that the company is some what forced to throw the techs the wolves once they are out of training in order to meet in service customer quotas. Many a high paid executive's job is on the line if quarterly goals are not met.
Me being one of the more experienced techs at a whopping two years on the job, I can say that it takes just shy of that long before you really have an understanding how this product works and what causes it to fail. As far as the company putting more experienced people in place to work with this product, such an animal does not exist. Yeah the company has plenty of guys who have been working with the company for 20-30yrs, for running new wire those guys are great, but for working with an IP based delivery system these guys are about worthless. The are very good installers, but the majority of them wouldn't even know how to turn a computer on much less install one of the most complex home entertainment systems to come out in the past 20 yrs.
So us 20 something's are the best you are going to get. The one thing I can tell you for sure is that there is no one solution to fix problems for this product, yeah the godly CAT V wire can be a cure in some cases. It all has to do with situation the installer may find him/herself in. I have gone to many a job where the customer is working off 30 year old RG59 and not a problem has been found, and the only reason we have been out there is to swap out a bad box or the customer keeps setting their TV to channel 3 when the service is on one of the video inputs.
Another thing I can tell you is that there are customers that we install and then never hear from them again, and there are customers that we have to go out the their home 5, 6, 7, even 8 times before we figure out what the problem is, it just the nature of this new product.
The best hope I can give you people that come here is that if you are having a problem out of one of the many trouble calls you make an expierenced tech finally comes out. If you are thinking about getting it, hope that an experienced tech is who comes out to do your job, and even that is no guarantee that you won't have a problem.
Just to finish off, this product has now been around for a little while, and we have learned a great deal about it, if you are in an area where it has been available for a little while I would say that you are safe. In these areas there is a good amount of expierence out there and this is being passed on to the newer guys. If you live in area where the product is just coming on line I would say wait a while, or if you are a need to be on the forefront type person go for it, but just be aware that you are going to have to deal with the learning curve the techs are going through.
This is an e-mail I can be contacted at, alsatian01 at-sign (change to @ with no spaces) hotmail.com , I do not check it often, and may not have time to respond to all e-mails, but if you are at wits end drop me a line and I will try and give you some help.

ATT UVERSE is horrible. I tried it for 3 months and am switching back to Direct TV who I am just in love with. Their Internet is not faster than my old SBC Yahoo! DSL, so I am making the switch on that also.

To save the rest of you money and time, DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME WITH U-VERSE

I just had uverse installed yesterday here in Austin. It sounds like a great deal and the video looked better than cable. Only one main issue so far:

The sound on the main box went out today. I haven't had this service for more than a few hours. I submitted a trouble ticket online and they sent a message that it has been assigned after 20 minutes.

I recommend that you get the full cat-5 install. The image quality on 100% copper twisted pair is much better than coaxial cale installs. I think it took a little longer to get mine installed, but the tech said it was worth it and it is.

I think they will start doing more 100% cat-5 installs. The tech said they are going through training on that subject next week.

BTW, the tech was great. His name is Hector and if you get him here in Austin you are very lucky. He calls before he comes over, is here on time and is polite as anything. They also sent the manager of the area yesterday to check on him. She seemed nice as well.

I wish them luck with this and hopefully my sound will be working when I get back.

I live in Beachwood Ohio, an eastern suburb of Cleveland. they put one of these boxes on my treelawn this year. directly next to my sidewalk. when they started to install it. i walked out. and saw the city inspector and the tech installing.

I asked why didn't they put it next to the existing box on the pole 25 feet down the street on the corner of my property.

seems in Ohio. ATT got power to do what they want via the PUC. local city governments had no say so in the matter. nor did homeowners like us. plans were approved in Columbus. not in each cities planning dept. only notice was a door tag informing us of impending construction and a

in the end. the box was up a couple months. then snowplows caused the smaller power meter part of the box to lay over at a 45 degree angle. now its surrounded by orange plastic posts, yellow tape and no one does anything to it. i often get 5 or 6 ATT trucks parked in front of my house, and they gather and do nothing.

im sure ill get blessed speed from att because of the proximity of the connect to my house. but i got to tell you. for all they've done. ill never purchase their product. and can only hope a large snowplow some winter just tears it right out.

really miffed at ATT for this. Really Really miffed.

Dear Don,
If you call into ATT and let them know that the power meter is damaged they should send someone to look at it, If you ask for the local Manager it might speed the process up. As far as the 5 or 6 trucks that park out there, those are Construction Techs. They are doing the Line work for that service, There is nothing that they can do about that power meter, Most likely in your area the department that handles the V-rad might not be in the same building. It would be to your benefit to call it in.
As far as your complaint about were it is located, That is the Engineer design. Probably because of were they need to place the Fiber, Distance needed underground, Were Conducts are, were power is, sewer, all of the Utilities limit were we can place the V-rad because we need room in the ground around them, I have seen some V-rads placed up to 250 feet from the Cross connect box. I do apologize about that. but again My recommendation is that you call and request a local manager to come out and inspect that power meter and then you could discuss your other concerns.
Thanks

I just finished doing a head to head test of U-Verse "Express" and the standard TW Cable. AT&T clocked in at a hair under the advertised 1.5Mbps down 890Kbps up while TW/Roadrunner did a respectable 5.5Mbps down with a paltry 500Kbps up. If you pay the extra 20 bucks to get the 6Mbps service from AT&T there is no savings whatsoever. I'd like to know what the head to head performance is of the digital cable where TW is claiming they can do ALL TV's in HD whereas AT&T is currently limited to a single HD feed per household.

We had AT&T's U-Verse installed on Thursday, April 17, 2008. To make a too long story short...the television froze within the first 5 hours, and the internet also goes down at the same time. This problem NEVER got resolved. We had service people here 3-times within first 5-6 days. Talked to numerous people on the 800 number.

Sorry, but this is not worth the $11 I was to save a month (television and internet...I did not bundle the telephone). The system did go down several times EVERY day in 7 days. My kids have homework to do and the internet is a very needed tool...can not afford it to cease working. Sorry, AT&T...I'm sticking with DISH as well as Earthlink (never did cancel DISH, and one day after cancelling Earthlink, we called and reconnected with them!) We now will call AT&T tomorrow to cancel and return the equipment. This was not a fun week. BUYER BEWARE!!!

In reply to "Just Dumped..." these are the same things that happened when we had the service. But after cancelling, it didn't stop there. Cancelled in October. They still billed us every month till this month, even though I had returned their equipment as requested. After talking to five different people, all who told me they would get the charges removed, and would have a manager/supervisor call me, I finally got in touch with someone who (as of this point) got it taken care of. And one of the worst parts is that when they installed the service, the techs "ripped out" my local antenna wiring, the antenna's little transformer and the Dish wiring, which I had to pay to have a technician come and replace for me. So, someone tell me who I can send the bill for this to? As no one at any of the phone numbers seems to know who's in charge.

At last i reached the pincacle of technology. This service is the future for all Telecom companies. i have been in the industry and have worked for all of these companies. The only sure thing is we need these services to watch, surf and call/ so which ever u have, u will always need it. As far as this whole U-verse product. Microsoft is in bed with these guys and as we all know they never fail. Yes there are issues there always is with new technology.

Rest easy knowing that by third or forth generations this product will take off. It will all come down to prices. With Comcast buying up all the little guys across this country and Verizone knocking on there doors. It no wander AT&T and Microsoft want in. So I guess in short if you really want this product and want to see its true potential I would wait at least another year to see what happens with its software.

Happy Happy...what ever they all end up ripping us off anyway..pick one

I hate it, but this is exactly the information I need. I was reading to decide on installing u-verse. Now it all sounds like a bad idea. I have heard of others having problems. I think I'll wait until my neighbors get theirs and get the bugs worked out, then talk ATT again. Thanks for your comments.

I have to say that all of this information is invaluable. My ISP needs override my TV requirements. I tried to order u-verse but was not able to complete the order because I already have DSL from another ISP. Apparently that is a blessing in disguise. ATT cannot even make an installation appointment until my current DSL provider is canceled. This is the only way I found out that the line is fiber optic only to the pole and uses old lines from pole to house and my current provider owns those lines at this time. The appointment issue is due to a conflict of interest over the phone line (??) There would be a MINIMUM of 5-10 days without an ISP between the cancellation of my current service and the install of u-verse. My reply to this is that ATT is definitely not going after business customers. Sounds like they're only targeting current cable customers. I don't know a person who uses email/internet for work who could be down for that length of time. Also, no one could answer the question regarding why I can't make an appt. and then guarantee that my current provider will be canceled right before the u-verse install. Again. . I think it's a blessing in disguise.

My U-verse experience in Stratford, CT has been very similar to most other people who posted here. Unlike cable companies, the service people are polite, knowledgeable, courteous, well trained, and they seem sympathetic. Unfortunately, I have spoken to them far too many times, and I have invested far too much of my own time with a buggy system that is still in the alpha or beta stage. I was an AT&T DSL and landline customer since DSL was first offered, and it was generally good except for a prolonged outage about 15 months ago. The U-verse install took two technicians most of a day, but one set-top box was inoperative and the HD did not work on the other one. A week later, they brought a replacement box set-top box and a software upgrade fixed the HD issue. A few weeks later, the pixilation and freezing began, and it continues even after they took out the old RG coax and replaced with “better quality” wire. The DSL cycles on and off, and I have had lots of POP and SMTP server problems. My neighbor gave up after two weeks and went back to Optimum for ISP, TV, and VOIP because he had so many problems and ran out of patience. So, I’m thinking his problems and mine are related to the wire portion, because it is much worse when it rains. I can’t convince AT&T because by the time they come out it is dry and the problem clears itself. What irritates me is that this is not cheap, and I continue to pay for service I am not receiving. The basic idea is good, and AT&T knows customer support and courtesy, but the system needs development. In fact, the DSL just went down and the TV froze while I tried to post this. I'm back up now, but for how long?

Too answer your question Linda Nunes, It's not Us preventing the install, It is your current Provider. See they Lease lines from us to provide Dial Tone, DSL, And other Services to people. If Att or any other company for that matter would to interfere with their line we can and would be sued for it. Now to what you said about fiber to the pole and copper to the house, that would be correct depending on were you are, Some Area are Fiber to the node, some areas are Fiber the the Prem. Sounds to me like you might be to the prem. I can not say for sure; But if that drop is old or not to the standards of U-Verse they will replace it... My suggestion for you to try, is if you add the service on top of your other provider, it might cost more to do it this way but I am un-sure. See if you can talk to them about adding it as an additional Service, and after it is up and running then you can cancel your other service. That depends on a few factors though but I would try that. Also try calling 877-u-ask-att and talk to them about it... I do apologize for your inconvenience.

Hi Service Tech,
I'm replying to you promptly because I suspect that others will find themselves in this same pinch. There is a conflict of information about who is responsible for what regarding disengaging my current DSL service. I understand that I must disconnect prior to an ATT install, that is not the problem. The issue is that I cannot even make an installation appointment with ATT UNTIL my current DSL is disconnected. I am the customer here - I am very willing to authorize a disconnect as soon as I know when U-verse will be installed. I am willing to sign a release so that each companies lawyers can quit breathing into paperbags. I can handle the risk of a couple of hours down; not 5-10 days. My current ISP disconnects my service within a couple of hours. According to them, it will take 7 - 10 days for ATT to release the line/number for a new service. I currently have ATT as my landline/long distance service. Is anyone else but me seeing a silly issue here?

And, I have called the U-verse customer service number, the great sales guy from the ATT store spend several hours trying to find a solution (as did his manager.) No dice. I cannot piggyback service; I cannot get dialup in place to span the disconnect/install gap. I can't even find out how long the gap will be.

Bottom line; my current DSL service is stable and works well. My cable service could be better but what the heck, it's just television.

I would love to be able to save money with a VOIP, HD TV/DVR, and ISP service from ATT U-verse, but not until someone can figure out how it can be implemented painlessly for me. . the customer. .the one paying the bill.

Linda Nunes, please see my post above. For now, I think you are doing the right thing - stay with your current DSL and cable providers. If you can't risk being without your DSL and TV fairly often, U-verse would not be a good idea, at least not based on my experience. AT&T just replaced a filter in the box outside my house, and it is up reliably for the first time in three days. The tech still thinks there is a copper line problem and that it will only be up for a few days. So, stay put until they get the bugs worked out.

I'm happy to see a service tech responding to some of these comments, since no ammount of phone calls or house-visits ever DID resolve MY issues. Never got a darn thing working, never figured out why, just gave up and kept my RoadRunner cable internet.

All I can say about U-verse is "give it a shot". If they can hook it up with no problems on the first visit, then give it a 30 day test run. If they have to come out to the house twice and still don't have it running, then dump it. I wasted WAYYYY too much time, too many days, watching the tech and waiting in frustration for U-verse to come online at my house... don't make the same mistake.

Thanks for all of the comments to my posts. I agree; it's just too early for me to risk going to a less stable provider. My ISP, Speakeasy, has been more stable that most (was better until acquired by another company, but that's a familiar story). Since both my husband and I require internet connection for work, we must not put ourselves in a less stable situation. TV is not the big priority (OK, for me. . .others in family would contradict me). I will sit tight and monitor the progress as both ATT and Verizon roll out their new technology. It's not the time for me to be a Beta tester

If anyone from ATT is monitoring this blog, what would be REALLY helpful is to be asked up front in the purchase process if a person already has a DSL provider, rather than waiting until the appointment screen displays during the order process. That would have saved me 45 minutes in the ATT Store and a day's worth of investigation calls on the part of the sales person helping me. If it's a "no go" with active DSL, please tell the customer right away.

So you have ATT Phone service But not our DSL.... Umm... I wounder if you already have 2 Lines to your house, well maybe not..... Well see one solution that I can think Of is If there is a Spare Pair that is in your cable, ATT Might be able to dedicate another pair to your home, But that would take some time, do to what is involved. BUT.. let's see another way that might be of help.... First off I would like to know who you current DSL Service is threw that Might help me... But with out knowing that..... I am trying to think, I know that with that DSL Service on there, it won't allow the U-Verse signal to come down the line, and with that signal for your DSL on, we can't turn it off because of the laws involved that have to turn it off, but if we try to put U-Verse on top of it, it will kill that signal and the U-Verse and the same time. Umm You might ask if there is a Spare pair in you Terminal. And they might not be able to answer that right away, You might need to ask if a Local Manager can call you about that, because it would require them to call LFacs and see what is available in there, Costumer Service wouldn't be able to tell that, they just know what Pair you are on. if your local manager can't find a resolution that you agree with, I am not too sure what else can be done. I will wait to hear your reply but in the mean time I will ask My manager what his suggestion is as well.. Thanks for your Much appreciated Business.

In Response to Josh! I am Sorry to hear that you had such a problem, I would like to remind everyone that U-Verse is still a Baby. We just reached over One Million Costumers. So it is going But with it still being so young, there are bugs, Much less in those area that are being conditioned for it now, Because for the fact that we are seeing what is causing it to fail in some areas and trying to correct it before we turn it on in new areas... I do Understand that With such Frustration You would want to drop the service. Some of these Prem. techs that they are sending out are young kids, just out of high school, and they haven't been in the Business for some time. But some of them are REALLY good...
Might I ask Did you have it installed with Cat5 or CatV wire or did they Use Existing Coax Cable? If they used the Old Coax, I would recommend a CatV install, Or if they don't have CatV were you are then Cat5. if they did that, then there must be a problem in the outside cable, And if that's the case I would give it another try in about a year, or if you see ATT out replacing cable in your area, after they finish I would try it again. I know that ATT is going to be replacing a lot of cable for this to end up being acceptable service. but Time will tell I do not even know my self I am just saying what I see happening.
Thank you for you business, And Sorry for you trouble.

It rained yesterday, and yes, U-verse and DSL were down again; 713 signal losses in 13 hours. Last Sunday a tech said they needed to send out a bucket truck to work on the line, but either it was not done, or it did not work. Today the rain stopped and everything is fine. Wouldn't you think that AT&T could figure that out? I'm thinking about contacting the Attorney General of Connecticut. I think AT&T should cease installation of new U-verse systems until the existing customers have received satisfactory service.

I've had U-verse for almost a year now and have been pretty happy with the service. I have had a few issues with my DVR (or it could be Internet latency issues). Their are a few issues I'm having.

1) I'll be watching a show and all of a sudden it'll freeze, sometimes it'll start back up a minute or so ahead and sometimes it won't and I'll have to erase the show.

2) I'll fast forward and all of a sudden its like the DVR rewound the show like 5-15 minutes and I'll have to FF again to go back to where I was watching.

3) This may be a one time thing but a few weeks ago I had to reschedule a weeks worth of programs. I looked at my scheduled programs and they were their but they said their wasn't any shows set to record so I had go back and reschedule them then erase the old schedule.

4) This is also hopefully a one time thing. Last week I had a notice on my DVR that said "no dvr available". I called and found out they were having a problem on AT&T's end and it would be fixed. It was but everything I recorded was erased.

I noticed my latency is high at times and I'm thinking that may be the cause of the first 2 problems. The latency issue sometimes is a problem when I play video games as well. I am using coax and thats because the installer told me since this is an older condo they had to install it with the old copper phone wires. I'm getting good bps stream they tell me but that doesn't mean I don't have latency problems.

The problems I have are pretty intermittent and I see that the service can be excellent. Its been good so far. Its not to the point yet where I want to get rid of it. Its better than cable which wants to throttle Internet usage and my HOA won't allow us to have satellite TV. Its a good bang for the buck if they can iron out the kinks and add some DVR interface and guide features.

I've had U-verse for almost a year now and have been pretty happy with the service. I have had a few issues with my DVR (or it could be Internet latency issues). Their are a few issues I'm having.

1) I'll be watching a show and all of a sudden it'll freeze, sometimes it'll start back up a minute or so ahead and sometimes it won't and I'll have to erase the show.

2) I'll fast forward and all of a sudden its like the DVR rewound the show like 5-15 minutes and I'll have to FF again to go back to where I was watching.

3) This may be a one time thing but a few weeks ago I had to reschedule a weeks worth of programs. I looked at my scheduled programs and they were their but they said their wasn't any shows set to record so I had go back and reschedule them then erase the old schedule.

4) This is also hopefully a one time thing. Last week I had a notice on my DVR that said "no dvr available". I called and found out they were having a problem on AT&T's end and it would be fixed. It was but everything I recorded was erased.

I noticed my latency is high at times and I'm thinking that may be the cause of the first 2 problems. The latency issue sometimes is a problem when I play video games as well. I am using coax and thats because the installer told me since this is an older condo they had to install it with the old copper phone wires. I'm getting good bps stream they tell me but that doesn't mean I don't have latency problems.

The problems I have are pretty intermittent and I see that the service can be excellent. Its been good so far. Its not to the point yet where I want to get rid of it. Its better than cable which wants to throttle Internet usage and my HOA won't allow us to have satellite TV. Its a good bang for the buck if they can iron out the kinks and add some DVR interface and guide features.

Wow, maybe I'm meant to read all of this depressing stuff. Last night, after talking awhile with an ATT rep who called about u-verse, I tentatively agreed and have an install scheduled for Friday (it's Tuesday today).

I'm in Dallas, TX, so I'm not sure how long they've been out this way with the new technology. However, I'm very wary now, and I may cancel my install, all things considering.

I would definitely cancel, Bert. I'm in Dallas too. Been there, done that, be wary.

Bob, can you or anyone in the Dallas area describe your experiences?

I started to go thru it after all upon talking with a rep who seemed to have a clue. But, at the last moment (install scheduled today), I got cold feet and cancelled.

I can't imagine the hassles of having a tv issue affect my internet--I use the 'net WAY too much to be able to afford that situation.

I have figured out my problem with att\'s uverse system. I am eqperiencing high volume of packet loss and pixilization from time to time. att has been very dilligent to help with my problem with many man hours. after personal observation of the timing of packet loss I have come to find out that Air traffic is the cause of the packet loss. which is probably the entire problem across the board. If I understood what frequency aircraft has that is traversing the uverse signal and how, this problem would be eradicated. the strange thing is my signal is arrested about 3 to five min. before the aircraft passes my property. The slower the aircraft the longer packet loss exists. a private jet of which is moving at a fast rate, chances are my system will recover before I notice or it will have a small glitch.I have even suffered an indirect lightning strike that fried my ethernet adapterand my hdmi card through my phone line , but Att is not responsible for that. Replaced my Rg and one set top. No problem! This is a relatively new technology. Im sure after they fix the bugs price will go up. we will see added services such as video phone and other things im sure. BE PATIENT! uverse service is great! fast response! and excellent service options! great price! I am just hoping the technology is able to overcome this issue. I am willing to wait and see.

New market in NE Atlanta

You made the right decision Bert by cancelling. The problems we had were too many to enumerate. Hours and hours of tech service, with no resolution to problems. Pixelation of TV, freezing up, whcih also affects the internet. After cancelling, still received bills for 5 months, and they turned us over to collection agency for past due bills for service we hadn't had for 5 months. Talked to 5 telephone reps who said they would get charges cleared - - never happened - - finally got a manager/supervisor on phone who cleared us up. The phone lines or whatever are not ready for Uverse.

I have been a U-verse subscriber in the San Francisco bay area since November of 08'. I will preface by saying that I'm the type who will place a phone call on someone's behalf if I feel that they have delivered exceptional service. However, based upon my experience with AT&T thus far, 'kudos' calls will be the least of my concerns. I can honestly say that I have had more exhausting and frustrating issues with both the service and the customer service than anyone should reasonably be expected to deal with; The original sales rep placing the order incorrectly without applying HD service to my order (for my 62" HDTV!) and it took three days to get HD running. Numberous outages for a variety of reason which are seldom well-explained, incompetence & lethargy in customer service, a grotesque lack of accountability whereby the person responsible for the issue in need of resolution is never the one on the phone with you! How about having a technician come to your home and, while resolving a simple issue, create another issue that is beyond his/her level of expertise! Functionality? My Comcast service delivered 4-HD channels along with the other digital channels. U-verse delivers 1-HD channel (though more are "right around the corner!") As an avid sports watcher, I really miss the 'slow motion' button on my Comcast remote. There is no such function with U-verse. The channel directory can be more complex than the scematic for the Tokyo subway system and channel listings can change without notification. At some point during every phone call with U-verse customer service, someone invariably states, "We do value you as a customer and thank you for using AT&T U-verse." However, with few exceptions, U-verse service and it's support network are little more than hotbeds for frustration at this point. AT&T has had SEVERAL chances to "turn my around" over several months. Instead, they regularly find new ways to add frustration to an already aggravating situation. The technology simply does not appear ready to deliver on the promises of the advertizing. I have every intention of switching back to Comcast at this point. I'm not fond of actually sitting down and writing compliants so please consider that it took a lot to get me to this keyboard for this reason.

Bob, thanks a lot for your additional feedback. From what I'm gathering, much of it depends on how long u-verse has been in that particular city (in our case, Dallas) as to the number and degree of troubles. One of the reps told me they've been in Dallas roughly 1 1/2 years, so--in theory--the techs and all should have better understanding of problems.

If I may ask, when did you experience all these hassles? If you had to deal with five months of billing despite no longer having the service, it's obviously been awhile since you cancelled. At the same time, this suggests severe customer service issues, which are independent of the technology and further cause for concern.

Rashawn, glad to hear you have faith in them, but isn't that highly discouraging to have something as frequent or random as planes overhead disturbing the signal, without even knowing how long it might be before they work out the kinks with this? It could be a very long while. Sounds like you have a lot more patience than I do. I can't imagine frequent service interruptions, especially as much as I use the internet.

Horrible service. Lets just say I cancelled it the second day that it was installed. We had misreprsentation on the whole package. The sales represenatative never mentioned that you can only watch 4 tv at one time and only two that are on HD. So please be aware. I also had freezing up and pixelation problems. Please be very aware if you re planning on switching to At&T uverse. Comcast might be a little pricey but well worth it.

Hello everyone,
Just wanted to say Uverse has come along way since its launch in San Diego about 1 year and half ago (San Diego only). I'm not sure what the issues have been in other areas like L.A., the Bay Area, or other states for that matter.
I work for AT&T and I'm the first one to admit we had a rocky start; our product is new and we are working to make it better. In addition, it seems we have corrected most issues in San Diego. I work as a Home Solutions Manager in the San Diego Area and when my customers have issues they call me to resolve them. These are some of the steps the company has taken to improve our customer service response time and overall experience.
Also, some reps do misrepresent the product, which is why we have a Code of Ethics and Business Conduct in place. It isn't any different than any other individuals in other companies misrepresenting their products' capabilities. All I can say is that you can get fired for misrepresenting U-verse.

Best way to compare is to try it our yourself, you don't have to be wary since your are not locked into a contract. There's literally no risk in signing up and trying it out. We have no installs, no contracts, no satellite. We even have a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee. There's really nothing to loose when you are already paying top dollar with your current cable provider.
And right now we have promotions like:
1 mo. Free TV, $100 cash back, 1 yr. free HD (46 channels are now available, and we do offer 2 HD Streams as of May 18th 2008)
We are a company trying to win over customers, no create a bad reputation for ourselves; unfortunately, you don't always here the good things about our products, most of the time you get to hear from those individual cases were something went wrong.
I work in San Diego only, but if you are from another state I can definitely answer your questions or concerns, I just can't sign you up.
My name is Ivan Gil, Sales Manager, call me at 619-791-6411 or email me at [email protected].

Ivan,
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I hope I can clarify the frustrations for you. I come from the software development world and am accustomed to Beta testing and controlled releases of product. The glaring issue I see with the rollout of U-Verse is that marketing didn't realize that the product is not ready for prime time. Expectations have been set by mailings and advertising. I also have issues with being asked to pay for something I'm testing. A money-back guarrantee still requires that I take money out of my pocket in the first place - not to mention money lost due to time away from work to troubleshoot and installation appointments.

In regards to the consequences of misrepresenting the product - I found that the sales people were not trained to properly sell the product. How can you fire someone who was not trained to answer questions or represent the new product? Sorta sounds like a gray area to me.

-Linda Nunes
Will not be canceling Comcast any time soon.

Having been a reluctant captive of Comcast Cable for several years, I was happy to learn about AT&T Uverse's arrival in my neighborhood.

Immediately called and scheduled installation about a month ago. SOOOO happy I did. Double the channels, super fast wireless IP, no voice (we use cells).

Help AT&T continue to give you a choice! Sign up now!!!!

Jewls

Believe it or not, the problems (see my previous entries) have finally been resolved. I've had DSL, TV, and HDTV for several weeks, even in the rain, with no problems. AT&T credited one month of service - I guess that was a reward for my patience. It took three months, but now that it is finally working, U-verse seems great.

Just got the Uverse, I'm very happy and they did a professional job in every aspect of the install including the booties on and off going inside and out several times. I do have a new problem though, my security system requires port forwarding and it seems the Uverse bos doesnt offer it. Has anyone come up with a solution for this? Thanks Rich

Have had Uverse for a week and a half. Problems with the tv (only one of 2) since the day after it went in. Every time I turn on the receiver that has the DVR, I get sound but a black and blue video. I have to reset the receiver. Last Sunday AT&T came out and replaced the receiver. Lasted 2 hours and did the same thing. Came again on Tuesday. Once again, the receiver was replaced. Another 2 hours and the same thing again. Wednesday, another tech came. Put in a line resistor and reterminated a cable. After he left, the receiver not only had the black and blue screen of death, but it continually resets itself now.

Coming back for round 4 this afternoon. Last time for me and I'll go back to DirecTV. Should've stayed with them from the get go.

However, I'm very wary now, and I may cancel my install

Well, after several talks with various reps---one really credible one in particular (the first guy was a complete flake)--I decided to give the u-verse a try.

Keeping in mind it's only been five days, so far so good. I'm holding onto my other service for now.

has anybody had any experiences on the southside of indianapolis. i'm thinking of switching from comcast

I meant to add I live in Dallas, where supposedly u-verse has been in biz approaching two years. Had it been, say, less than a year, I likely would have stayed with my prior provider.

I have Uverse in the Dallas area. It works fine.
Picture is excellent; almost zero downtime. We like it as cable TV goes. The DVR works great. Menus are clear and easy to use.

Having said that -

Comments - Getting installed was a nightmare. I had earthlink DSL which apparently leased ATT's wire into my house. We went through WEEKS of
"You must cancel Earthlink DSL before we can install"
"But I DID cancel Earthlink DSL and I can prove it"
"No you didn't" "Yes I did!"
Ad infinitum. (Well, FIVE install cancellations!)
I had to call management to get beyond that point.

Installation then took 8 hours and they drilled holes in the brick walls of my house and put ugly wires down the outside walls. Hmph.

Can't support HDMI cables although the box is wired for it. I tried - it failed.

Can't use my RFLink 5.8 GH wireless TV tranmitter/receiver any more. RF Link is working the reason, but everyone is baffled.

The interactive net features are pointless and take too long to boot. Sports scores; local weather; stocks. Bah.

My

Anyone in the Detroit area? Lincoln Park specifically
I am scheduled for install next week however I am now extremely worried given all this info. Especially considering my husband is leary to change anyway--I'm talking him into it.

I got it a couple of weeks ago near Chicago. It's working pretty well and the DVR functions much better than the horrible one from Comcast ever did. Installation wasn't too bad and would have been faster if not for this building's stupid intercom system.

Problems so far:
No Comcast Sports HD channel in the lineup at this point. The DVR box just stopped producing picture and video at one point (but it would still show the interactive channel menus) and it took me unplugging it to get it back. Various minor graphical issues.
Nothing major, really, and it looks like I'll be dropping cable.

Just ordered UVerse in the Columbus, Ohio area. Anyone out there with positive comments. Am thinking about cancelling after reading all the above.

I just talked to a Uverse sales rep and I thinking about changing my service. But after reading all these posts I am definately having second thoughts. Has anyone had any experience with Uverse in the Milwaukee area?

I am from Milwaukee too and I was just talked into U-Verse by a sales rep. I wish I had read this before speaking with her because I would have deffinately asked more questions. If anyone has had experience with U-Verse from the Milwaukee area or even Wisconsin, PLEASE POST!!

Very sorry that so many of you out there are having difficulty with U-verse. We've had it now for 4 months. This is our first experience with any kind of pay TV at our home. Before U-verse we just watched regular TV. My husband is a movie buff and when he retired I thought I'd surprise him with this service. WE LOVE IT. We are NOT experiencing any of the problems that I've read about here. My internet speed is faster and more reliable than it was with my past provider. As for the TV service, my husband could not be happier. No freezing picture, the sound is terrific and Movies on Demand as a bonus. We also get a reward rebate for getting the bundle deal. We've been recommending U-verse to everyone who asks us about it. I talked my brother into switching to U-v , only to find that it's not yet in his area. He lives 2 and a half miles from us. Work on that please!!!!

Would someone with U-verse on West coast answer the simple question att reps couldn't: Is the tv service east coast programming based or local (meaning prime time is showing at 8pm like on cable)?

I must say I been totally impressed by the ATT Uverse it's cutting edge and the on screen menu's blows comcast out of the water. I mean you can actually see a live preview of a channel in the preview window... And yes the online content like yahoo games and photo's takes too long to see and use it should be instant but I would never use it would rather be able to see content from my computer like with the Xbox360 to show movies and photo's...

The bottom line is ATT Uverse is cutting edge technology even though it's hybrid DSl it's really neat to use and is still in it's infancy but either way I am going to stick it out... I was a Comcast user for about ten years and seriously had no major problems with comcast always had great service but wanted to try something new.

Price wise ATT Uverse is cheaper even against Comcast's promotions and service here in Westland, Michigan has been great so far.

I don't know if it's right for everyone but if your a geek you will love ATT Uverse just because it is IPTV and the modem is nothing like I have ever used...

Each extra box only costs an extra $5 a month and each box has HDMI and RJ45(Ethernet Cable) so I got two extra boxes one for my room and one for my sons...

Unfortunately you can only DVR or watch the recorded shows from the main box and you can set to DVR 5 shows at the same time if I am not mistaken...

You can fast forward and rewind live shows as well...

The only issue I have or that bugs me is the speeds and wonder if they will ever be able to increase them in the future. I got the max speeds which is 10mb down and 1.5mb up... I haven't found a web stream or download that can handle more then 2mb transfers... But bit torrents aren't being blocked with ATT as of yet if that is a plus...

I won't switch back to Comcast anytime soon as I think even if Comcast increases their speeds the pipeline won't be much different and the speeds I had with INTERNET with Comcast fluctuated way to much compared to the speeds I am getting with ATT Uverse at this moment.

I never used DSl or had Fiber but must say this is still neat to use...

Install was a snap for me the installer just plugged the DSl line into the phone jack then he went to the main Uverse box and hooked me up with the service. Took a little while but most of the time was spent at the Fiber box about 900 ft from my Condo... Was sweet watching him unpack all that new equipment...

Well that's about all I'll say for now...

CozmicShredder,

You're lucky, then. It totally disrupted every single bit of P2P I was doing. Can't upload or download, even pay services. And it can't see my laptop. The tech tried for an hour to make it see our laptop and our laptop to see it. As a result my kids can't do their online schooling unless they bump me off my business computer.

Those are our only complaints, though. We aren't seeing the issues others have seen.

I have yet another problem to report with AT&T U-verse. I signed up for the service package (Internet, cable and phone) Their technician came to the house to install it all. It went well, but when he called to get my phone activated using my same number, I was told that they had not gotten my phone number released by Sprint, my former provider. I was told I would have to wait a week for this. Since the tech had already taken out the old stuff and put in the AT&T lines, he could not just switch it back. I called their 800-288-2020 customer service number and was given quite a run-a-round. They promised call-backs on the problem, and never called. They said they would send a tech out, but he never showed up. Finally, I just gave up, and decided to wait out the 7 days with no phone service. Today was the day that they were supposed to come and fix the problem. No tech showed up, and no one from AT&T called. When I called Customer Service yet once more to see what was going on, they had no record of a service call being ordered. Once again I was told that they had not requested a release of my phone number. This means another 7 day wait for phone service. If they can't get a simple phone line in, then just think of the opportunities to mess up on all the harder stuff. If they can't get this fixed soon I will go back to Time Warner ( I should never have left). I think they have big problems with customer service to iron out, and I cannot recommend U-verse at all.

I just got AT&T Uverse. I'm in Rancho Cordova (near Sacramento), CA. The image quality is good, but the on screen guide and configuration options are lacking. The guide can't be customized much at all. I can exclude channels, but that's about it. Also, the channel guide shows the station call letters, but not the station friendly name (e.g. Discovery, History). I got so used to seeing friendly names with DirectTV making this is Uverse's guide difficult to browse.

I am in Saint Louis, Missouri, and we had a rep show up at our door and sold me on this new technology. I have an installation set up on the 19th of AUG. So anyone in Missouri have any problems? OR good things to say??? Also...if there is a wireless router to be installed...I already have one that we use for our PS3??? Will it interfere??? Will we need our other wifi router? Can we just use the new router for our PS3 also??? for you techies out there you know gaming is a priority???

I just had U-Verse installed this past weekend and am very pleased at this point. None of the issues some others have reported. Installed in less than 3 hours - 3 sets plus DVR and Internet. Located in Columbus, OH. The service is just new in this area. No delay when changing channels and the picture is great. There is delay when swithing to Games but I don't play them so not a big deal. Everyone (ATT) I have spoken to thus far has been great. Do not have the wireless hooked up yet but hope that goes smoothly. Internet speed seems at least as good as Warner Cable. Much cheaper for more services than Warner. I hope it continues.

Plus we get the Big 10 network!

Does anyone else in Ohio have any issues?

Interesting article in a way, but as our friend said: Rough start-up" isn't the same as "doomed". U-verse is one of the best services out there now, it's way better than cable, it has more hi-def channels than cable, dvr features and many other to list. Now, as most products the first version never works a 100%, they're finding solutions to fix all the little problems that we encounter that if we add them all can be frustrating and make us want to cancell the service. In a few months it will all be resolved, and if you are looking into getting u-verse go ahead and get it, it's great.

We've had U-verse in our new neighborhood in Fort Worth since Dec. '07. I hate the motorola DVR, u can watch tv on any of our 4 boxes, but only watch recorded shows on the 1 main DVR tv. Verizon has commercials now showing u can record on 1 tv, but watch from any tv in house. i am sick of this aspect of u-verse....if verizon can offer these better dvrs than so can ATT.
Also, if i am recording 2 shows and also 2 tvs are being used for live tv, kids turn on a 3rd tv and boom it asks to interrupt a show, etc...
Come on ATT, u told me in December that within a month or so u were switching from motorola boxes to scientific atlanta boxes which are supposedly better with more bandwidth needed to run hd on all tv boxes at once, not 1 at a time. i was told this 8 months and still same crappy motorola equipment.
we want to be able to watch recorded dvr shows on any tv in house, not just the 1.
Todd

I agree. We felt like AT&T U-verse was experimenting with our service and our home!

We had many problems with the installation, the AT&T U-verse Gateway, and the wireless home network provided by AT&T. The internet speeds were so inconsistent that even reading e-mail became a burden.

Playing games on the internet was impossible.

AT&T told us they couldn't deliver reliable, consistent internet speeds via their wireless network. I thought they could have fixed the problem, but I guess not. Has anyone else had this problem???

-Long, ineffective installation process
-Slow, slow internet speeds
-Internet lags and disconnects

It was not worth the trouble and the internet just didn't work. In the end, AT&T gave up.

www.att-consumer-report.com

The new CISCO boxes are being installed, however if you already have the Motorola dvr then we will not replace it unless it is defective.

AT&T techs (usually in teams of two) have been in my house for over 50 man hours. I'm currently on my second day of voip outage. The repair tech called my home line (while I was sitting in my living room) to tell me he'd be right by. But, since my phone doesn't work, I couldn't get the call - so he didn't come - even though I gave AT&T my cell number. Then their dispatcher berated me for not being available for the tech. Where do they get these rocket scientists?

I've spent over two hours cleaning mud off my floors. I've gone days without phone service. Other days without internet service. I've spent over 10 hours with AT&T on the phone. Two days ago it took over an hour on the phone and two escalations to reach someone who could send a tech out. The TV service pixelates like mad - lots and lots of dropped packets. And one HD stream? Weren't we all told there would be two by the end of summer? Ah, yes, no mention of a year.

This is the least reliable, most frustrating, most ill-conceived consumer product I've ever encounters in my 50+ years on the planet.

I used to think cable TV had the worst customer service imaginable. I've had to expand my imagination with AT&T. I've run into several very nice people, a few rude creeps, and virtually no one who had any idea of how to get the service to work reliably and consistently.

If you like being treated rudely, savoring frustration, and wasting time to get a clearly inferior service, sign up today.

I have had a horrible experience with AT&T. I was completely happy with Comcast other than the price and the sometimes flaky DVR.

It started when the slick salesman kept pestering me to switch to AT&T. He offered me $300 cash, first month of tv free, and free HD for a year. Sounded too good to be true and it turned out it was.

It took two installation dates to get the service installed. The first time there was no video signal at my home according to the tech. He appologized and offered to give me an extra free month of TV. That never happened.

As far as peformance, the internet was slower than comcast. I supposidly have 6mb elite service which is slower than Comcast 6mb.

As far as price, it is as expensive as Comcast if not more expensive. The $40 phone charge turned out to $52 after all of the fees.

The real problems came with the first bill. I was charged for HD service when it should have been free for a year. I called and was told that promotion is no longer available. They tried to offer something else-bait and switch!

When we asked about the $300 offer, they said they have no record of the offer.

I am switching back to Comcast. The triple play will save me about 40-50 per month.

Greetings. I live in Concord, California and have the
"refrigerator" white UVERSE boxes in multi-unit complexes near me. Concord is 26 miles east of San Francisco and has a population of 135,000. As usual AT*T puts the boxes up, but gives no clue as to when they will reach a particular area. I am extremely skeptical about FTTN. There is also the problem of IPTV shutting down when the internet connection goes down. If CLEARWIRE can get WIMAX fully stable, I may be able to get IPTV, VOIP, etc from AT&T, COMCAST, DISH or DIRECT TV. What we all really need is for
all of these companies to put the customer first. If that ever actually happens, that is the company that will get my business.

has anyone in metro atlanta had any experience with u-verse

My mom and my boss both lost their televisions this week. Both subscribe to U-verse and both had the same problem, the video is shot, and both have fairly new TVs. I saw on the internet today that another U-verse customer also lost the video in both of his TVs. In all cases, the TVs are unrepairable. When you spend thousands of dollars, this is costly damage, and I have no doubt that it is U-verse - related. Keep this post in case your TV breaks down all of a sudden.

Stay away from U-verse in the ATL. I feel like they have surpassed Comcast for bad customer service and a product they oversold. I have their internet and tv. When they work they are ok. The sales person even mentioned that their standard channels were better than Comcast's HD - fat chance.

They have already increased fees by $10 due to 2 channels I watched the Atlanta Braves on. They took the Sportsouth channels from their base (100)package and put them in the sports package or in their premium (400) package. With 0 notice the channels showed up as "not subscribed" when I called their level 2 tech support had no knowledge. It just so happens within the time I called a few other customers were calling as well. I called and spoke with their sales dept and they were not aware. I was told that the supervisor would call me and that never happened either.

My service was installed the day the NCAA college basketball tournament began. Being a UGA fan and living in Atlanta I figured I would watch that game - it was the very first game of the tournament. As soon as the next game (UNC vs. some 16th seed) started 10 minutes later that was my local game. ATT explanation was that (months later) was that it was part of a package - they did not offer. Currently, ATT is not a big enough player in the cable world for me to watch my local team?

I was concerned with reliability initially, but was told that I would have no problems. The technology was such that the service would not get knocked out. Sometimes, when I go to sleep neither the TV or internet works and when I wake up the same thing. Speaking with tech support they can see issues, but offer little help to diagnose the problem except send a tech out that does not show. The day after the tech did not show, I get a call from their dispatch or care dept. to see how the service call went. Except they did not show. Scheduled another call and they are currently late by over an hour for that. Supposedly they sent people south to help with the hurricane.

I even have people knocking on my door trying to sell this product. At every turn there are issues. Not one time has a courtesy credit been offered, nothing but "sorry" - YOU GOT THAT RIGHT!

Now, I read something about potentially losing my TV? What's with that?

Signing up with U-verse is the worst thing I've ever done! From the incompetence of the installation tech to the "customer service" reps who know nothing to the interference on the TV and the static on the phone that no one knows how to fix. The repair people who expect you to take off lots of time from work so they can attempt to fix this nightmare, if you thrive on stress and aggrevation this is the service for you! For now I think I would be better off with an antena and two cans and a string!

Anyone in the Ft. Lauderdale area of Broward County, Florida has U-verse installed & care to comment? I'm considering switching over from Comcast and bundling with U-verse for TV/phone/internet. Good idea? Thanks!

To Janet,
I researched ATT U-verse as a switch from Comcast TV cable service only to the full ATT U-verse package. My posts about this are in this blog. To sum it up, U-verse is all about the TV service, not the internet service which is critical for me so it was a no-go. The path to find out I couldn't make the switch from DSL to ATT U-verse without going an undetermined time without any ISP was unacceptable.

U-verse is fan-tastic.

For the average user:
Record up to 4 shows on DVR?
Lots of HD content?
Seems pretty fast to me (channel switching).
Killer Wireless Router/Gateway (2-Wire w/ wireless & 4-port switch).
Get it all (TV, Internet, Phone)?

What I want is to be able to put the OS in a Virtual environment on my PC and do my own DVR and playback. That would be SWEET! Any geeks figured that out?!?!

Well so far here in Westland, MI. it's been about 5 months and the cable service and Internet have been rock solid no issues what so ever and I use the Internet all the time. And Uverse to me is all about the Internet service because without Internet IPTV wouldn't be! I get average speeds about 10mb up and around 1.5 mp up.

I had Comcast since 1997. I seriously didn't like the commercials comcast had about ATT and I remember how horrible Comcast had been over the years and thought it was wrong for Comcast to act like they were a perfect company so I switched! And like I said the service turned out to be above satisfactory!

More and more people I know are making the switch to ATT Uverse and loving it! Comcast sooner or later will fail do to the limitations of Broadband and the fact that the main customer the Internet user is getting restricted!Because they are going to have to Cap more and more as their company looses customers to other service providers that use Fiber.

In my mind I see companies like Verizon Fios and ATT that will succeed and other smaller companies that offer Fiber or maybe some other type of high speed Wireless service. I don't hate Comcast just been through all their horrible days and back in the day all cable companies were horrible. But for a company to act like they are better when they weren't always better and people had to suffer because Comcast had blocked all other cable competitors I say switch and give it time!

Oops! I meant 10mb down and around 1.5 mp up!

Oops! I meant 10mb down and around 1.5 mb up!

Man they need to add a edit button here!

This is my experience with ATT Uverse in the Detroit area. I signed up in July 2008 for the total package of phone, TV, and internet and was promised $100 new customer sign up bonus and a $100 come back for phone service for a total of $200 bonus. I had been with WOW for many years and was seeing a declined in speed quality and consistancy w internet as time went on.
Problems w ATT include:
1) No local access/govt channels for my city ever though everybody pays a mandatory fee for these channels. ATT refuses to pay to interface with the local communties older cable system network! THEY REASON THAT THEY ARE A PHONE COMPANY ONLY.
2)Missing local channel 9-CBC which is across the river in Windsor, Ont, Canada. So, no Hockey Night in Canada or unbiased news programs. All other cable providers carry this LOCAL channel.
3)Unable to change no of rings(set at 3-4 rings)that phone VoiceMail system picks up. So this negates most fax machines which pick up at 5 rings! So no incoming faxes!
4)Their HD/DVR box unable to work properly w my new LCD when using a HDMI cable (no sound after first week). So had to switch to componant type cables resulting in a degraded HD signal! Constant re-booting on this box because it locks up.
5)And here's the topper. NO local sports(Fox Sports Net) in the HD package! Thats what HD is for ATT, live sports programming. All other cable companies HAVE FSN in HD of course.

If you have DSL you can switch with no problems... the install would be the only time you are down for... 6-8 hours... only time that would not be true is if you are using a re-seller DSL company and if you are I highly recomend switching away from them and getting over to AT&T. for the simple fact that should you ever have any trouble down the road with your internet it will be a nightmare to have the problem resolved...
How ever switching from AT&T DSL to U-Verse is no problem at all... And to those saying that AT&T does not give the interenet speed, then they dont read very well.... U-Verse internet speed packages are 1.5Mb down & 1Mb up--3Mb down & 1Mb Up--6Mb down & 1 Mb up--10Mb Down and 1.5 Mb up
And to correct another answer... People agure and say "Well comcast says that they have "Power Boost" with "Up to 16Mb downloads" okay lets put some truth behind that MYTH... Lets say you are downloadling 1Gig... the boos will only be for the first few seconds... After that you go back to 6mb or 10mb in some areas... now lets put some more truth to that myth... lets say your trying to do this while kids are getting home from school... your speed will slow down even more.. you might get 3Mb download at this point... REASON.. Aprox. 2000 plus poeple are going threw one nod on their network going threw a single fiber to one card...
why do i tell you this... because on the AT&T U-Verse network a MAX of 24 people are being served on One card and a max of 400 on 2 fibers. So when you order 10mb download speed you will get 10Mb download speed 24/7 and not 40% of the time... not to mention we don't tell you that you can only download so much a month... unlike comcast with their regulations on internet usage...
I think we have a winner
and a new feature to add... TOTAL HOME DVR... Puase TV in one room start it in resume it in another room... PLUSS up to FOUR TV's can watch the same recorded show at the same time and still puase rewind independently and not interupt the others, all from a single DVR.. this will be in place by the end of fall in all areas.. those of you who already have the DVR service will have this at no extra cost...
thank you for reading my post....

Had the service installed 2 weeks ago in the Austin area. It works great. So far so good. I have a fairly new home (2001) so my cabling is fairly new. The installer said they have learned a lot about what cabling works and how that using old cable and old connectors can greatly impact the bandwidth coming into your sets. Dirty copper and bad connections will cause pixeling and freeze framing. If you have an older home then you may need new cabling ran in your home and new twisted pair run to your home for uverse to work correctly.

To AT&T, post of 10/5:
I don't know what rule book you're reading, but the issue with changing from DSL to U-verse does NOT take 6-8 hrs. and this is per information directly from AT&T. Having a reseller DSL provider is not the issue. These companies provide excellent customer and repair service that AT&T could only hope to match. The inability to guarrantee a roll over schedule for me was ONLY on the AT&T side. My DLS provide could hand off immediately.

Get your facts straight before posting.

My experience with U-verse in the Cleveland OH: Terrible experience with all facets of ATT. We were pitched U-verse by a door-to-door salesman. We signed on but the order was not completely processed so we wasted a Saturday waiting for them to show up. Next appt went better but the technician discovered that due to the path of wiring to our home that we were technically too far from the fiber optic box for U-verse.

Of course ATT cancelled out local phone and DSL as part of the process. You can imagine the joy of dealing with ATT customer service to rectify this. Two weeks without phone service and still waiting for our DSL.

During this process another salesperson came to our house to sell U-verse and it took a couple of attempts from my wife to convince this person that regardless of what ATT said that we could not get the service

Customer service was useless and took many,many calls over many hours. The different arms of ATT do not communicate and you could never get a hold of anybod with any accountability.

Our cable company on the other hand deals with issues the same day so maybe our long-term decision has been made for us. I would recommend avoiding ATT!

For a communication company AT&T needs to take some lessons. Like Linda N, I spent much time trying to get U-Verse installed, both on line and in an AT&T store, I also had a long "chat" with an on line person. . All were really polite and the young lady at the AT&T store really went out of her way to assist me. Bottome line --even the sales people are not told about having to disconnect dsl before they can even order U-Verse. And NOWWHERE in the on line order form or other advertising is there any mention . Seems I will be putting up with Comcast for awhile--maybe I'll just go to Dish TV and keep my current dsl service.

Look out: After I signed the contract, U-verse poached my phone number (without my permission) away from my ISP, Time Warner, before they discovered they couldn't do an install at my house (older non-grounded electrical plugs). Now I'm without home telephone for two weeks while Time-Warner drags its feet getting my digital phone hooked up again, at an extra charge and in a more expensive package.

Nothing like being gang-raped by a couple of giant corporations.

Worthwhile noting that the poor UVerse tech was left on hold by his own company for over 20 minutes. It took me an hour (of cell phone minutes) to get anyone to complain to when I discovered my phone had been disconnected and re-routed into cyberspace.

A plague on both their houses.

Ramsey
Austin, TX

I read a hand full of comments here and did some research
myself. Most subscribers are bios to what there needs are
for what isp/provider works best for them at there level of understanding to configure there needs.
Here is what I came up with.

1. 6 to 8 hrs is for a full custom installition , not a switch over.

2. IPTV or any fiber provider has better quality.

3. Older homes that have 35yr old electric wiring and ungrounded outlets is a fire hazard, and against 99% of any city state local codes, you can’t even sell your home in most cases without a GFCI installed.

4. All providers have there good and bad. The fight to switch from 1 provider to another will always be a mess
as providers try and move you from one provider switch to another.

5. Price / Cost is 85% of your descion to select your provider.

6. Cable Providers need to drop there prices and uncap
Up/dl speeds. Pick up and or drop off there owned equipment instead of making subscribers do it.
get rid of the boostspeed and leave it open.
a 30 to 60 second speed increase is just a tease
then you got to wait 3 min to get the boostspeed again.
reduce the amount of subs per node so during prime time
your speed is less the 56kb.

7. IPTV Providers need to make there RG's more compatible
with protocols other then web surfing , advance users use
FTP, SSH2, DCC, FXP , Needless to say the RG Port forwarding don’t work well at all.
Stop Blocking / Firewalling File sharing Ports.
Have there workforce work as one , Rather than u-verse to install, I&M to install new drops, and 09 to remove bridge taps and clear cable trouble that should have been done prior to u-verse install. ( bridge tap a multiable pair down the cable increasing line footage total to vrad. causing freezing picture. )
I believe they call it Dpro that clears trouble after the install not b-4 install.
Stop disconnecting other providers connections and re using it. What if they wanted to switch back or use both at the sometime?

Overall U-verse won the Battle. The lower cost and better quality picture. once all the bugs were worked out.

I just got U-VERSE and wanted to add my comments, simply based on the fact that the majority of people who write on these forum/blogs are the unsatisfied folks.

FOR THOSE OF YOU STILL ON THE FENCE ABOUT GETTING
U-VERSE***PLEASE READ:

I am here to tell you that the installation went very good, stayed withing the expected install time limits, and was painless with only one tech who was very professional and upbeat.
I had a phone porting issue since stupid Brighthouse doesn't port on Saturdays, other than that I am very happy with what I am seeing. The speed of the Internet and quality of television U-300 pkg is more than satisfactory. The functionality of the controller and the hardware is better than expected.

I am just tired of all the negative normans feeding off of each others miserable attitudes.

Oh and one last note to those that are here to drain their tear ducts, I am sure at one time or another in your life as an adult, you and/or your company have made mistakes at one time or another on a given task, well multiply that by tens of thousands or more with trying to implement U-Verse in several markets at one time, there are bound to be a few kinks.
If you go to McDonalds and they screw up your super-size-me order, are you going to boycott McDonalds for life or shoot down the whole company...I don't think so!!!
So go pull yourselves together and realize that many thousands of folks are satisfied with their service and installation of ATT-Uverse (at least for now).

I will also be getting it.. I was wondering what exactly they have to do.. cause on the wensite for u-verse they dont exactly tell you what is involved. If someone could post a list.

Check out the AT&T U-talk Peer to Peer forums. You can find a whole bunch of horror stories on the internet.

If you don't have an actual GROUNDED 3-prong outlet, and don't want to spring to have one installed, you can immediately forget about getting U-Verse. Unfortunately, they don't tell you this when you call to order, so you wind up taking time off of work for nothing.

Also, be prepared to take more than a day off. In most cases, the don't even finish the job in one day.

On top of that, most people I've read stories from had major billing errors. And AT&T U-Verse customer service is on par with other awful CS departments.. you WILL wait on hold for around an hour and the most you can hope for is a CS rep that cares. Most people who have posted their stories expressed that the CS reps did not understand the situation, didn't seem to want to, and gave them a run around.

Personally, I'll stick with my Comcast. Sure I can only record two shows at once, but I rarely ever have any issues with my cable. Not to mention, when I call customer service I get a rep immediately.

We just got At&t U-Verse Oct 29, 2008 before we got it, was told about the new features, turned out not to be true. We had dish network threw At&t, with our dish network we could pause live TV from any one of our rooms, records, for the third bedroom we had to buy a DVR box to record in the third room. With the new U-Verse went can only pause from the living room tv, there's no total control as they tell you.

How is it total control when you have to get out of bed go to the living room and turn that set on to record something, you think someone in your home might want to see, and when you get there, you have missed part of it. When your in bed and need to go to the kitchen to get something, your to miss part of the show because you can't pause it or record it.

I've been on the phone with At&T for the two days we have had the new u-verse and we don't like this. There's no as they advertise saying you have total on control of your tv's no you don't your tv's now have control of you. As I told At&t that it's no different then hooking a vcr back up that is what you have taking us back to there's nothing new in this Uverse, I was then told yes you will not loose signal when a storm comes, well I would whether loose signal then go threw this.

I told At&t that when I cancel this I will get my dish network threw dish and not them, I don't like being lied to and that is what they did. They knew of all this before they started installing it into peoples homes and with this new U-Verse your going back in time and not forward. Now I know why when they connected me to dish and I asked dish why was I connected to them when I got my dish threw at&t. I was told, yes you paid at&t but they paid us and we have an account of you. She then stated are you sure you want to cancel dish, would you like to keep the account open for thirty days, I told her no, not knowing what I know now. But I had a feeling they knew but could not say anything.

If your thinking of getting U-Verse think twice, if you like to pause from your bedroom and not just the living room, if you like to hit record from another room and not just the living room or one box, I was even told oh, you can go on line in your bed room and hit record now tell me this, if I can do that from the internet why can't the box in our bedroom do the same thing. I'm paying extra for these boxes that don't do anything but let us watch what we have set to record from the living room box. Think twice before you get this service.

Any miss spelled words I'm sorry, I'm still up set about this. Again we have only had it two day.

Cindyrsdu

I think they updated their system with newer boxes for other rooms with the record function. I am still using the boxes they gave out in July 2008. One main box in the living room and two little boxes in each of the bedrooms.

And this is a new system with IPTV and even though it's been around a bit but it is still in it's infant state and they are upgrading the systems as I have read and seen.

So far I only know of two companies supporting IPTV that is ATT and Verizon FIOS. I know Microsoft makes the softwre or the networking servers software or something like that.

Eventually as the bandwidth is sorted out as more get on they will let out more features as I suspect this whole nutty thing with people complaining will get worse as more and more cable providers adopt to this type of media streaming.

At least ATT took the step with this to give it it's all and I commend them on it and so far it works great for me but I know for some there are issues that could go wrong and well people trying to adopt to a newer technology there is always going to be huge problems.

I am sorry some of you people have had so many issues and well I am sure someone from ATT is watching these blogs and feel the same way just this Technology with IPTV will be improved over time and within our time as I see it is the new cable!

I just don't see all those installers actually knowing how to make sure everyones homes are able to support a really good stream without issues like maybe old outdated copper wiring!

What maybe they should be doing is setting up a system to test homes to see exactly how their new cable will work and maybe people should see if a friend has it and see how it looks and works before they make the move?

AT&T U-Verse needs to tell there customers the truth. Before I went to the new U-Verse I asked all kinds of questions, I had my wireless through AT&T, I had my satellite (dish network) through AT&T, which each TV you could pause live TV, record from any room, when I switched over to the new u-verse we no longer could do this, after we where told we would be able to do. I even owned one of my own dish network boxes, again I asked them over and over about recording from each room, pausing live TV from each TV, and I was told yes we would do that.

I even told them if there system could not preform up to what I had now then I didn't want it. I was told oh, yes it's even better that we buy all of our stations from dish network, and you will see a big saving and better service.

Well the system didn't come even close to the dish network, I've only had my system in less then two weeks now, it freezes up alot, in one day it froze over six times, the recording of one of our shows it recorded only 28 min, which is an hour show, it did that three times. No, we are going back to the Dish network.

I've spoke with AT&T and they have given us 100 channels for six months, at no charge, taken 20.00 off a month for six months, but when I asked them when will they get the boxes where you can pause live tv, and record from other rooms, that it's not good to get up in the middle of the night when you see something your family might want to see and have to turn the living room tv on and off. This is too much ware on our living room tv.

Also the internet to record something when your not at home, have anyone tried it, well I did. I wanted it to record the election results and it would not do it, I took photos of the message it gave me. If the program you wanted to record didn't come on for two hours or more then it would do it, but if it had already started or was about to start it would not do it.

No, I don't care for this at all. I also spoke with a supervisor and asked right out, when will we get boxes where we can pause live tv from other rooms and record, I was told she didn't know that they was working on it, and it would be called the total home u-verse. I told her I have that, it's all on my paper work, Again I asked her to give me a ball park idea of a date, three months, six months, a year, someone has to have some type of an idea, again I was told she didn't know they was working on it.

I went back over the information we had gotten in the mail, and what was given to us, on our paper work and again it states we have the total u-verse and at the bottom, in fine print it states that every home will have the two DVR boxes by the end of 2008. Well I find that funny since I've only had the system for two weeks and no one can give me a straight answer. So every new customer should have been getting the two DVR boxes if every home is going to have them by the end of 2008, well the end of that year is almost here.

I will be calling AT&T Monday and they can take there U-Verse TV I'm going back to my satellite but I don't think we will get it through AT&T like we did before. I don't like it when you lie to me. All my service was through AT&T, internet (wireless) Dish network and our home phone, I've also gotten some paper work in the mail where our home phone some changes where made that I told them I didn't want changed. Does anyone at AT&T listen at all?
Cindyrsdu

I am currently a Charter Cable customer in Glendale, CA and have been interested in U-Verse for some time. My neighbors across the street have it, but my house is out of range, or so I'm told.

Anyhow, today I received a call from AT&T trying to sell me $14.95 DSL service. I said that I had Cable, but I was interested in the U-Verse service. The operator surprised me by saying "You don't want U-Verse", and continued to say it had many troubles and that AT&T would be DISCONTINUING U-VERSE NEXT MONDAY, November 10, 2008.

I asked her to say that again, and she said that AT&T is getting out of the U-Verse business. People who already have it will have to get something else.

After reading of all the troubles, and thinking about the current economy, I guess it shouldn't be a big surprise, if true.

If you are frustrated with U-verse now, just wait till you try to cancell. I lived in San Antonio, TX and was transferred to Seattle, WA by my employer. A month before my movers were coming to ship my household goods, I called U-verse to find out how to cancell service and where to return my set top boxes and related equipment. Even though AT&T's corprate headquarters are in San Antonio, they had no place in the city I could go to return my equipment and advised that I would have to mail it to Laredo, TX (150 miles away). It gets worse! They will send you the shipping box to return your equipment, but not until you cancell the service. I informed them that I wanted to keep my service right up until the day before we moved and that I needed my internet service to look for housing in Seattle and book hotels for our cross country drive. I was told "Sorry, but we can not ship you the return boxes until you cancel your service and that it would take about 7 to 10 days for AT&T to ship me the boxes". I asked that the boxes by shipped now and that I would continue to use and pay for the service right up until the day I moved. I was told that "policy" prohibits this and I would have to cancell service now and wait to get the shipping boxes. Does this make since to anyone??? I asked to speak to a supervisor and was finally told (by a supervisor) that they would make a rare exception in my case and mail the shipping boxes while allowing me to keep and pay for the service. After waiting 10 days and not receiving the boxes, I called back and discovered that they had no record of my call and that no boxes had been shipped. I started all over with my request and again had to ask for a supervisor. This supervisor suggested that I leave the several hundred dollars worth of equipment with a neighbor and have the neighbor mail the equipment for me. When I explained that I was not comfortable puting the burden on a neighbor, she relented and assured me that the boxes would be shipped immediatly and I could keep my service until I called and cancelled. After waiting another seven days and still no boxes, I called back and was told that the boxes were on "back order." Now it was too late to get boxes before my movers came so I had to pay movers to ship all my u-verse equipment from San Antonio to Seattle. In frustration I called a friend that is an executive at AT&T and she advised she would make some calls and find out why this was such a problem. She called me back and advised that "the boxes are on backorder" is a lie they tell you when the are tired of dealing with you and want you off the phone. She talked to a manager in the u-verse section who agreed to ship the boxes, but by now it was too late, the movers were coming before the boxes would arrive. About 3 weeks after moving to Seattle, a flimsey and partially crushed cardboard box arrived in the mail (box was shipped as an assembled empty box with no styrufoam support so it arrived crushed). We bubble wrapped the equipment and mailed it to Laredo. About a week later, a second crushed box arrived at our home from AT&T, but since we had already mailed the gear, we through this box away. Two months later we received a bill from AT&T stating we owed $810.00 for failing to return the equipment. Luckily we kept the UPS shipping documentation and tracking info that showed the date it was delivered to AT&T in Laredo. Again we called a supervisor who reviewed our account and the shipping information and advised she would "take care of it" and that our account now shows a "0" balance. We asked that she send us an e-mail so we would have documentation, but she never did. Well guess what we got in the mail today (a month later), another bill for $810.00 with a not so friendly reminder that the bill is past due. Again we will have to call our friend at the AT&T Corporate office and see it she can resolve this before they turn it over to collection service and ruin my excellent credit rating!
I would go without TV and the internet for the rest of my life before I would pay AT&T for their piss poor service.

Uverse isn't going out of business... lol

I would like to see that! Maybe Comcast will be going out of business soon as I see more switching over to Uverse here around me!

Not sure why so many people are having issues here sorry to see it! I guess most here have either poor installations bad customer support personal and maybe old wiring in their homes maybe... But still my service has been running really well and haven't had any issues since July 2008 installation but my home was built in 1989 and I live within 900ft of the main Fiber box as well.

I would take it that obviously many areas throughout the nation there are places where the ATT staff and installers are lame to some extent and don't take this move as serious as other areas would.

But like I said before Comcast wasn't always so good I remember how horrible that service was for a good time and when they rolled out the Digital service how I was always getting those pixelated images but I called the main head quarters got a hold of someone there and explained those issues and the next day about ten trucks showed up in my area with all kinds of tech people and they replaced everything in my area and the image on my set was totally awesome but still I had to suffer for almost 8 months and was always told everything looks good on their end! And you know sometimes I think workers just don't give a dam if their company fails or not but if you complain to the right person it makes a world of difference!

HI

I have U-verse since august '08 and It works fine in the north Atlanta area (alpharetta). Installation was good and it took less than 2 hours, very smooth. The only issue is the INTERNET speed. They sold me 10 Mb but I get only 2.5/3 Mb. So I changed my contract to 3 and it works fine paying the right price.

Bye

Fabio

I've found another problem with the at&t u-verse and this is the last straw. Like I've said in previous post, I had dish network through at&t, I had my wireless internet with at&t, when I told my DVD recorder to record the election results, like I've done with my dish network, for backup reason I even had the DVR box to record.

Later when I went to watch it, and see how much time was let on the disk before closing it, there was nothing. So I tested it by trying to record the news from live tv, got a message can't record copyright, "What" so I played the election results from the u-verse and hit record from my DVD recorder and again, got the same message. I've tried everything, went on line and found others having the same problems. I can't take this u-verse any more, AT&T claim U-Verse is bringing you into the future, well it's not, it's taking you back in time.

With the dish network, I had no problem telling my DVD recorder to record what shows, what times, and it did it with no problems. Now I have a DVD recorder that I can't use, I don't see where this is helping me at all, or saving me any time or money. It's time u-verse goes.

Cindyrsdu

I've had every problem in the book with Uverse. (I've got a 9 month old home with complete Cat5 cable.) Over 30 hours for installation, another 30 hours of techs tracking mud through my house, DVR functional from 1 TV only for recording or programming, etc. etc. etc. Someone should put Uverse out of its misery. Now here's a (relatively) new problem. About 3 times each day the entire system goes down - TV, phone, net - for no obvious reason. Outages last from 1 to 5 minutes, then the service comes back up. There are no power hits or any other reason I can see that this should happen. (There is an alarm system connected to the VoIP.) Has anyone else had this problem? Any suggestions other than getting this crappy service removed from my home? I never, ever believed I'd want cable again, but I was wrong.

I am so glad I found this blog. Since last Thursday, November 13th, I have been in AT&T U-verse H_LL! I am at a friend's house, using his internet.

I tried to get them to de-stall my equipment and wire me back with Comcast Cable and BellSouth (now AT&T) service. After 30 minutes on hold, I was told, "we don't do that"!!!

HELP!!! Who can I complain to? How can I get my former life back??

I realize that an any answers you email me, I won't receive in a timely manner, as I am an internet refugee#$%^&*()!!!

Thanks for letting me vent.

Susan

Most of these messages are from users that actually have UVerse service. I’ve so far had four screw-ups in my order to setup service. If I wasn’t in the middle of all of this I would believe it myself.

It all started off with very courteous service from “Cybil”, the offering of a great price with discounts that made UVerse seem like the obvious best choice. I moved to a new home and decided to switch from the cable company.

I realized a few days before my appointment that my family room was scheduled to be painted on the same day as the installation appointment so I called to reschedule installation for one week out.

On the day of the original appointment I got a call from “Jorge” saying he was at my house to install my service but there was no answer at the door. My first mistake was to assume that the reschedule had taken but poor Jorge was left out of the loop. The next Friday when the appointment was scheduled happened to be the day after Thanksgiving. The AT&T service operators were off for the day. I waited beyond the appointment window just to be sure, and no one showed up.

On Monday I called to find that my appointment had been changes, but the reschedule order was incomplete. The operator “Debbie’ apologized and first made a note on my account to credit the first month for free, and then made a new appointment for the next day for the 8:00 to 10:00 window. Debbie also told me not to worry; because of my inconvenience the technician would be there at 8:00.

The following day after reserving a half day of vacation from work (if necessary) I waited patiently until 10:30 only to call and find out that no one was coming out. They couldn’t explain the mix-up but assured me that if given another chance they would have someone out the next day at 8:00. I accepted the new appointment.

At 8:20 the next morning I called 800-288-2020 and found that there was an appointment scheduled for me, but the order was never dispatched. And again no one would be coming to install my service.

Livid, I called 800-288-2020 and spoke to a service rep. We both waited on the line while a supervisor called me on my cell to discuss. After hearing my story she (the supervisor) apologized and promised to call me with a solid appointment within thirty minutes. If not today then she would have the next available. Thirty minutes the supervisor called back to say that she was still working on the problem and would call back when she had an appointment. Two hours later I called for a status and happened to get the same office. The operator who answered said the supervisor “Beverly” was actually his supervisor and he would check with her.

He comes back and says that Beverly can’t talk to me but she was unable to make an appointment for me today. Period. So then… what about the next available??? I asked. He knew nothing of a next available. So he tries to book something and realizes that there’s a block on my account. He calls it “jeopardy”. He explains that there’s been a problem identified in my area and it has to be mitigated by a field engineer before a new appointment can be made.

So now I’m waiting patiently to hear when this (fifth) can be scheduled. And if you think this is to warn you about the possible pain in the ass that AT&T can bring I guess for the most part it is. But as I think about it; in greater part it’s a testimonial about how terrible Charter Communications is in the Pasadena, CA area. Because I my wife and I are willing to wait for AT&T to fix their mess before we’d go back to Charter who never got our billing right and provided even worse service. Remember the good ole days when TV was free and all you had t do was plug the damned thing in?

I used to love U-Verse and had very little problems with the service up until last week when internet and tv just wouldnt work. Called up support and they sent out a technician to fix the problem, which he did but now I can no longer watch more than 1HD channel at a time. Called up and complained and they said there is a problem with lines in the area and they only support 1HD channel now. WTF? Before the damn technician came everything worked fine.

If you have the chance, choose Comcast!

Timeline Dec 4th, 2008
Technician in Oakland country Michigan: great
installed entire uverse package: fine

DVR comparing to Dish Network:
Cons: ATT DVR: pain, slow scrolling for channels., can not save searches, have to constantly change non hd channels viewing to "justify" from the ATT default on my Panasonic Widescreen tv (never had to do this with Dish network)
Also, you can only see the guide channel listing in a certain default viewing mode (at least on our wide screen tv)

Only has one favorite choice to list your favorites, Dish Nework has more (great for additional members of your family)
ATT DVR will usually default the viewing guide to "all channels" insteadd of favorites unless you go to an extra step(s) of going to the menu and choosing "view favorites.

Rather than going on and on basically someone did not do their homework and there are more steps to go through that Dish Nework had on one screen. Dish Network DVR allows you to quickly view channels and scroll quicker. My spouse also stated that the DVR automatically turns itself off at night? what is with that?

Pros ATT DVR: very intuitive remote, can set up your components to work from one remote, the bring up your missed phone calls is ok except that you have to wait forever to do so, so that is not efficient, it is faster to go to your phone book

Conclusion: it is a great system if they can get more speed in using the functions of the remote, going back and forth using too many functions is a pain and too cumbersome. I am glad I did not cancel dish network dvr.

ONE MORE THING: OUr uverse internet connection is 1/3 slower than what we paid for, you can google "internet speed test" to find out your speed. Furthermore the email service through yahoo is ok but not the greatest with the ads.

About the wireless phone service: Ok but half the time the help menus online say that sorry they are not available at this time.
The messages online are cool but I like Vonage better and Vonage is cheaper with more functions.

OVERALL CONCLUSION; We sure went through a lot of trouble just to get HD, I think I will just go back to Dish Nework standard tv because it is not worth all the headache.

ATT will probably iron out all these problems but that is time and money for all of us

I am tempted to go to Dish Nework HD

U-verse seems like a deal that is too good to be true – and it is. See my comments on May 2, May 10, and June 7, 2008 about no service, etc. Now, there is a new problem: no 802.11b/g wireless at all. Three hours on the phone, and they told me what I knew – the RG was bad. They came out in two days, spent an hour on the phone to their office trying to get authorization to replace the RG, and when they did, the wireless was fine. That only lasted a week, and now I have two laptops – one next to the RG – with no wireless. I told them I’ll hook up my own wireless router, and they said I can’t do that. From what I have read, it seems true, so to get my laptops working, I need to take off another half day from work and wait for them to spend and hour getting authorization to install another RG. Let’s see – one bad DVR, one bad set top box (both the day the U-verse was installed) and three bad RGs – two for no wireless and one for no internet.

I want to tell you how grossly disappointed I am in the Uverse offering.

First you need to know that I am Senior IT professional and have been in the industry for 18 years.

I have been dealing with networks before the IP protocol even existed. I was very excited to try the new U-verse product being in the advanced technology field supporting IP telephony and very large data centers for Fortune 500 companies.

I was very excited to find out that I had 78 Mbs of bandwidth available to my residence from the local SONET MUX. If you don't know what this means then you should forward it to a supervisor who probably will.

I am very unhappy with the following issues that I'm having with the U-verse product:
1- Every 19 seconds I have an audio clip is very reproducible
2- I consistently have issues with the scheduling software not recording a scheduled program. This is not because of a conflict either I'm very aware of the conflicts and how to resolve them.
3- The fact that I cannot watch more than two HD channels in my entire residence is not acceptable. I understand that not all you U-verse clients will have the available bandwidth to their residence that I do but that should not limit my viewing ability.
4- The channel lineup and guide is TERRIBLE and has no rhyme or reason as to how it is laid out. There is no "category" search which is available on all other "modern" (and I use the term loosely) video delivery services such as cable and/or DirecTV.
5- The limitations imposed by a single "whole house" DVR is ridiculous when you have a paying customer who is willing to pay for an additional DVR but your corporate policy does not allow one home to have to DVR's.
6- Your development team using the Windows CE as a platform for an enormous initiative for your organization? Who made that decision??

****Not being able to pause TV on a "non-whole home DVR" is a HUGE omission in your marketing material.
****Not being able to schedule a recording from anywhere other than the "whole home DVR"is another HUGE omission in your marketing material.

I have a Gigabit Ethernet network in my home. You could not have a better candidate for this product and I am very dissatisfied and look forward to hearing from you. I can provide valuable feedback to your organization from an end-user perspective that will help you gain market share.

I look forward to a response from a manager at some level you can give me some type of a warm and fuzzy and not just lip service like your customer service people on the phone. I know a lot of companies like yours are monitoring blogs.... personally I do not like blogging but if that's what it takes to get some answers I guess I will be blogging away!

Sincerely,
Robert

AT&T's response. NONE. NADA. Lame TDM dinosaur of a company trying to move into the packet market.

The product team/marketing team should be fired.

Isigned up for Uverse on 11/22/2008. I was lied to by the AT&T salesperson on the phone about the services she told me I was getting, as well as the monthly fee. She told me that for $126/month I was getting 10mbps internet service, digital phone, cable service (that included the HD channels such as the Discoveries, TNT, TBS, ESPN, FSN, etc..) & the U300 package for 12 months.

When the installer came on 11/25/2008, he said that he had no order for the HD channels or the U300. He also said that digital phones was not even available in my area. I called AT&T to cancel before the guy started the installation. They offered me the HD channels for free with some type of stackable credit for six months. My monthly bill is not even close to what I was sold ($126/month for dsl, cable & phone). My bill is $120 for uverse plus a separate bill for my AT&T complete choice plan ($45/month). I was told by the girl in the retention dept that the stackable credits can be renewed after six months by calling in. I was told differently by a supervisor afterwards.

I was also told by the sales woman that cable to each other room was free. I later find out that I am being charged $6/month per each room's receiver. I cannot watch cable in the other rooms without a receiver.

I've called and complained about what they sold me and what I got. They just don't care.

The features for the cable and dsl are nice, but the service and the sales people & the customer support personel are just unprofessional.

I will disconnect the service as soon as my promotional credits expire or if Comcast offers a better deal.

Very unprofessional service.

ugggh.... U-verse AT&T.

AT&T 4, Customer 0

AT&T tried to come out and install the service on Saturday. I have four pages of notes of how many things went wrong.

But, in the short of it:
- They never put in the request to port my number.

- They showed up near 2 hours late - never called - dispatch took 45 minutes to tell me they couldn't tell me where the tech was.

- Very long story... eventually the frustrated tech who was outside in the cold trying to get this thing to work for hours and hours told me that there wasn't enough power to my house and the back office was closed and he couldn't install my service. 3rd house today with this problem (all his installs).

- When he left my existing phone, cable, and internet cable service was dead. I called my tier 2 escalation person (it got that bad that they proactively called me and gave me a special code). They told me that they couldn't send anyone out until the next day to fix what they broke. So I had no emergency service to my house. BTW Comcast DVR won't work when there is no signal to it!

- Tier 2 guy and his team lead were to buried under cases today to talk to me after I missed their first call.

There is so much more. I'll keep you all posted.

But, probably don't waste your time switching until AT&T figures out how to get the installs working. I lost an entire Saturday of my life.

Uverse...a modern day tragedy. Who new that fateful day when the install tech showed up at our house that life would be for ever changed. From July 2008 and a dozen service techs later I've come to the conclusion that this whole service is just a scam to steal money from hard working people and give you nothing but aggravation in return. From the pixeling and freezing of the TV to the disconnected phone calls and the lack of internet service on a regular basis to the numerous hours of lost time from work so they could fix this nightmare..... On 12/15/08 switched back to regular phone service because my calls kept getting disconnected. On 12/21/08 the whole system crashed and could not be rebooted, on football Sunday going into the playoffs this should be a criminal offense. This struck the death blow to this unbelievably BAD service. If you answer your door or your phone and a stranger tells you that they are from Uverse have a wonderful new service at a really good price. Don't believe them, close the door, hang up the phone and you will avoid the hell we have lived through.

Have been watching this Blog (and the many U-Verse
'sufferers') for nearly a year now. We had U-Verse
installed on January 30, 2008 (Kansas City). Came
to U-Verse from Comcast TV, but already had AT&T
phones and Internet. Except foe one bad DVR box,
our U-Verse experience has been flawless! We have
four boxes, and all are wired on pre-existing RG-59.
I could not be happier with AT&T and the entire
experience. (And I work for Dish.) ~ Steve

This u-verse system is poor. Running RFWaves through the phone lines work poor. This system takes up to 25mins to recieve a signal. The tech yesterday from what he stated 25mins is a normal time for their signal to build up within their system.

Lets get rid of all the tv's and stop the waste of time with these companies.

It seems that the cable and dish users are forgetting that the future in communications is optics and will be outdated in years to come along with the first transistor radios,Commadore 64's and any other tech devise that is progressively remade.Weather copper or optic the future will be wireless and there will be problems to overcome. In the interum,enjoy the fact that there is an alteritive to other systems and enjoy the fact that we are progressing and optics are here to stay for a long time.

Hi David,
You are correct about the future of technology but that is not what the various complaints address. AT&T has released a product that is not stable or available with the same consistency in all regions. The marketing and sales pitch does not match the stability of the product and AT&T should not be charging customers to test Alpha or Beta version of their product.

We got UVerse installed on 12/23 and been running for less than 2 weeks now. Simply stated, it's awesome.

We already had AT&T DSL and DirecTV w/ Tivo and had been very happy. When AT&T offered UVerse in my area I jumped at the chance. Hands down the features are far greater than anything being offered in the either cable or dish markets. But most of the compliants I see here are around performance (or simply not working at all). Being highly technical myself, I honestly understand your pain. But I must report that since the install my Internet and TV experience has been stunning.

We did not opp for AT&T Voice, I am not a VoIP fan at all and have cherished my land line phone forever. I am a little disappointed that the caller id on screen and history features only support AT&T Voice and not analog line, since they are both using the land line for connectivity.

I have also seen the master/DVR unit mysteriously reset at least twice now. It just turns off, then the 3 dots and finally the logo screen. Everything seems to catch back up, even recordings that were in progress when it reset, which is nice. The reboot seems to take about 9-12 mins, but no longer for me. But I must confess that I have really been burning through the menus and other remote buttons both of these times.

All in all, I would highly recommend both AT&T DSL and UVerse services, take or leave the VoIP. Your mileage may vary...

BTW: The website(s) linked to my comment is being hosted on my UVerse connection as well as I have a second house using a wireless bridge on the same connection.

We have had U-verse for about 3 months now. We had Dish for about 10 years prior to getting U-Verse and are seriously considering changing back. I love being able to record 4 shows a once with Uverse but that is the only thing I love about it. There are a bunch of things I hate about it. The slow response to programming changes is the first. When I erase a recorded program it quite often hangs for a minute or more. It makes me think they are running Windows 3.0 on the settop boxes. Come down in the morning and turn on the TV and some mornings it takes 10 minutes for it to decide to wake up. If there is any problem on the network forget watching anything on the DVR. I hate not being able to record or erase recordings from any other room in the house. Bottom line is I have had more problems with At&t U-Verse in the last 3 months then I have with DISH in the last 5 years. The AT&T U-Verse residential gateway seems to work great. The wireless on it seems to work quite while. We really have had no problems regarding connection to the internet

I am a u-verse 18Mbit Internet only customer (18Mbits down 1.544Mbits up). Its screaming fast and reliable. Install went smooth. I am a CTO and work from my home office, I wish they had static IP's, it was a little bumpy getting the Cisco configured properly behind the 2wire router. Did not add HDTV stayed with Dish Network which IMHO Rocks! great service, great value, great features and no slow channel changing with Dish.

I don't see how you could go wrong with U-Verse.

Wow! My kindred spirits! I'm glad it's not just me who's had problems with these jerks.

I originally signed up for service back on November 12. They gave me a date of November 25th to come out and do the install. My was going to be home during the time window they stated and so everything was lined-up and ready to go.

Well, first of all, they showed up late (my wife had a commitment about 5 hours after they were supposed to show up). She called to tell me that the guy had shown up, but nothing was working and it was getting close to time for her to leave. He couldn't seem to tell here the problem. And he was trying to get the 2nd-tier guys to contact him.

Basically it turned out that we had a poor signal in our neighborhood and it had to be fixed. So the following week, they showed up...tore up the cement in front of our house and pissed off our pissy neighbor next door. But they fixed it (or at least they sealed the cement back). Ok...so one week passes, two weeks pass...Christmas comes and goes...finally, I decide to call them on Monday, December 29th. That's after giving up on the useless web pages they have online and the always not what you need chat support.

So I call the support number...fight through the stupid voice recognition (and if you can't understand Spanish...and sure I do a bit...don't jump the gun and "oprima numero uno" cause 1 gets you espanol) and finally get to a support rep. They tell me that my order was cancelled on 12/23...and he couldn't see why. But he'd file a "request" with the field group and that I should hear back within 24-hours (yeah right!).

So 48 hours later I call back again. This time I get transferred 3-times before I get to the right department. I explain the problem to the rep this time and she can't tell me why my order was cancelled but then she starts asking me what services I had on my original order...like I can remember everything I had entered online back in November. So she keeps asking me questions and then putting me on hold. Finally...the line goes dead, the phone rings and I get the dreaded, "If you'd like to make a call...please hang up and try again." message.

10 minutes later, I get a confirmation email from Uverse with a new installation date. The date? January 23rd with an 8am to 12pm window! Undoable and considering that date was over 3 weeks away and over 2 months after my original order date it was just unacceptable.

So I call back go through the stupid phone system get transferred only twice and ask to file a complaint and cancel the order. I talk to someone who sounds REALLY knowledgeable. She offers to talk to her boss that Friday when he got back in the office (this was after all New Year's Eve). She said that at the time all she could see was Jan 21st as the earliest date on the schedule. But, she said that considering circumstances her boss could possibly overrule and get the date moved up to the following week. Which was cool if she at least tried. Well, she said to expect a call on Friday Jan 2nd...she would be in at about 9am my time and that she would get back to me with the update by the afternoon.

So Friday at about 4:45pm, I call em back again. I get someone else after a couple of transfers. This person gives me some song and dance about a call possibly coming in as late as 7pm when they close (tell your story walking, buddy). Then he reiterated that the earliest date for me would be January 23rd. And some token apology. No help getting me to a higher level supervisor or anything. No offer of a discount for the inconvenience...nothing.

So I canceled the crap. No call no email apologizing...nothing.

But it sounds like I might've dodged a bullet afterall.

Got Uverse internet and TV installed yesterday. We kept our Dish service so that we could compare picture quality. Dish completely blows away Uverse in terms of HD picture quality. We had to double check to make sure the Uverse channel was an HD channel. The difference was very noticeable. Skipping commercials on the Uverse DVR is next to impossible. There is no way to set recording priorities. There is no way to lock or protect recordings from being overwritten. There is no way to see how many hours of recordings are available. You can't start recordings early. the list goes on and on. Needless to say, we are canceling the TV service and keeping the internet. Internet is lightning fast but expensive.

Have had UVerse since Nov 2008. It is flawless and well, just awesome. We have 3 boxes and 3 TVs, and I am running a 3 PCs wireless network.

I came over from Verizon FiOS after moving to a FiOS-less area. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that they installed a box in my garage - I had been told that UVerse was box to neighborhood - but that is NOT the case.

No issues with either the TV service or the internet access. So far, so good. Oh yeah, the VoD is WAY better and more extensive than FiOS's ever was.

As an expat here in the US, I even get to watch European Soccer and Rugby games during the weekends, which is fantastic.

Henry - look at your instruction manual - we can do everything you mention. Pressing FFWD moves over commercials easily, we can lock recordings so that they are not deleted, we can set recording priorities (can even do so online!) ... I wonder if we have a different system/options?

Anyhow - we are extremely happy with the good service!

I have had ATT Screwverse for 3 months now-its the most unreliable service I've ever seen. Last night, after the cable, dvr, telephone and internet went out for the upteenth time-I got the phone book out and called another service provider.
I've waited on average 9-20 hours for a technician to get out here each time I've called them (and its been numerous times)
Yesterday, after the tech left (took them 20 hours to get out here) the service failed after only a couple of hours. I get excuses like "you're too far from the box" "basically it will go out anytime a squirrel nibbles on it" etc etc. You get my drift.
Its horrible-now I'm going to try and get them to refund my money. lol Good luck with that.

Update: We got rid of the U-Verse television, but kept the internet part. The claim was that it would be faster than DSL and that it would not slow down during peak times.

It's pretty fast when it works, but it goes off intermittently. I can tell, because the mail will stop loading or the images will not load. And sometimes we're just off line for periods ranging from a few seconds to twenty minutes. I've called support four times with no success. The periodic dropping for several seconds happens all day long, every day.

This results in an experience that is slower than dial up. It is very frustrating.

I think it's time to return to DSL.

You have some sort of problem either at your premise or somewhere between your premise and the switch. DSL will be subject to the same issues, its just a little less touchy; but make no mistake this is not the norm.

U-Verse was the only option I could find in north Fort Worth when I moved here from Denver in late December. I am not a fan of DirecTV so U-Verse was the only other option I could find. In Denver, I was a happy Comcast customer. I was getting 20mbps internet (down, my up was around 1 mbps I believe) digital cable and DVR on one TV (no HD) and landline phone service for around $140 a month.

I called AT&T in mid December before I moved, I believe around December 15th or so. The prices seemed good. I had about 6 choices on internet speed and decided that 6 mbps was good enough for me. I went with the U-200 TV package. I dont need landline phone anymore and she told me it wasn't available thru U-Verse in my area yet anyways.

She was very nice and very helpful, unfortunately they seem to have very few installers in the area as the first date she could give me was January 8th, over 3 weeks away. She told me that oftentimes, they will have cancellations and if I call the dispatcher every day or two, and ask if they can send out an installer, I might be able to get one to come out earlier.

So I called as soon as I moved and the lady on the phone said that they very rarely have cancellations and she could bump my appointment up 2 days, but that's it....oh well

Day of installation, the installer called me at around noon. They gave me a time window of between 12 and 2. He said he had to make some connections at the "box down the street" and would return soon. He came back about 30 minutes later with all his gear.

He was very friendly although a bit slow, but he seemed to know what he was doing. He installed the router and DVR box in the living room, and did an install of CAT-5 to my office where my desktop computer is located since it doesn't have wireless. The two bedrooms already had CAT-5 so he didn't have to install anything there. After everything loaded and synched it, we were ready to go.

My experience since then is very satisfied. Keep in mind, I don't have an HDTV so I am not limited in recording HD. Channel changing seems very quick, MUCH faster than my old Comcast DVR box. The DVR box in general is so much better than my old Comcast box. For example, my old Comcast box, when you tried rewinding or skipping through a program, the remote would sometimes become completely unresponsive. You would press fast forward maybe a couple times with no response on screen. Then 45 seconds later, all those fast forwards you pushed would all come at once. Very annoying. So far, when you push a button with U-Verse, it actually works. I am very impressed with this.

I enjoy being able to watch DVR-ed shows on my bedroom boxes and this seems to work very well.

Picture quality seems very good compared to old cable, but nothing earth-shattering.

My MAIN complaint is that I can't just SWAP between tuners on the DVR. With my old Comcast service, I would have maybe a TV show on one tuner and a basketball game on another tuner. I would watch the TV show until it went to commercial, then swap tuners to the basketball game for a while, rewinding if I felt the desire. Then swap tuners back to the TV show, rewinding if I missed anything. With U-Verse, I haven't found a way to really do this except to record both shows at once. Not really a good solution. Anyone know if you can do this? I dont think you can. So that is annoying, but not a huge deal.

Internet speed is as advertised. I get about 5500 kbps and 900 kbps up on speed tests. for 6mbps/1mbps, that works for me.

2 weeks into service and I am satisfied. No outages yet. Nice people. and good price. Let's hope it stays that way.

According to the J.D. Power and Associates 2008 Residential Television Service Satisfaction Study released in October 2008, AT&T U-verse ranks highest in customer satisfaction in three regions and Verizon FiOS ranks highest in one region among television service providers. (The entire nation was divide into 4 regions in this study: North Central, East, West, and South.) It seems 3/4 of the country is happy with U-Verse.

http://www.jdpower.com/corporate/news/releases/pressrelease.aspx?ID=2008204

Could most of the complains on this blog come from some particular metropolitan area? It would be great if people commenting on U-Verse experiences here could state where they live.

Charles
South San Francisco Bay area

Check the fine print before signing up, the equipment is warrented for 1 year, after that the leased equipment is up to the leasee to replace. The cable companys replace the equipment free.
Also, you'll need to provide ATT with your credit card as a deposit on the equipment.
Pricing may be $10 to $20 less than cable, read the reviews, ATT is very difficult to deal with, after all they were Ma Bell at one time and still act like the 1000 lb gorilla.
Mike

Steve, tell me the secret to getting installed. I started in early Nov and still no tech has showed here. This is really starting to get annoying!

This sight is totally boggas. I have had several chances to view this porduct on many different levels. The installers where well trained. From what I hear there training last for several months before we even see them. Further more most issues seem to come from bad cables from the old telephone pots system. Many of which are in the process of a major upgrade. There is no other product like U-Verse out there and judging from the future in electronics pay attention becuase every thing is moving over to IP. Take the new SAMSUNG tv line for example all of which are IP ready. This is truley a wonderful product and have meet many, many happy people who have this. Channel changing speed is unmatched, internet speeds as high as 18mg with a cap rate of 56mg in the future and total DVR which is also due to launch around April or so. If you search for U-Verse and this is the only sight you see, then you need to look again. Becuase for every 1 bad blog you will find 10 good blogs. I will be looking and following this blog as I have been since it's conception and will comment on any issues any one may have. Good luck trying to stump me and I hope you really give this product the due chance it desreves. Besides COMCAST is the worst cable company on the planet......PERIOD.

A comment to L.Collins - 1) Comcast is not the worst cable company on the planet. I have superb HD service with Comcast and have only had a couple issues over the 3 years I've had Comcast. All of which were quickly fixed. Any billing errors I received were also fixed very rapidly and I didn't have to sit on hold with them for as long as AT&T leaves you on hold for.

U-Verse, although a great idea, fails in the hands of AT&T's incompetent customer service crew and install crew. I have heard FAR more bad than good regarding U-Verse from colleagues of mine here in California, not to mention the ghastly experience I had with an installer who snooped through my apartment and made personal insults about me to her supervisor who was on the phone. Why was I mad? Who unplugs things in someone else's house without asking them? especially after it was already established that I do not have grounded outlets - something U-Verse CONTINUES to neglect to find out before wasting your time and sending a technician out.

A word of advice to anyone who does not enjoy sitting on the phone for hours sorting out billing errors, or sitting at home for hours waiting for an install tech. Go with another cable company. The quality is just as good, if not better, and you will have less of a headache.

U-Verse might be worth it in a few years, but right now, in most markets (as clearly some, but few areas they seem to get it right), U-verse is a waste of your time (and if you have to take off of work, money).

You know I have to say something.. You are on here you have made this huge complaint about U-Verse and how bad they are all because you have this OLD home without grounded outlets... You might want to think about having your entire house fixed. Because that is EXTREAMLY dangerous and can lead to an electrical Fire. Mainly because that tells me how old the wiring in your home is... Probably have extremely old circuit breakers as well... Your home sounds like a fire hazard waiting to happen...
On Another Note, Comcast is only nice because they have a smaller customer base and they can't afford to lose one customer. Check their stocks, even before the economy crash, they were dropping. Check their scores with the BBB. Now do the same with AT&T... Yes Even AT&T stocks have dropped mainly due to the Economy Crash, but check the BBB Scores. And the JD Power Awards. AT&T installs Aprox. 250 New U-Verse Customers everyday... I think maybe 1 to 3 people have a new complaint PER WEEK... and just to let you know the number of recalls and troubls on new installs over all of the U-Verse is 1 out of 10. Yes you will wait on hold longer with AT&T Due to the fact that there is a HUDGE demand for U-Verse Service, And due to the fact that they don’t have many Service Techs. To help. They are trying to hire more ASAP however, it takes a long time to be trained on this technology. After 2 years on this technology I myself am still learning new things on it... so before you get on here and scream that ANY comppony is the worst in the world just because you had a bad expreance is uncalled for. You should do your research...
AT&T is the old dinosaur that is coming back on top. They will never go away, and they are the future. If your home is too old to adapt to the very recent future, then you will be left behind and everyone else will move on...
Thanks for your time on reading this....

FYI: Most apartment complexes in the Bay Area are OLD and do not have grounded outlets. Yeah, would be nice to fix but that's not my call.

Also, your numbers are way off. 1-3 people complaining per week? You do realize there is no major company that only has 1-3 people complaining per week.

AT&T is the old dinosaur that will always be the old dinosaur - even their wireless division leaves a LOT to be desired, even with their exclusive deal on the iPhone.

It's nice of you to feel so passionate about a poorly organized and poorly executed company, but the fact remains that hundreds of people a day, throughout the US are getting their appointments cancelled or missed and not receiving professional customer service.

Not saying they don't get it right some of the time, but from my own personal experience, as well as that of several people I know and people THEY know as well, is that U-Verse as it stands today, is entirely subpar and a waste of money.

I see that I may have started a hurrican. Well I am glad so many have decided to have a real talk about this service. To start with I will answer Richard. Yes Richard in some markets the total Home DVR feature is in full swing and again in other markets it is due out with in a couple of months. With all the upgrades it just takes time to get all the services. This is also true with there VOIP phone service. Some markets have it and other don't. To answer Linda you must be eating the garbage COMCAST sends out about there HD. I too have Comcast HD service and honestly I get maybe 25 real HD channels. Now if you look at AT&T U-Verse there are over 120 true HD channels. Almost the same as Direct tv and Dishnetwork. you can keep your compressed signal too. AS far as the customer service answer if every one who has U-Verse was to really pay attention to there service they would know they can online chat any time of the day using there UVERSE home page. Go to the help me section and serch for what they need and you always get some one to chat with or answer your questions with out the long waits. But I think we just like talking to real people and forget that tech. is here and now. We chat online all the time why not chat with your service rep. Saves time and head aches. I also have an inside track on COMCAST being the worst. If you remember a small cable company called ADELPHIA and how for many many many years they where rated the worst company in the country by several consumer markets. Well who bought that company and spent no money upgrading there system..HHMM..Enough said. If you live in these areas you would know what i am talking about. Well thats enough for now and I look forward to answering more later.

To what Collins said, Comcast would not even be here if it was not for AT&T. In about 80& of their market, AT&T was their first. And they realized that the system was crap, Re-built the entire market, if you had AT&T back then you should remember the build, because it made a lot of people upset and a lot of people complained from time to time of losing their cable while they were replacing cables, and equipment. And AT&T spent too much money too fast and went bankrupt. Then Comcast stepped in bought them and sat on their fat butt... they sat for 4 years before they even began to finnish what AT&T started. And the only reason why they even decided to finish it, is because AT&T started to build a cable, or sorry a "TV Service" again. They got scared.
And Comcast is nothing more than a compressed amped up single. And if you’re ready for some truth about their internet, pay attention. Comcast serves their Customer from a Node, each node using 2 fibers transmit and receive, and the one node serving any was from 500 to 3000 customers. So while you’re on your internet during non peak times, you will have all your speed, but when the kids get home and people get off work, what happens, you lose your speed. Now let’s compare. AT&T U-verse service has 2 fibers (transmit and receive) that serve a max of 150 people out of a V-Rad (or Node if you will). And not to mention, AT&T has much faster speeds. Right now they have what’s called "Max 18" which is 18MB download and 1.5 MB Upload. All Comcast can offer is 12MB but that is only their BOOST that last a whole 1 second. Then it goes down to 6MB. And I am not done yet... Comcast advertises that they are all digital (If you have a digital box). WRONG. All of their lower channels that your get on analog cable without a box, are still analog with the box. AT&T is all 100% digital, because they can’t transmit an analog signal.
By the way just to let you know who you’re talking to I was an IT Pro for Both Comcast and AT&T, I left Comcast for double the money at AT&T and then was laid off from AT&T. Trust me what I am telling you is only half the info. on these two. I wish I could tell you everything, but something’s I have signed agreements not to say.
Thanks for reading

Looks like they have handled the 3-prong plug issue.

My wife just ordered u-verse and the following paragraph was included in the service appointment notification:

"A 3-prong grounded electrical outlet is required for installation of AT&T U-verse High Speed Internet."

Our install date is March 6, so there is a backlog here in Houston.

Just for the record, last time the dish installers were in my home, they did not understand my system, so I let them touch very little.

We have a whole house video distribution system that puts our two dish DVRs on channel 60 and 63 on every TV in our home (in SD) and one of our HD TVs is directly connected to a DVR via HDMI. Nice setup when we did it 10 years ago, the HD upgrade was a hack...looking forward to full digital with u-verse.

I'll report on my experience with u-verse(respond to this thread if I forget and I'll get an email reminder).

Regards,

Richard

Jan. 30th 2009

The service for some reason was good for several months, but then in the last 3 months (right after I foolishly gave them a referral)it has been a uverse nightmare.

Many of the same problems of the aforementioned. The main DVR sometimes says no signal, but the other 2 TV's and boxes in the house are fine, it will reboot itself one to several times in a day, freeze up, erase my entire library of recorded shows whenever it feels like it, not record at all, or miss part of what one is recording because the reboot happened while one is trying to record something...but right now I have been waiting for 2 days for the tech to show up and I am ANGRY.

I had an appt. for yesterday AM between 8-12. I waited until 1:30PM at which point they never even bothered to call and acknowledge that they stood me up. I had to call them, go through their "can't speak to a live person" automated crap to be able to finally reset the appt. for today, same time. Here's a real hoot. Someone calls 2 hours after the appt. has been rescheduled to confirm the appt., like I had forgotten in the 2 hours prior and like I am the one that needs to be reminded! I wish that they had concentrated less on reminding me and more on just showing up!

So anyway the appt. was rescheduled for this AM same time 8AM-12. Yep, no show again. At 2:30PM, no call from them to apologize, recognize, sympathize...nothing! My husband went through the automated, to FINALLY get to speak to a person who informs us that they are coming within 1 hour. Can anyone guess where this is going? At 3:30 I call to see where this tech is. They assure me that he is coming and should be here by 4:30.

I request to speak to a supervisor. I was told they don't take transferred calls, but would have to take my number and one would call me back later today. Well, it is 6:20PM, no tech, no super...no respect for the fact that we have work, kids, that time is money NOR for the fact that it is Friday, superbowl weekend.

Remember the old days, for instance going to the gas station and someone would greet you, pump the gas, offer to check tires, fluids, offer a piece of candy to the kid...what has happened?

When did we all become such a selfish society where no one cares about reputation, customer satisfaction, being able to look oneself in the mirror at the end of the day? We are only as strong as the weakest link in the chain.

I have to agree with some of the other bloggers. The employees, the supers, the several techs that have already been out here don't care. Their competitors are the same way, as I have dealt with a couple of them as well. It seems to be impossible these days to get a great product with a great service, or even good service. We shouldn't have to lower our expectations right out of the shoot, but I think they have us over a barrel and they know it, hence the lack of concern about how many people they put out in the course of a day.

I guess the next action will be that they too will want a government bailout for a business that they ran into the ground themselves, but somehow don't take responsibility for.

Perhaps the super should get a big fat bonus or maybe the tech needs his own jet to be able to get over here to my house, or maybe they could lay off some folks so that we might get tech service sometime before the end of the year...just venting...they are still not here. Anyone want to make a bet that they make it here to day at all?

Sorry you're having so many problems-we've had the same thing. At the moment, only 2 televisions are working-the third one has been out since last week.
As I mentioned earlier, as one of the ATT techs told us-"A squirrel nibbling on the cable can knock it out"
Geeze, AT@T, if a tiny squirrel can bring down your entire telecommunications system, you need to give it up. And thats what I intend to do on Wednesday-I'm having Time Warner reinstall their system.
Yah!!!!!!!!

After researching U-verse for some time, prior to finding this blog, I decided to stick with my service provider, Time Warner. Why you may ask? ATT customer service has never been the same since they divested, lots of bad experiences and memories are long, and most of the time your only recourse for problem solving with Ma Bell, is just walk away. My time is too valuable to waste with customer service.

Now just read the postings; and think about the old saying “where there is smoke there is fire”. If the service is so great why the massive weekly offerings from U-verse? The JD Powers customer satisfaction poll, most likely ask the wrong questions; sure I would love the ATT service if it was as presented. I’ll bet Powers now wish they had paid closer attention because they now look bad.

The last straw in my research was when I found out the U-verse requires a credit card on file, which they can bill at anytime for any reason. Think you can just walk away from poor service? Think again, as they the key your money. Also the equipment belongs to U-verse, but you will pay for replacements or repairs after 1 year. Um, does your cable provider do that?

I love ATT, but this time they have miss they are off course.

Thanks for you time & good luck to all.

All I can say is: the experience that I have had has been excellent, and that the small number of negative comments here, when compared to the over one million Uverse users, and the quarter million new users each month, must be service anomalies; or related to the users themselves (e.g. poor wiring, RF interference, misuse). The comment about JD Power is completely ridiculous. If you are having issues just go to the ATT forums http://utalk.att.com/utalk/?category.id=U-verseTV. If you look at the statistics the poor experiences are dwarfed by the good. If you are having problems, perhaps you should not be so quick to just write it off and instead look at your circumstances and determine why you are in the minority.

I am just going to throw some things out here for all of you who would like to know. UVerse is great WHEN it is working at standards. It beats cable and dish hands down. I have worked in the cable field and I currently work in the other and I can see where the pros and cons are. The only things that is hurting UVerse is the use to the copper twisted pair to the house and the lack of knowledge that a lot of the tech have about using the internal diagnostic tools that are at their disposal. It took me a while and I had to figure it out on my own what a lot the readings mean when I ran my tests. I can pretty much figure out the problem before I get there and service is running when I leave, and I am not talking just for a couple of hours either.

Now about the copper, from what I have been told and from just seeing, when the copper was ran way back when there were really now standards per say when they did it. Guys were taking short cuts all over the place. You could do that because with dialtone it just worked, it ran in all directions back and forth just as long a both pairs were making some kind of connection. And it didn't have to be a good connect either. Different types of wire different gauges, all over the place, but it worked so hey. With dialtone also being analog you got a whole spectrum of quality going on. From the best there is to fuzzy static but you can still hear a person. Now you want to go high tech and start sending digital signals down the jerryrigged copper and that when you find all the little shortcuts that was taken way back when because digital is fickle. It either works or is doesn't, there is no kinda fuzzy. If you have kinda fuzzy in your cable in feeding your set top box or DVR have tiling on your on your TV screen or long periods of waiting for your boxes to finally show a picture. If you have fuzzy on your line from the box on the street to the drop to your house or from the main line leading from the NID on your house to the gateway you get dropped service.

There is a lot more I want to add and I will put it in another post. But if anyone is having problems with their service you can ask me and I can most likely give you a good idea of what the problem is. Granted that I can't be a hundred percent right with my theory or guess, because that is what it is without me actually running test and physically changing things out and seeing things but its more than what you had before.

So bring it on!

you people are jokes.. stop crying and call uverse.. they will fix any issue you have.. simple as that i had issues i call they fix. it works fine!! stop crying about it and get it fixed. they fixed my lines... and the wifi works fine.

The post above mine is completely unnecessary and biased as can be.

Lots of people have major issues with U-Verse, some are lucky enough to have a positive experience.

All in all, I personally would rather stick with cable, because it is reliable. At least until U-Verse eventually solidifies their service, and of course, provided their customer service centers can cut down on the hour+ hold times.

All, I've signed up with AT&T yesterday to have U-verse installed in my house. I've researched some sites and read several satisfactory stories and several unsatisfactory stories, so I'm in a pickle. I like what AT&T has to offer with their HD programming and DVR recordings, the internet, and phone service. I'm currently with TWC with all three services. Clearly AT&T offers more choices for the amount of money I pay for cable.The areas that seem to have the issues are the areas where U-verse was initially rolled out in, is that a true statement? I live in Dallas, TX. Is there folks in the Dallas area, particually northeast side, having these issues mentioned on this site? I can cancel anytime and stay with cable if I want too, but I want to find out, if the complaints are legitimate and not exaggerated or are they true issues that are not getting resolved by AT&T. I know there are "haters" and "lovers" of certain products, like itunes verses other music sites or mayo over mustard or big mac over whopper. I'd like some legitimate feedback and opinions that are genuine to help me with my choice. Thank you in advance for taking the time to write back.

It seems that ATT is getting a little sensitive about the negative posts related to their service. The rude comments being posted about all us folks who have gotten less than stellar service are proof of that. Apparently ATT doesn't want to accept the fact that there are real issues with this service and until they stop and listen to the problems that CONSUMERS are having, nothing is going to be resolved. ATT has the potential for a really great service but they are not there yet. Maybe 5 years from now everyone will be happy with the service, but not yet, not even close. Comments from people like "you people are jokes" don't help.

ANDERSON, INDIANA - Installed U-verse 6 weeks ago and love it!
The installation was extremely frustrating due to slow roll out, long scheduling backlog, missed appointments, poor communication with dispatch, etc. These problems quickly faded once the service was installed.

I now consistently have a 27 Meg download speed to the gateway through the 53 year old twisted copper pairs servicing my street. Incredible throughput for wires that were designed to carry no more than 20,000 hz of analog voice signals. AT&T had to remove some old half-taps from my line the day after installation to ensure reliability and speed. I am 2600 cable feet from the 52B box servicing my neighborhood.

Once the gateway synced the first time, it has not burped once! The 27 Meg download was partitioned as I requested, which was 6 Meg for internet and the remainder for IPTV. I now have 6 computers networked through the ATT gateway sharing files and printers without a hitch. AT&T even provided free wireless adapters for the pc's I had not run cat 5 cable to yet.

I had one small problem which was quickly corrected using the customer service CHAT feature. Calling AT&T customer service is still as bad as it has ever been, but the CHAT works quite well. If you don't let them know there is a problem, they can't fix it.

I don't understand the resistance to trying U-verse. In my area, A&TT offers FREE installation, FREE equipment, no contract term, a better product at a lower price than cable. I kept my cable service at first, knowing that I could cancel U-verse at any time if it wasn't all I expected it to be. There is NO risk.

I would like to see the U-verse roll out and installation process completely overhauled, but I am keeping (and referring) the service. I am glad to see the greedy cable companies receive some long overdue competition. Cable was king in the 90's, but this is a new decade.

Had U verse installed a week ago and now I am ready to switch back to my original provider. On their channel line-up at their site they have a list of all the channels you will get checked off in the boxes,even the HD ones.What they don't tell you,is if you want to watch them in HD,you have to pay extra. So now I paid extra and I just find out you can only watch one program in HD at a time.My wife and daughter can not watch any HD programs while I watch my sports in HD.I talked to a tech and he told me the bandwith signal was not strong enough too watch two HD channel's at a time,that is probably why my computer slows down when they are watching TV.Can't wait to switch back to my old service.

I'm not sure why everyone has flocked to this blog to hate on U-verse. I have had it two years (as of 2/09) and...

It has way more HD channels than cable, and channels change much faster than digital cable or dish, its cheaper, and the internet is more reliable (if I had a dollar for everytime roadrunner/time warner/comcast goes out...)
I honestly have more than 5 times the amount of HD channels that many cable companies provide - whats the point of having an HD TV if you can't get any channels in HD???
TV picture quality is great AND it never goes out AND it doesn't need to have a dish facing some cockeyed direction, which limits how many people can actually get dish service.
The internet speeds have been fine and with a great upstream I do fine (even compared to friends on cable, and other providers, etc) p2p and surfing.
I have never had a problem with it forgetting my settings for recording or otherwise.
They came to replace my router after a lightning storm and had it replaced within an hour.
Their on demand availability is adequate along with great picture quality.
Maybe it is because I live in a large apartment complex in a large city (dallas) but I have had nothing but value-laden technological awesomeness with u-verse.
A friend of mine did tons of research to find out what is best....and for the cost and quality, at least in a big city where their infrastructure seems to work best, NOTHING can beat the HD channels, price, internet, speeds, quality, and overall package.

velvets2033

The negative uverse blogs are about quality of service (could be regionally) and ADDITUDE (nationally). ATT is difficult to get in touch with and after getting a person on the other end, they have the idea they can due no wrong. At one time ATT was the best in all areas of the communication business, now sad to say they are the best only in the technoligie area.

If ATT ever wanted to resolve this communications problem, they must answer EVERY call with a friendly human voice, who is helpful and concerned.

Live in Houston and just switched to U-verse and absolutely LOVE IT! Previously we had Comcast and were paying upwards of $175 a month for Digital TV in one room, Standard cable in two, high-speed internet and phone service. Now with AT&T U-verse we get the "digital cable" in all three rooms, high speed internet and phone service and its costing around $130 a month. I had a little blip when service started up but one quick call and it was fixed. With Comcast, you would have to sit there waiting forever to speak to a representative who usually turned out to be rude and not very helpful. I don't have an HDTV so I don't bother with all those channels and service is still great for me.. Another big bonus was the free installation and it does take the 6-8 hours they tell you. I am so happy I left Comcast for AT&T U-verse.

I tried the U-verse package last summer. There was a huge problem with the phone line part. As a result, I had no phone service to my home for three weeks. Customer service was just plain awful. I dropped the U-verse and went back with Time-Warner. The jokers at ATT kept right on billing me. I would call and tell them I had dropped the service and was told it would be seen to. Then the next month I would have to call again about the same thing. I wasted a lot of time trying to get to Customer Service and then trying to get them to do something. If I only asked for minimum wage for my time, they would owe me several hundred bucks. Not exaggerating here. I have moved many times in my life and have had many experiences with getting new services put in, and this was far and away the worst experience I ever had. Time-Warner has been no problem with service or customer service. Pat from Texas.

Older homes. Not everyone lives in new homes and rewiring/grounding all of your outlets is expensive.

I think it's a great testament to the customer service of AT&T that so many folks who seem to be employed by AT&T come in to bash the people who aren't satisfied with the service (actual quality of installed U-Verse service or the customer service).

They come in to tell ya that you're stupid...your house is too old so your wiring sucks or that you're lying.

Great bit of PR there!

We have had the same problem here, since we got Uverse in Oct 2008 I would say each week there's a tech here. In Nov 2008 they said it was the Uverse modem box and that didn't solve the problem, then in January of 2009 they said they had to replace the DVR box, now remind you we had not seen all our shows that we had recorded, we kept getting the freezing, then like one gear wheel then two gear wheel then an red x, I would have to reboot the box about fifteen time before it would come back up. We could not see or watch what we had recorded. Like with satellite when we changed over to Uverse, we told them we still had some recording that we had not seen yet, they told us how to hook it up by video cables only and watch it. Which we did. With Uverse they told us, nope that will not work, you just can't watch those shows you recorded. We have given Uverse enough time to solve these problems. I'm tried of the freezing which we still get, there's no such thing as back up the live show to see what you missed, it freeze. There's too many problems with Uverse, and they have gone up on the none dvr boxes that does nothing, I've had it, tried to give it a chance but it's not worth it.
Cindy

I love ATT UVERSE I am a loyal customer at this point and I could not be happier .. and my bill is about 20 less a month than it is with comcast and I am getting more features

Hold on. AT&T u-verse isn't that great. They have the same bad programming as cable or satelite. Check the packages they have. I currently have the U200 (which does not give you 200 channels). Compared to Time-Warner they did at the time I bought it have more HD channels. They were a little cheaper. BUT Time Warner gave some additional movie channels in their package (Encore and Flix) that AT&T did not. I would have to buy the U300 (which does not have 300 channels) package. Now AT&T U-Verse is starting to take some of the HD channels I originally had and put them in another package. Also the On Demand stuff they offer is not that great and it is expensive.

NW, I have to make a comment, just because a plan is called U200 or U300, that is not an indication of amount of channels in that package, so please don't be ridiculous in your thinking you should get 200 or 300 hundred. I've had TWC and Comcast and Dishnetwork and Directv at one point and just recently switched to AT&T Uverse. I can honest tell you there several more channels offered by AT&T that the cable or sat services do not offer. The one thing that got me wanting AT&T is that they offer mostly all their premium channels like HBO/SHO/Starz/TMC/MAX in HD, where satellite or cable does not. I pay for the highest plan, U400 with HD upgrade and find I get more from this package then I did with the package I had with TWC and I'm saving myself 20 bucks. I like AT&T and have not had any of the problems mentioned in the previous comments above. The installer had one hiccup but it was corrected in 30 minutes. He was there 4.5 hours. I was told ahead of time to allow 4-6 hours for installion, so I was prepared all day. He was nice and pleasant and called me Sir. He sat with me and went over all the features on the TV and on the Internet. I got all three services, phone, internet, and tv. I've enjoyed my services and gald I made the switch. Plus another great promo is there is not contract! With TWC in order to keep my price from going up I was going to lock it in for 2 years. The problem with that is if they lose a channel or channels, my price will not be adjusted because my bill is locked for 2 years. And at the end of the 2 years which you have to keep up it, your bill will go up to the new price that is set.

Richard, you are incorrect. Comcast shows all their movie channels in HD.

Another odd thing I noticed - why are most of the people that praise AT&T unable to spell for their lives?

Mary,
Just because you have had a different experience than others on this site is no reason to attack them on a personal level. Reading back through the posts, I see that both pro and con statements have misspelled words. That is more an indication of our society, as a whole, and is not limited to those who have had good experiences with u-verse.
My service has worked quite well. Installation was deplorable, as is their customer service, but my service works great. I love my u-verse, I can spell and no, I do not work for AT&T.

Those of you that love AT&T U-Verse so be it. But if you have noticed from 2007-2009 all the problems are still the same, Why? My son had his house build, and his home is all fiber optic, he order the U-verse and has had the same problems as 89% of the people here did. It would freeze up, causing the rebooting about five times a day, they finally fixed it.

But those of us who does not have the new houses with fiber optic and the fiber optic is only running below our streets, when it gets to some of the houses, there's not much stream is left, this is what one tech told me. He even showed me when he pulled up my U-verse on his computer I was having over five million errors, you I typed that correct, I said FIVE MILLION Errors.

There's another problem with U-Verse that I didn't have with my satellite, my DVD recorder, recording my shows on disk to keep, it states copyright and will not record, just like your VCR would record shows. I called CBS and talked to them about this, it would not record NCIS stated Copyright, CBS told me its the U-Verse box, that it uses Microsoft program software and and I'm not the first caller to tell them this.

I even called the company that makes my DVD record box and was told they have gotten many calls and it's U-Verse software programing. I was told to keep hitting the record button, and ok until it start recording, this hard on my DVD recorder remote. With satellite it recorded without any problems. I even try hooking up my old VCR and try that, guess what that will not work either.

When we first got U-Verse in Oct 2008, every other day we had a tech out to our home, I was told it was this problem, that problem, and then one tech said your system was installed in two hours, yep. The tech state no telling where the problems are. I was credit one month on the bill, just about every day we had to reboot the system about fifteen times, Yes 15 times, a day. We missed more of our shows then I ever did with my satellite.

I was even told well just think you will not loose tv when bad weather hit, What? I can't watch tv now, it keep freezing up. I'm doing more rebooting which is not good on my tv set. The only reason I haven cancel yet, is because I still haven gotten my rebate as promised. Got one of them but not the other one. Nothing beats satellite, you can pause in any room, and GUESS What have any of you gotten a post card stating the box that does nothing, no pausing, no recording, nothing they have raised the rate on those boxes. Pay more for boxes that does nothing, and I'm tried of hearing oh, you can pause the recorded programs, well I could do that with any dvd movie, why pay more for a box that does nothing.
My point and my point only but I'm tried of U-verse and not getting what was promised, which was the reason we got it in the first place.
Cindyrsdu

To Cindyrsdu:
Just wanted to throw a few things out there, the first thing is, did you know that recording shows is technically illegal. Reason why, is if you play that show or movie for anyone other than who watched it the first time, it constitutes personal use and is a felony. Which is why Microsoft does NOT allow you to record the show unless it is allowed, for instance some of the History channel shows that at the beginning say that you may record the show but must destroy it on a certain date, U-Verse will allow that to be recorded on such device. The error you get of being Copy Righted is correct. Other services are too trying to do the same to block recordings. Sorry if no one told you this before, probably never spoke to a Cisco Engineer before. But it is coming, may not be for a little while yet.
On another note here, you stated that you son has a house with fiber threw out. Well in U-Verse's case, that does not matter. U-Verse does not use in house Fiber as of this point. Soon we will yes, but not now. It is running on CAT-5 or COAX inside the home, hopefully it's on CAT-5e but I doubt that. As of date the only service that will run on a House fiber network is Fios from Verizon. However it's at least twice as much, but you pay for what you get. And to your remark about Fiber under the street that looses single as it gets farther down, that just tells me how much you know about fiber. I can run a single fiber from the east coast to the west coast and not lose a single DB in single strength. This is the whole reason everything is moving to Fiber. Not to mention as of date no one has even found out how much bandwidth you can stress threw a fiber, no one has maxed on yet.
U-Verse is switched to Copper at some point any were between 100 to 3500 feet from your home, the closer you are, and the better service you will have. I agree that sucks, but soon hopefully in 5 to 10 years U-Verse hopes to have fiber to and in homes, when that happens, there will be no trouble, maybe at first as techs get used to it, but after that it will be like a dream come true. Unlimited Bandwidth for everyone. Imagine getting a full length movie in a matter of 2 seconds.
Any ways, thanks for reading, and to the lady correcting English, I could care less, it's the point of the passage that matter, give it a rest.

Justin, I have to say your wrong on recording local shows, movies yes there's a copyright on them. But TV news, local Tv shows are not. If that was the case, you would have never been able to use a VCR to record your shows. I've called CBS, ABC, because when I got U-Verse my DVD and my VCR would not record the shows. I was told by CBS, ABC, and Fox that any local station programing you can record. That is why your VCR and DVD recorders has a timer for you to set to record your local shows.

No one is speaking of recording Movies, I'm speaking of Local shows, even the 10:00 p.m. news. Microsoft has no right putting into there programing software to stop you from recording your local stations. To a major point, I can hit record on a commercial and get this copyright message, no one wants the commercials, Once again, I've done what the maker of my DVD recorder box told me, to hit record, when I get the message can't record copyright, hit ok, but keep doing this until it records, then about anywhere between ten to fifteen times the recording will start, and record the show.

I never had this problem with satellite, even the tech of AT&T U-verse told me right here in my home, that local stations you should be able to record on any DVD or VCR. Which I knew that, local stations you can record that has come from my local station that I've called.

Movies are a different ball game, but there's some movies you can record, and I'm not speaking of recording movies I'm speaking of recording my local station shows, that I've never had a problem with recording before until I got U-verse.

That would be why I said unless otherwise noted. However, it’s not just Microsoft that put this into their system just to make everyone mad. They are simply following want the Station request that they do. It was not a Microsoft call to just block all recording, U-Verse has their Own DVR, and so they would not want to block everything. However the DVR will record everything that you watch Except for PPV. Why, because you cannot duplicate it. Well you can, but you need to be a tech. junky and know how, and I am not going there for legal issues. But putting the show onto a DVD is illegal there is a difference between putting something on your DVR to watch latter and putting it on disk. Read that law very closely.

This is just so odd, I can not reconcile the differences. My experience with U-Verse has been great. From the initial order, to the install, to customer service on some slight order changes. They even worked with me to get the 2-Wire router to properly work router-behind-router so that I can use my Cisco router. My experience is so polarized to what is being said here that it does not make sense. Addtionally they have been tremendously successful in the roll-out and growth of the product.

Are the problems regional?
Customer centric?
The statistical bad employee?

PS The grounding issue is not AT&Ts fault, it's a technological fact that can not be "Jimmied" or ignored. If your wiring can't support newer technology, then it's not for you. It's like trying to watch HD on an old television.

One thing that I want to add real quick for all of you who complain about not having grounded outlets in your home. When you call in do you bother to listion to the person that you are talking to? They list a few question at one point, and one of those Questions is, "Do you have grounded Outlets in your home." If you the idiot who decides to say yes and they come out the will find the truth. You can not cheet them say yes and then use one of those converter things, Sorry dont work that way. and i am still doumb founded on how people have computers with out grounded outlets. everysingle computer i have ever owned have a 3 prong grounded outlet plug. if you are using one of those converters on your computer, you are risking everything computer damage to fire. so good luck with that.

I have had U-Verse for more than a year. It is the best TV service I ever had. The reason I switched from Comcast was that I am a heavy Internet user and Comcast cable modem just simply doesn't work for me, and their customer service was also so poor. I am wondering whether there is any future for cable modem, unless they come up better technology. I was so happy to get rid of Comcast, and shouted to their representative, "I have U-Verse now, which is far better than your service". THe U-Verse is cheaper compared to Comcast. I subscribe all channels of U-Verse, and Internet, but it is still cheaper than Comcast package (about 70% channels I am having).

The U-Verse TV picture was a little choppy at the beginning, but it is improved a lot now. DVR and video on demand are great. Internet is so fast, I never have any problem with my VOIP phone.

During Comcast days, my VOIP phone quality was so poor, and frequently interrupted, due to small Internet bandwidth, and Comcast Internet always have some interruption during the weekend.

Down with Comcast!

Homes with old wiring are probably not the problem with UVERSE in most cases but of course any opinion is anecdotal only unless one has access to statistical evidence. If the cable company or satellite company is able to make their system work (in our area it does) with old wiring then the question is why can’t UVERSE. BTW before anyone jumps in I am upgrading my wiring, amperage and plugs ASAP and it is going to cost me plenty but not because of UVERSE. Having personal experience with two attempts at installation at my house, the neighbor next door and a relative in a much newer neighborhood but in the same city it seems likely it is the external old infrastructure that is the source. I would like to pretend that I came up with this:))) but actually the techs pointed out that the old narrow gage wiring connecting the poles and distance from the head were the reason the modem could never sync. A work order was put in for a crew to fix the problem. It is not clear that it ever was. That was over two years ago. I was assured recently that the fiber is much closer to our area now. The neighbor who just installed UVERSE in December and did get it to work is experiencing daily freezes some of which are 5 minutes in length. Also he said they recently charged him 180 dollars to upgrade his wiring to make it work. That could be somewhere in the fine print but why would assent to it? My relative, who is a relatively new area, and who has the wiring apparently running to a box right on the lawn had initial problems but it is has worked fine for a long time now. It was upgraded to Total Home DVR recently. I am about two days away from install and need confirm or cancel it. I am trying to decide if I should play the fool and try it anyway again as my cable company price is a lot more for what UVERSE offers even I cut a few things from the cableco cost to almost exactly match what UVERSE is offering.

Followup

I talked to a UVERSE Retention person yesterday and he agreed that until they make rock solid the signal in my area there would be little point in me installing UVERSE. I think he took the right approach but I am not sure this is UVERSE policy which is a problem. He did provide information on their new Direct TV bundle after I asked and I am considering it. Price-wise it is not much different than what UVERSE is offering except they don’t provide as many up front incentives and for retention after the 12 month deal expires you have to deal with DirectTV not AT@T. Of course by then there is always the hope that UVERSE will have fixed the neighborhood. I am still waiting to see whether the neighbor's situation improves. BTW Justin in all my conversations with UVERSE I recall no mention of proper grounding inside the house. Anyway AT@T, at least in my area, is perfectly willing to come out and check your house to see if UVERSE could be installed and at that point the grounding issue should be discussed no matter what you told them over the phone though I see no purpose in any customer lying about it.. .But as I wrote, I doubt this will solve most signal loss/interruption problems. The signal from the outside must reach a certain level I believe I recall it was somewhere in the 80’s and if it does not the inside of the house doesn’t matter. The last time I tried to install UVERSE the signal levels were still not good enough so the signal would not hold especially for supporting the bandwidth for the TV.

Its funny what people take for granted. There are going to be problems with any new technology, and though high-speed network connections are not new, the ability to deliver these bandwidths to the home IS. I remember the first DSL connection that I had, in fact it was IDSL. PacBell had at least a dozen 10ft long 8ft deep 3ft wide trenches all over my neighborhood to repair poor splices, that were fine for analog telephone, but death for the bandwidth required by IDSL (a whopping 144kbps!). It took them 4 weeks to complete the installation.

There are bound to be problems, get over it, because this is just the start of the flood of IP services to the home. ATT will fix the wiring to the premise, you will fix the wiring in your homes; and in a few years we will be doing it all over again putting CAT6, or fiber, in our homes so we can all have our 100mbps or even gigahertz connections to the Internet.

PS. Having ungrounded connections in any home is just plain bad and can have dire and possibly life-threatening consequences. I very much understand the cost of remediation, as our home had aluminum wiring that had to be dealt with, but I will guarantee you the cost of what can go wrong because of an ungrounded connection, or faulty wiring, is higher.

After reading half way through this page, I am now unsure if I want to do this. I don't need the TV, just the internet. The ATT guy said it's faster than my DSL Extreme 6.0 but the same price. However, I work from home and cannot have an interruption in service. I use the internet all day long and moving between pages, placing orders can be slow when customers are in a hurry and even a 5 second lag between pages is aggravating when on the phone with them. But I am not tech savvy and since I deal with credit card numbers all day, I'm afraid of the words "no protection". I use AVG and the standard windows firewall although I don't know anything about tweaking them. The technician is scheduled to come out on March 14th and I'm thinking maybe I should just cancel it. Since I'm not getting any TV stuff, (we don't do satellite, cable or anything and don't want to) how much faster would it honestly be? Would it be worth it JUST for the internet especially since there is no price difference? I am in the Palm Bay/Melbourne area of Brevard County, Florida.
Thanks!

I just want to respond to Heathers comments.

If your current provider is working for you don't make a change. Not because there is a problem with U-verse but because anytime you make a change there is a chance of a problem. Unless you see a big benefit from making a change don't take the chance stay with whats working.

I worked in Verizon DSL support for a number of years and we got surprised all the time. People would make a change in their service and then surprise they would have weeks of problems getting their service working again. The problems were not necessarily because someone did something wrong but it is just the way things work in life.

We have had U-verse internet for 6 months and have not had a problem with it. The tech install went great and the customer service has been as good or better than the other companies we have dealt with. We had U-Verse TV and loved being able to record 4 channels at a time but have returned to Dish Network due to the way the DVR worked. I am expect that in the future I will consider returning to U-Verse TV once they have had a chance to improve the DVR and provide the ability to control the DVR from any room in the house.

Tom in Socal

In Response to Tom in Socal.
AT&T does now have Total Home DVR. Which means from any TV that is connected to U-Verse can control the DVR unlike Dish which only the 2 TV on the box can control it.. Do make sure that it is rolled out in your town, if not ask them when they expect it. But I did want to tell you that Total Home DVR is available, and is Fantastic. Not only can you control it from any TV in the house, BUT, let’s say you’re at work and forgot to set something to record you can log in via the Internet and set it up that way.. I believe it is possible from your AT&T cell phone as well, I am not 100% sure on that, you will have to ask about that.
Let me know how you like the total home DVR.

Talk about someone that is still stuck in the stone age... Besides Bunny ears is incorrect because the do not recieve the Digital Signals. You might get one or two, but you need a Digital Atennia. and a Digital Box unless you want to go spend big bucks on a new TV. then you would just need a Digital Attennia, But yeah Welcome to the 21st Century, and get out of the stone age my friend.

My Experience with the uverse service has been acceptable. My problem was with the "professional" install. I had 3 installers out and all of them wanted to drill a hole right through the front of my house. I asked in what way is shoving a drill through my house professional? They are all members of IBEW and should know how to fish wire in a wall. Mine was actually very simple for a pro but they all told me that they were not trained in fishing wire and there is only 2 options. Drill through my house or through the floor. Very disappointing. I had them drill under the carpet and leave me enough wire so I could get it installed correctly. I called IBEW directly and they sent out a qualified communication installer and it now looks great. It cost $150 bucks but looks great!
I was surprised to find out that there is a special AT&T faction with a different skill set in IBEW. Seems to contradict the benefit of a union installer.
I bought the 6mg internet package and according to speedtest.net I get very close. Still nowhere near the 20mg speed that my neighbors get with Comcast but having more HDTV channels was worth it.

Warning: ATT U-verse customer service sucks. If there is a problem, and there are going to be, when you call customer service you get snarky, rude, sarcastic High-school drop-outs who can't help you and wish you wouldn't bother them. Their door-to-door sales people are not ATT employees, they're contractors, so ATT doesn't feel that they are responsible for the lies they tell.

I live in Roanoke, TX and last Oct. we signed up and ATT came out to install U-verse. They couldn't get it to work and eventually decided we were too far from "the box". In the process they disconnected our current cable/internet/phone bundle and we were without service for a day and a half.

Big hassle, no apologies.

Fast forward to earlier this month, ATT salesman (contractor) comes around again making all kinds of promises, saying they’ve fixed the problems with the range and that he guarantees us we can get service now.

Today they show up to install U-verse and it’s the same story, we’re too far from the box, and they’ve had our current cable/internet/phone service turned off so they could “port” our phone number to their service.

Unbelievable, what a screwed up company. The box is apparently on the main street coming into our neighborhood just outside the neighborhood, we’re on the 2nd street into the neighborhood 4 houses from the main street where they ran the fiber, so if we’re too far from the box then 90% of the neighborhood is also. Why bother to run fiber down the middle of the neighborhood if you can connect any homes to it? What a way to do business.

Oh, and did I mention their customer service sucks? I’ve now wasted 2 days and still have to get my service with my current provider re-connected, which by the way I DID NOT request to have turned off. ATT had it turned off.

I'm in North Dallas. We've had this service for just over a year. Starting three months ago the picture started to freeze intermittently, about every twenty minutes. It would freeze for about a minute, internet would die, router would blink red.

We've had three or four service calls to figure out this issue. Each time on the phone with them, they put us through the same script: reboot the router, reboot the receiver, ok, neither worked, sending a guy. Guy comes, pokes around, says the problem should be fixed. It's not. Picture would still freeze up an hour later. With the last service call, the guy went to the DSLAM box (down the street) and replaced circuits saying the circuits were bad. He said he has dealt with 5 other similar complaints in our area: picture freezing, internet cutting out frequently. Even after 'replacing the circuits' the picture is *still* freezing, now even more and for longer durations. It's infuriating. The internet has cut out twice while I've been writing this comment.

My theory is that the infrastructure itself is FLAWED. The copper wires are dirty, degraded, unable to handle the signal strain, or they just did a poor installation and no one is trained or aware enough to figure it out and fix it. We're giving one last chance with one more service call (they're coming tomorrow). If they can't figure out the real issue, we're canceling and never looking back.

Rob in Dallas; We have had the same problem since it was installed into our home. Each week there would be about 4 techs at our home, they even sent the supervisor out to fix the problem. They replaced the router, they claim they had replace some items at the main station box, but nothing worked. Our Tv's kept freezing in one day we had to reboot 27 times. You might want to tell them to replace the DVR box.

After almost of four months of this mess, they came back out and said it was the DVR box, that they would over heat, the fan would not keep them cool down, and would cause the system to malfunction. We lost all the recording programs we had not watch, I asked the guy, could I hook it up like I did the dish network and record my program off there the box before he took it. He said no, the system is set up so you can't do that.

I didn't believe him, dish told me I could do it with there box before mailing it back, why can't I do it with U-Verse, so I asked him could I try, hooked it up just like I did the dish network DVR box, and he's write. AT&T U-Verse & Microsoft had a program written with the box that would not let you do it. Still waiting on my last rebate before I tell them to come and get this crap out of my home and I get my dish back.
Cindyrsdu

WOW !!!!! I have been thinking of switching to U-verse, but after all this , i dont know !!! Here in michigan, its been 50/50 also, so i dont know what to do !!!! geauss i'll wait, keep reading and see what comes up !!

thanks for everyones help, i'll keep reading !!
I.M. mi

can anyone help with my descion? I live in Weston, FL..

I have DirecTv w/HD and ATT(Belsouth) DSL Ultra 1.5 is as fast as they offer in my neighborhood.

I am thinking of switching to U-Verse U450/HD package w/6MB internet.

I live about 200/250ft from the VRad box where the "Mini" DSLAM is and where the fiber goes to copper.

I have (2) HDTV's and my house is networked to the hilt.

My house was bulit in the early 80's and I have concerns of the copper in the ground. If i bitch will they run new copper to the splice box?

So, now you pay DirectTV and AT&T for two services and you don't spend more than $139 a month? Do you get OnDemand programming or PPV programming? Do you get an unlimited calling plan with no time or minute restrictions? You're right Cable isn't perfect, but it's far better than dish or AT&T. I mean they've been doing it the longest, and are providing everything the customers need. They'll have the same features, i.e. multi-room DVR's, recording functions from your cell, etc, in a very short period of time. Aren't all these negative comments about cable really just a "big brother" issue? Give it a rest already!

How long does it take for a "work in progress" to graduate to "faulty concept"? Did you not notice that this blog and the initial comments are more than two years old? And the comments for the most part have remained the same, with the most common being picture freezing.

Do you honestly expect it to get better in 6 months?

I, too, was suckered to leaving DirecTV and ATT DSL (and, no, Cable Guy, they are not the same type of service). I told the sales guy I was very interested in HD--not one HD channel ended up in my lineup. Picture freezes and pixilation are quite common from one set top box (STB), even on recorded content, fairly rare from the DVR, and quite rare from the other STB. Some nights there's no problem, some there's no TV in the bedroom.

If you've had a DirecTV DVR, you DO NOT want this service. The remote/menu functions are a joke. And, although there are ways to "hack" it (install a larger hard drive), it's not recommended because of possibly specialty hardware and, more importantly, because you don't own the DVR and hacking it violates the terms of use. And, indeed, why would you risk it on a device that's already buggy?

As for Internet use, I haven't seen any connection problems. It appears I'm actually getting the 3MBPS I'm paying for, not the "up to" (actually 384kbps) the cable companies give.

However, whenever my laptop logs on to another network, it won't connect to my gateway when I get back home until I reenter the password. Sometimes I have to do this a couple of times.

Customer service? Not so much. Clearly a different bunch than the ATT phone/DSL ones. Scripted (you can tell when they repeat what you said to buy time so the computer can go to the next page), sometimes condescending, obviously outsourced, and not very technical.

I'll be having a technician out this weekend to see if he can handle my TV/logon issues. I have little faith, so I have to make sure I'm current on my recorded programs.

yes i just got at&t u-verse and i was wondering what times for certain shows come on that i watch bullrun on the speed channel breaking bad on A&E. when i had time warner they came on at 10pm. for some strange reason they dont come on during that time. was wondering if anyone knew what times they are shown thankyou.

We've had U-verse here for just over a year. Switched from Dish Network to save some money. No major problems until 1 1/2 weeks ago & now we warning everyone we know to stay with their current provider & NOT go with U-verse!

For some unknown reason we have been without service for over 1 1/2 weeks- tv OR Internet! I have lost 4 days waiting for techs- some show; some don't, but those who do show up do NOT show when they supposed to!

Tech today was great, but everything crashed again 5 hours after he left. Now I have to start all the phones calls to the uncaring reps & wait for techs that may or may not show up!

SICK OF THIS! If not fixed soon, we're going to transfer ALL our service away from AT&T- that includes our 4 member family plan of cellular!

They need to be held accountable & FIX whatever the problem is!

I made the switch to Uverse (phone, internet and tv)after it became available in my area and it was THE WORST MISTAKE I EVER MADE!

After two months, my internet and tv service went down for some unknown reason and was out for a week. I lost multiple days waiting for techs that were not able to accurately identify the problem nor could they resolve the issue. I wasted hours on the phone doing reboots and was losing money because i run a home business.

Long story short (I won't go into all of the horrid details of the back and forth with tech support and customer service) after being at my wits end, i stopped a random tech on my street who was able to resolve my issue -- go figure.

after two weeks, now my phone is out and i am on the list for a tech to come out yet again.

I called customer service and encountered several extremely rude, unempathetic, nasty, unresponsive agents who basically said that they'd be happy to cancel my service if I am unsatisfied and only offered to credit my account $5 a day even though this PROBLEM WAS DUE TO AT&Ts FAULTY EQUIPMENT AND UNSOPHISTICATED INSTALL.

Well, I'm taking the option to cancel my service and go back to Direct TV where I was a customer for five years.

My advice to ANYONE considering switching to Uverse -- DON"T or Do it at your own risk. You don't want to go through what I've been through...for real!

Just thought I'd update on our U-Verse experience here in the Kansas City area. Installed on January 30, 2008...
That's 14 months... We have AT&T phones, U-400, and DSL.
All works very well! In the first 3-4 weeks, a DVR box
was a little iffy. That was resolved with a s/w fix, ans
since then, NO PROBLEMS!!! NO OUTAGES!! Maybe we just have
'good luck'... maybe we happen to live in an area where all
the lines are good... maybe we have great AT&T Techs here.
Whatever the reason, I LOVE the U-Verse service and I truly
believe that IPTV technology will improve steadily and will
be the 'future of TV'! If you are frightened off for now, then just keep watching... I am certain that AT&T will improve this service steadily and consistently. Best of luck! (And don't believe ALL of the 'naysayers' on this blog. ~ Steve

Hey AL, Sounds like a cable is unplugged. The tech Probibly forgot to replug it in, or there is no room on the tv's to plug them in. I would recemend unpluging the U-verse box FROM THE TV ONLY, and plug the VCR/DVD combo in there when you want to watch it, and be sure to switch back to watch U-Verse again. If that does solve the problem, then you can buy a box from Wal-Mart that allows you to plug in multiple units and then flip a switch on it to the device that you want to use. if this does not solve your problem please contact Costumer support.

And as for Shannon, I am sorry that you have had these problems, alot of the Prem. Techs that are in the feild are new to this type of service, and yes i will agree could probibly use some more training. I come from the other side of U-Verse I am a Service Tech. which is one of the guys that builds the cable pairs so taht the signel reaches your home. and I again I am sorry but the Prem Techs taht they send out, are not allowed to get into the outside cable, and 80% of problems would be, my guess, outside the home. they should be calling in a Repair man to search the cable to find and fix the problems, after they have detremind the troubleis not in the house....

How ever something not very many tech are aware of, If they are installing this service in your home, and you have switch out your light bulbs in your home to the new floressent (cant spell that word) bulbs, then they need to stay as far away from your lights as possible. For some reason they put off a very high pitch Sound wave that Humans can not hear, how ever this sound wave intrupts the U-Verse signle. As well as if they are using any part of your exsisting home Cable wire, then they need to be sure that A. it is not ran with ANY electrical wire, and B. that it is Grounded. or ellse it will not be sheilded and running threw walls near electric will inturpt the signel as well...
If you guys are having problems and it sounds like one of these may be your problem, then please call and have them re wire the U-Verse. If you have these lights and you notice the problem try turning off all the lights that are floressent and see if it helps.. just to test before you assume that the wire inside is bad. but these are problems that Service Techs like me find cause the problem... Again I am sorry for the level of service that you have recieved, and hope to have you as a customer again in the futre. Maybe once the system has it's time to go threw its Bug and BATA faze.

Thanks

Live in a rural area outside Kalamazoo, MI. We've been trying to get precise info about ATT Uverse for some time, because some installers were nearby over a year ago. Today first a young women, then her husband came by trying to do what appeared to be a hard sell--save this and save that much money. We asked for firm information and were given two papers that didn't make a lot of sense. They kept saying that orally they could answer any questions. How do you know the question when you have no information to begin with?
We are interested in good service and in being able to record. From meeting these sales reps, there was not a feeling of confidence in anything about ATT. The interviews caused us to completely lose confidence in anyone connected.
Has anyone had a similar experience?

I received a sales pitch call March 28, 2009, and scheduled a date of install for April 13. I lost a day's pay waiting for someone to show up and no one did. Then the nightmare started by trying to call AT&T to find out why no one showed up. First person I got on the phone I could not understand them. Asked them where they were located and with a long hesitation they finally said, "I cannot tell you that because of security purposes". Because I had to keep asking her to repeat herself I was getting no where with my inquiry. I hung up and called back again and got someone who talked as if they were in the United States. My problem of no one showing up for the April 13 install apparently was too complicated for her and when she left the line to check on my issue she never came back on line. I then hung up and called back again. This time I got someone who also sounded like they were in the United States and I asked her where she was located and she said in Texas. I told her that I had been told by another representative of AT&T that they could not reveal where they were located because of security purposes. She indicated that was not true. She then went on and assured me she could help me---this call occurred on April 13. She asked while she was on the phone with me to call my internet service provider and cancel for May 13 (I have no idea why she selected this date). I cancelled my service for May 13 while she waited on the line. She indicated she would call me back later in the day and give me an install date the week of April 20. She did call back later in the day but said she could not give me a schedule date until Wednesday (April 15) and would definitely call me back. Never heard from her again. Called back on Thursday, April 16 and demanded to talk to a supervisor and got the runaround that it was not necessary they could help me. Yet another person I could not understand---they told me they were in the Phillipines demanded to talk to a supervisor. Apparently I then got transferred to the United States to yet another person who sounded very helpful. It was the person who schedules the installs. She said I had to disconnect my internet service before they could schedule my Uverse installation. It had to be actually inactive. All of this contrary to what the first person told me and that was I could wait until AT&T installed and then call and cancell my Dish Networks and my internet service. I simply could not wrap this around my mind since I had been told so many different things. She then wanted to transfer me to another person who could explain to me about the need for my internet to actually be cancelled before they could schedule an install. I gave up on that call and called back again asking to speak to a supervisor and again got someone telling me that was not necessary that I had finally reached someone who could actually help me--this call was Thursday, April 16 and they were located in Texas. They indicated because I had a specific internet provider I would first have to disconnect my service with that provider and then they would schedule my Uverse install which could be 3 to 4 weeks away because they are so busy. I have a small business and simply cannot be without my internet services because I have to upload photos. They put me on hold for some time while she talked with her "supervisor". She came back on the line and said she would call me back on Saturday. She did call me but without any resolutions about the internet problem. Said her supervisor had not resolved the issue yet and she would call me on Monday, April 20. Guess what? I have had it with AT&T. I have been promised all kinds of rates, and one quite low for all that I had been through (but that person never called me back and I have no proof of the price she gave me over the phone). I have 4 TV's in my house, two of which are HD. The first person told me I only need one HD receiver for all 4 of those TV's. Another tells me that is not so if I don't want to have to put the other 3 on an outside atenna. I have been to their website and it is not really clear about the rates for 4 TV's. Dish Networks is now looking very, very good to me. I have been with them for many years. I'll wait until a neighbor signs up and see how they fair with it before I will even consider a change. AT&T has already wasted far too much of my time and money and they are not through we me yet!

I am considering switching from Comcast to U-verse in Western Springs Illinois. Can anyone tell me their success or failures with AT&T within my area? Thanks

Ok, I've read every one of the comments here, and am still on the fence. I live in Houston.

Here's what we currently have...

We were previously with Time Warner Cable, until it changed to Comcast. With TWC, we never had one problem with our cable or internet service. Not one!

With Comcast, we have issues with our cable tv service regularly, like almost daily. Sometimes it will freeze up during a program, sometimes the whole cable will go out, so a program that was recorded on TIVO will only be a black screen. We then have to reboot the boxes. This is annoying enough when it causes us to miss one show but we're home to catch it and fix it right away, but it really ticks me off when we go away for a few days and we miss days of shows because the cable went out and our shows didn't get recorded.

Monday, with no warning at all, channels 309-313 (Fox, PBS, NBC, CBS, & ABC) disappeared and new 600 series channels for those networks showed up, and our TIVO tried to record our programs from them. The problem was that we're evidently not "authorized" for those channels, so all that was recorded was a screen that that said "No Authorization. Please call blah, blah, blah..."! When we called Comcast we were told the programing would fix itself within 48 hours. Hasn't happened yet.

We have a big screen tv (52" inch?) in the living room and a smaller tv in the bedroom. We have cable & TIVO on both tvs, and can record on both and watch recorded shows on both, as many shows as we want. With TIVO we can pause in the middle of a "live" show, rewind, and fast forward. We can record a show in one room and transfer it to the TIVO in the other room and watch it. I enjoy the speed of changing channels that we have and I enjoy the channel guide that we have.

Will we be able to keep using the TIVO with the Uverse? As much as I hate Comcast, is the grass going to be any greener with Uverse?

I have had Uverse for over 2 months now. The service has been Ok not great but OK. When recording high def stations sometime strange thing happen like the sound will disappear or the picture will will disappear for a short time. The internet sometimes briefly bogs. none of these symptoms have been extreme yet so it is still acceptable to me.

The thing that bothers me now is getting the rebates! They make it as difficult as possible knowing most people will give up. When I ordered the service I asked when I will receive the rebate and they told me within 60 days. I was eligible for the $200 cash back. I got no notice's or anything in over 70 days. So I called. I talked with there support to figure out what was up and after 20 min or so I was told that a check will be mailed out for $100 and the other $100 will come to me as a visa cash card. They gave me web address to log into to claim it. They also told me I will have to wait 2 weeks before the card will be assessable on line. I thought I was done. I jumped through there hoops. 2 weeks passed and I logged on to get my visa card and am greeted with yet another hoop. All this website did was confirm who I was and mailed out yet another form for me to fill out and mail back within 30 days or the card is void. In this day and age this is unacceptable! This should be as simple as logging into my uverse account after 60 days of activation, clicking a button that say's "send me my rebate" and having a check show up at my door. All these hoop are insane!

So I got my check for $100 and I am assuming that they want me to cave in now but I am resolute! I will get that visa card! You should too!

Hi Mindy,
I do have good News and bad news for you. First I just want to say that what you are starting to see with comcast is only the begining. after having them my self for years, they will start to take channels one by one, and it always seams to be your favorite stations. and they tell you if you want them back then you have to upgrade to the higher package. just another way for them to rip you off...

Now for the bad news and please read on after I say this, but no you will not be able to use TiVo with U-Verse. The only way you could is if you manualy set the U-verse channel and then pushed record.
HOWEVER, I would HIGHLY recemend that you order U200 with Total Home DVR. With this service, it is very much the same as your TiVo. You can record Multiple shows at one time, and can watch them on ANY tv in the Whole house that is hooked up to U-Verse. Btw the way that was the good news I forgot to put it in there. Sorry about that lol... I would say that the DVR service you get with U-Verse is MUCH better then TiVo. I can see the draw back of having to set the new DVR to record all of your shows me be a hassle, but it should pay off in the long run..

Another thing that I wish to share with you, is dont always go by what people say on a blog, half of the Negative comments on here are most likly false and or repeat people, Due to fired employees, people that just plane old hate AT&T. ect...

So my advise is, just give it a try. Most places they have a 30 day Free trial. ask for that. then you have 30 days to try at no risk. ask them when they come out that they do not hack into your old cable that way if for some reason you deciced to cancle, you can just switch right back.

I hope this info helps you in some way.

Justin
U-Verse Service Tech

Mindy,

In response to what Justin told you. Actually, you can use Tivo with U-verse. I currently am, and it works well, it automatically changes the channels and records with no problems. The are good primers available check out www.tivocommunity.com and search for u-verse.

I do have to say that this is the first time I have ever known TiVo to work with U-Verse. I will be honest with you guys, I have gone to peoples home because they complain that it's not working with the U-Verse service. But if you can get it to work then great. However, I still recommend getting Our total home DVR, Simply because if you order the U200 or better package (In Most Area) the Total Home DVR if included for free. so why have 2 TiVo's when you can have a DVR that you can play on any and every TV in the home? and that you can record more than one thing at a time on the DVR. I believe you can record up to 7 shows in some areas. Some areas are limited to 4 shows at one time. You will have to call and check for your area and what they allow. but still, if you order the U200 service which is $15 more than the cheapest U100, you get this Total Home DVR free. I say it's a deal, and better then TiVo. And no I am not just trying to make a sale, because if I was I would give all of you my Referral Badge, but I'm not because I just want to share my personal experience with you and hope that you listen... If you want to keep TiVo you can, but I will tell you the U-Verse Techs DO NOT set them up nor will we help you with them officially. Unofficially they may help you with them, but they do not have to.

Thanks
Justin

Uverse ROCKs its worth the "Beta" like problems. The software is awesome, every provider has problems....the ones ATT has here, are minimal. The web access rules.

I've had U-verse for almost two weeks now. The technicians were excellent. they re-ran two cables that they said would have had pixalation problems if they tried to use them. they replaced all of my wall jacks and station cables in the house. all of my tv's look great now. no pixalation. my only problem is having 5 tv's. agreed: why we need 5 tv's all watching different programs at one time? get outside, I get that but sometimes it happens. we can only watch 4 different channels in the house, if a program is being recorded then we can only watch 3 other programs. i've tried even watching all SD programs. will it ever open up to more streams being able to be viewed at the same time?

Most people with Comcast don't read the fine print. Whenever people run a speed test with Comcast they always say "I'm getting the speed I am supposed to get every time, it's fast". Now I know for a fact that Comcast throttles is speeds back because I use to work for them and it is not consistently fast like people would think. If you would ready the fine print they state that you get their maximum out put available for the first 5 to 10MB of your file download or 10 to 15MB depending on your internet plan. After which your speed gets throttled down to somewhere between 3 and 6mbps depending on the network traffic in your area. When you run internet speed tests, its a measure of how fast data gets transfer from point to another. The data that is being transferred is relatively small. No where above 5 to 10MB so you are never going to get an accurate reading for Comcast. Now if you want a real test of your internet speed, try downloading big files like 100MB or so and time it. Or better yet just watch your rate of transfer for that file and see what your average is. When it comes to Uverse internet verse Comcast when dealing with "supposedly" same internet speeds. Uverse wins every single time

Okay I am responding to a couple of threads, sorry that I don’t name those I am responding to. My first one is to the last guy commenting about Comcast Speed Vs. U-Verse Speed, He is correct, but still failed to mention some of the worst parts to Comcast. Let’s say you have to 10MB/s Plan which in my area runs 59.99 okay the give you that boost thing that he was talking about, so for the first 2MB you get a 12-15MB boost, then after 5-10MB depending on Network Traffic the throttle it down to around 5MB. now here’s the worst part, On the 10MB/s plan you are allowed 5 Gigs of download Bandwidth Per month. Now most areas only have the 6MB plan which allows only 2Gigs of Bandwidth per month. So let’s say you download a couple of movies, and there goes your Bandwidth. if you go over, they give you a warning, if you go over 2 months in a row, they Disconnect you for 30 days, and you are still required to pay for those 30 days. if you do it again, you are blocked permanently. Now with U-Verse, as of right now, they have NO set limits, even on their 15MB/s plan which Comcast does NOT even offer for Non-Business customers.

On to the individual who asked about the Pixilation issue. Well A number of things can be causing this. Yes it's true that if you separate the STB and router it may have some relief. NEVER stack them (I know some tech do this) and Never set them on the floor, if it is carpet (I have seen this as well). And the reason behind this, the router has a wireless signal and if it is too close to the STB or Residential Gateway as I refer to it as, the wireless signal the Router puts off interrupts the U-Verse signal. Yes this is kind of dumb, and I wish they would fix this, but it cost too much for proper shielding and would cost too much to the customer. however, a quick thing to try if that is the problem, is to put them about 5 feet apart. If this does not work, then it is most likely an outside issue, or building wire issue, as I noticed you said you live in an apt. building I believe you said. That can be harder to solve but if you can get a good tech out they can resolve it. However, a U-Verse Tech that comes to your home, cannot fix the outside cable they have to call Repair to fix it, or Construction. Which is where I used to be. But if it continues to be a problem, Please call and ask that someone come out and do some testing on your line..

ONE MORE,
The person that said they have 5 TV’s and can only watch 4 shows, 3 if recording. We are working on this. In some areas where it has been out for some time now we have it up to 7 TV’s and 10 shows. However very few people are able to get that kind of Bandwidth to their home. you should call in and ask them if it is possible to be able to add more bandwidth or be able to watch more shows, since this is upsetting you. I am not sure if they can help you, Because I do not know the area you are in nor what kind of problems they have in your area.

HOPE THIS INFO HELPS THOSE THAT ASKED FOR IT, SORRY I RAN IT ALL TOGETHER.

We had Uverse installed October of 2008. If it worked consistently, I'd love it. Unfortunately, all three - phone, internet and TV (TV pixelates and freezes) go down quite often. I contacted Tech Support so often I lost count, they've sent service techs out about 7 times, and line people 3 times. They've given so many different reasons for the lack of service - fluorescent lights too close to the gateway box or the incoming connection (not proven as a problem); bad gateway box (not proven as a problem); too much interference on the line; house is 3,850 feet from the port (or whatever) - they're still working on this one; and, 3,350 feet of the wire is the old lead cable (50 years old), the last 500 feet is new.

I have no idea which of these, if any, is the correct explanation. I just had to call tonight about the freezing up - more than 24 times in less than 3 hours yesterday, 12 times in an hour tonight.

The tech support person configured the gateway (again), restarted the gateway, and, port bounced the service. So far so good but that was only an hour ago.

Anyone else have these problems? Have they found the solution for you? Will you share what they found?

Thanks!

Mary,
Well to be honest, All of these are your problems. First one that concerns me is your distance. 3850 is pushing it, in my area we like to stay below 3500. they may be trying to push it out farther were you live, and as you can tell it doesn't work the best. Also the fluorescent lights WILL cause your service to get interrupted. Short story to prove that, Were I am at, we had a V-Rad (the box that puts the signal from Fiber to Copper) it was on a customers premise, and every single day at 7pm until 7am the V-Rad would shut down. We couldn't figure out why, we all kept thinking that it was a program issue. well long story short, turned out the gentleman had a fluorescent light that was in his driveway that came on every night on a timer. we had to pay him to replace it and put up something else. something inside your home, Move all fluorescent lights away from the all U-Verse Boxes and Wires. And I will be honest and say that there is nothing wrong with your box, they are trying to program it to get a better signal way out there, because in all honesty you are too far from the box. Sry to inform you of that, but hopefully they will get something worked out...
Also to inform you, that now because of the digital age, even going back to Comcast or whoever you have and you get their Digital service, (Not their analog) You will experience it with them, maybe not as much dude to different signal. But they all have the same problems. U-Verse is just a new Beta TV service if you will... It is still in its trial and error stage...

Way better than Charter, the whole a/v experience is the way it's supposed to be. Until we hooked up Uverse our two high def TVs never achieved their true potential. Now, the picture & sound are way better than what you see in the store.

The only negative with the Uverse system is it's not compatible with range extenders. I have tried to find one that will work with no luck getting that information from ATT support.

Made it to third base, but not home
I'm in Franklin (Nashville), TN. I noticed the ATT Vrad get put in a few months ago at the entrance to my street.
After several phone calls with the Uverse salesman, I picked a package. The salesman lied repeatedly. He constantly tried to use the same $20 discount over and over again to 'bump' me up to the next tier for data and TV. I kept explaining that his math made no sense. He tried to tell me I was going to lose certain channels with Comcast after the digital TV transition. We went back and forth, and came to an agreement on the price. I was supposed to get a total of $325 in rewards. $125 'today' for switching from cable. $200 in two separate chunks 30 and 60 days down the road. Once I placed the order, all I had to do was go to a website or call a number to get the $125. I went to the website, no reward. I called the number. They said I could get the reward 1 month after my installation. Annoying, but I can deal with that. Installers showed up on time today at 8 am. First guy was outside cable guy. He was very nice, but things started looking bad immediately. He ran a 25 MB load test on my line, and it showed it using 92%. He said they don’t like to do installs with that being over 75%. He said he would keep working on it. The engineer showed up next. He too was very nice. Again, he doesn’t seem to optimistic. The 2 of them decide they can offer me the '19 meg plan'. I would only be able to watch on HD feed. They say they expect bonded lines to be available by the end of the year, and then they should be able to upgrade it back to 25 meg service. I reluctantly agree. He then discusses phone service with me. He says it will take 3 days or so to port my number from Comcast. Sales guy on the phone said it would be done today. The 2 techs wince and explain how tired they get of coming in after salesmen tell the lies. In the end, they decide my signal is still too week. One measurement says I’m 2700 ft from the Vrad, and the other tells them I am 3000. Their equipment also tells them there is a 'bridge' in the wires somewhere, but their inspection doesn't find it. They said they would recommend I hold off until ATT is ready to implement bonded lines. This will increase the acceptable distance from Vrad to 5000 ft, and force them to find the spot where there are issues with the lines. The install guys were great, and I appreciated THEIR honesty. I guess I’m stuck with Comcast for now. I’m now spoiled on something I never even had. I don't want plain DVR! I want the multi room DVR!

I don't have time to ready the 333 comments, I just hope anyone thinking of switching to ATT.not reads this first. I switched from Time Warner (TW) in April. It has been a nightmare from the word go. Here goes:
1. If you want cable on all the TVs in your home, each TV requires a set-top box $7/month each. This was not disclosed during my online chat with an incompetent sales person.
2. Said incompetent sales person adamantly declared I would NOT have to get a new email address even though I knew other wise and even after I spelled out my roadrunner address to him, he insisted I would not need an ATT email address. I should have know it was too good to be true.
3. The port-over of my telephone number with TW got screwed up because of an ATT mistake. As a result, I was out of phone service for 10 days which forced me to use my cell phone. I went over my cell minutes by $130. ATT "gave" me a $50 credit and said I should ask my cell phone provider for some leniency.
4. The technician who came out the first time said he could only get 1 out of the 5 set top boxes programmed because someone at ATT made a mistake. He said once the mistake was corrected, I DID NOT need to have a technician come out. He said I could turn the boxes on myself. WRONG - a tech had to come out the following week.
5. When the second tech came out a week later, he had to undo and fix some of the problems the first tech made and said the set top boxes should have never been left in my possession.
6. After trying to contact Service over a period of hours, I was connected, disconnected, and reconnected FOUR TIMES. I spent 45 minutes (cell phone minutes) trying to get some help. After complaining about everything, I was told I would receive some credits off of my first bill and my account would be noted.
7. When I received my first bill it was $315. Apparently ATT bills a month in advance, so tis was two months worth. The $30/service is about $109/month BEFORE taxes. The salesperson would never tell me or even try to estimate what my taxes would be when I asked. Turns out my $109 bill is actually about $155 (more than TW bill with taxes). So I never realized any savings and got lots of headaches.
8. When I called to ask why the $300 bill the operator on the line said, "Oh, we call that sticker shock". The fact they actually had a name for it indicates I was not the first to express such dismay after receiving my first bill. The operator literally argrued with me for 30 minutes saying there were no notes in my account for any discounts/credits that should have been applied. She told me I was upset because I wasn't hearing what I wanted to hear.
9. I was transferred to a manager and I ended up canceling my ATT service.
10. Here's the kicker. I get a letter in the mail indicating that I MUST take all of the equipment to the nearest UPS store (shipping is prepaid), what a joke. After al I went through I have to disconnect all this crap and spend my time and gas money to ship pile of dung back to ATT. ATT indicated they only want the set-top boxes. They said the power supplies (5 each), remotes (5 each), cables (5 sets), and the battery-backup is mine to keep. How eco-unfriendly is this? Now I have hazardous waste to dispose of (backup battery system)? This is totally unresponsible for a corporation as large as ATT to put the onus on the customer to have to deal with all of their "waste" products.
11. Besides, the quality of their HD sucked. It wasn't as bad as stop-motion animation, but it was close to it.
Good Riddens ATT.not

DS1152

Hey sorry to here that you are a terminated Employee. If your going to slander a company dont post your Tech ID with your post.. I have already pulled it on our records.. Please Ignor his post everone. Thanks

ds1152 your a idot and a liar there service is great i have had one problem and the customer service is woderful the best i have ever had !!!! the one problem i had was when the tech came a hooked up the new box to the existing wireing left from comcast as in hd cables the tv worked good but a couple weeks later the wires ended up bying cheap crap and they replaced with hdmiv cord and things are perfect also i got a large first bill and they knocked it down asap with out one problem and they guy on the phone was very nice i also have there wireles service and had a high first bill and they took care of that to. at&t is wonderful i live in michigan and had comcast prior and comcast was horrible the customer service sucked they laughed at u told you go ahead and cancel and we will not lower your bill 162 per month for cable with internet and hbo plus 7.95 for nfl network because you have to pay for it with comcast not mention most all services charges for extra boxs in each room but comcast would flat out not work with my on the bill so after 6 years i left there crappy crappy service and i am glad best descion i ever made to switch to at&t u verse the picture is good and customer service is great and i love it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! by the way i pay a total of 126 a month and get every channel minus playboy and pay perview. not mention internet and yes i did have to switch emails but no one said you had to have a comcast email either there are plenty of email services where it does not matter what service you have like yahoo,hotmail,ect... when i swtiched to a at&t email they have a service called true switch where they let everybody in your contact book know your new email and they forward your old email to your new account for free and every time you get a email from your old adress true switch lets them know your new email so it great i love no paying for nfl network and rate sbeing raised everyother month not mention at comcast they cut 4 of there hbo channels just one day out of the blue and did not notfiy me and when i called they said hbo took them away and that all providers would now have 7 channels instead of 11 but then raise the rate on 7 channels of service when when you use to pay less for 11 channels but funny thing happened when i switched to u verse low and behold at&t had 11 hbo's they had hbo 1 and 2 and east and west and ect. comcast only had 7 and no channels in the western time format? so for the long email but i live in michigan and have at&t uverse and the service is wonderful best i ever had . great people comcast not so much rude people who laugh and lie and say there is no rention department even after iwas told to call and ask for the rention department they would not connect me and hung up on me three times there loss is at&t gaine i should have swtiched 8 months ago would have saved a lot of money and been way happier

Something I would like to stress again for those of you reading these comments on here. ds1152 is a terminated Employee that is posting on several blogs and trying to make AT&T look bad, I ask that if there is a MOD that monitors this blog I request the removal of his post. Thanks for your time.

I switched from Comcast to uVerse about 1/2 seconds after it was available. I was getting "violated" by Comcast because they were the only game in town. It's a great alternative which is a much better deal. I started out with 6MB but dropped to 1.5MB and it's still very nice. Wouldn't switch back for anything.
4 CHANNELS @ once?!?!? Record 3,watch 1 or record 4. Very impressive. Haven't had the first outage. I do have to give Comcast credit - outages were *rare* but I did have some. I was on relatively new infrastructure for Comcast. - Give it a try if it's available near you... No contract either - I've changed my package several times w/o penalty...

No offense, Justin. But you are (much to your tribute) an admitted U-Verse Service Tech so although ds1152 is an idiot and a potential terminated employee, why take away his posting privs?

Then again, if that violates the T&C of this blog, then...off with his head.

Anyways, I might entertain giving U-Verse another chance. But that crappy experience with customer service and the stupidity and with the schedulers gives me very little patience for screw-ups next time around.

Justin:

Whether you are a former employee or not or a current one hyping great service when in reality it's not, people should research and try for themselves.

Having a MOD delete a comment or calling it slander is just suppressing free speech. You have made several incorrect comments on here already and when people correct you, you don't comment on why you are wrong.

You also seem to come up with "try this" and "try that" but sometimes the technology AT&T is using compared to SAT or cable will never give you equal results due to the technology, distance issues, etc.

For the record, the AT&T people who showed up at my door did reference U200/300 as the amount of channels and directly compared it to other providers and got it wrong. Other people already stated that many of the channels are duplicate feeds of other channels as well.

Sometimes you just don't want to combine services because it causes degradation of the other service, limits HD on two TV's, or enters controls on DVR ability. Also for the record, it isn't illegal to record anything it is only illegal to rebroadcast the program to a different audience at a different time. To me all of that is just control.

Just a few things here, The reason why I ask for the removal of his Posting, Is due to the fact, that He Never had the service himself, He is only attempting to try to get others to stay away from the company dude to him being terminated. And I never Said I was a U-Verse Tech, I am a service Tech, But Not a U-verse tech. The Service Techs are a Higher Level of support then the Tech that come to your door, Which is why Sometimes the ones that come to your door say something different or different things to try, There’s a reason Why I make more money than those guys, However if you want to believe the guys that are at your front door that may or may not know something, well that’s your choice. Not to discredit anyone, most of the U-Verse Techs Know quite well what they are doing, but just like in every company, there are a couple of slackers. And as for the sales people that go door to door. Well those are contractors that in all honesty went to a class for like an hour and they think they know everything when in reality they are retards that know nothing, if a sales man comes to your door tell him thanks but no thanks, and call AT&T yourself and ask them about the service, or an even better idea, and the best thing you can do for info. Is going to your local AT&T wireless store, because they can sell U-Verse there, they tend to have the most accurate info. Although sometimes may still be miss guided, due to thins changing in this service every day. So sometimes it's not that someone is lying it's that it changed and they haven't been told yet. But the guys in the stores normally have the most info.

Back to an OLD topic that someone brought back up, to copy a show, movie anything on the TV in your own home for showing to you own immediate family ONLY is legal, and if you read that whole post on this I already said this. However, let’s say you invite a friend over to watch it, you are now re-distributing it. And it is technically illegal. Now having said this, are the police going to bust in your home, are you ever going to be caught, probably not. But the fact is that any recording you make is for your own personal viewing only. And that was what that post is about. And there are some things out there, which are not allowed to be recorded PERIOD. And AT&T does block from recording those shows on our equipment. Now we can argue this all day but if you want to know the truth for yourself call a lawyer that knows Federal laws, and ask them. That way we can stop this whole argument from continuing. Sorry if I sound rude but everyone has their opinion and everyone thinks they are right due to never having this problem on any other service. Or in their life. Just because you have been doing something doesn't mean its legal...

And to were you saying that all I do is say to try this or to try that. Well if you have ever been a tech you would know that what we do is trial and error. Sometimes there is no exact reason for what is causing the problem, there for the exact thing to do is to try things that might cause the problem. So I don’t see were your trying to hurt me there. As for as the technologies, well AT&T is completely different then cable or sat. This is a brand new Technology that we are the only company that does it. Verizon FIOS is another example, however even their system is completely different. And yes distance does play a role, a huge role. However, we are over coming this very quickly is testing something right now that greatly extends the range.

And again the only reason the request for having him Deleted is due to a terminated employee that is trying to slander the company with false info.

And to comment on the person saying that in the U200 and U300 having duplicate channels... Well Yes and no. Yes there are 2 Nick, and 2 Disneys, but there are east and west, different things on each channel. There are no 2 true Duplicates. It's just like sat. The way they have 2 of the same channel. However if you want a good comparison, I know a lot of people that Love the SiFi channel, Myself included, Comcast saw the trend as well, so what do they do, they move it to a higher package so you have to pay more if you want it. In the area that I live, I can’t say everywhere because channel line ups are a little different in some markets, but the SiFi is in the cheapest package with U-Verse because it is so popular. and like I said before the sales guy that comes to your door trying to sell it to you is NON-Union Contract employee that doesn’t make any money unless you buy the service, so he will tell you anything he can to get you to buy. I wish they would have a rule that they only get paid if they keep the service for 90days but it don’t work that way. As long as you pay one month they are paid. But anyways. Thanks for reading.

There is a very sad reality to this, the ceo and chief of operations know that dirty copper is going to cause ongoing issues in a fair percentage of uverse customers. They are to worried about profits and not the customers satisfaction. Randal S., Stankey, Hamilton etc, all these dirtballs need to go so the company, employees and customers can be happy

I apologize, Justin, if there is another Justin posting here who is a U-Verse Service tech or if someone else is masquerading as you. But I took it that the person who posted this:

"So my advise is, just give it a try. Most places they have a 30 day Free trial. ask for that. then you have 30 days to try at no risk. ask them when they come out that they do not hack into your old cable that way if for some reason you deciced to cancle, you can just switch right back.

I hope this info helps you in some way.

Justin
U-Verse Service Tech"

was you.

I haven't been a service tech myself. But I used to repair monitors and computers oh so many years ago. It was mostly warranty, so I definitely know about not being able to spend too much time diagnosing in too much detail (that was for the out of warranty work).

Even if you never had the service yourself you can still have first hand knowledge such as friends or family members having the service where you spend time at their homes. Heck, it's almost as bad as some people on here that understand virtually nothing about IP commenting on how good Uverse is while never having a comparable service to relate to. Same with those saying "it works well" or "it seems fast to me". Those people aren't and can't use anything other than generalizations because all they know is that "it works". Many people also only watch TV or use the internet a very small portion of a 24 hour day and don't know either. My point: You can't criticize someones possibly valid opinion because of no ownership. On the flip side an owner who doesn't know anything about tech might have numerous problems but don't use it enough to know or don't understand how it should be. I am in the IT field and deal with vendors such as Cisco, Nortel, AT&T, Verizon, and other almost on a daily basis. I learn a great deal from Cisco stating the downfalls of a Nortel product/technology even though they don't own the Nortel product themselves for example. I appreciate all information and perspective, even if it comes from a "former employee". More often than not they actually know the real facts and when they get pissed they spill them.

I never said you were a Uverse Tech did I?

The AT&T employees that came to my house were not contractors they had been at AT&T for several years as employees, had AT&T badges, business cards, etc. Whether they are contractors or not shouldn't make a difference. If you represent a company in any way coming to someone's home you better know what you are doing or it discredits the entire company. If AT&T is sending "slackers" and "retards" as a practice to people's homes as a practice I would call not only the TV/Internet service into question but the entire company into question.

You comments about inviting friends over being "redistribution" is not correct. Go look at DMCA and actually read copyright laws and supreme court cases. Redistribution simply means to re-broadcast (over antenna, internet, television etc) not displaying it on your screen at home with non family present. If you believe that cite a source. The personal use clauses cover anything you want to do on your own tv. Going to a lawyer isn't how you find definitive answers man, read court cases yourself and the DMCA and it's obvious. Don't tell me to go to a lawyer when you have not cited any source like I just did that I have read on here. I'm just guessing by your background, logic, and ideas that you are probably younger, am I right? Just because you have been doing something over and over doesn't mean it's illegal either.

I am a engineer/administrator for state government and I work with people very high up within AT&T all the time, most likely much higher then your tech position in customer service/technical support. I work to engineer and administer multi-million dollar networks that uses many of the same layer 1-3 devices and protocols in question so i am very versed in what is going on, probably much more so than you i would assume. If you have a good product it won't require testing on your customers. You normally work that out with a small group of alpha/beta testers with full disclosure, not sell it as something that it's not and test and tune through trial and error as you put it. Many times that shows you really don't know what you're doing if you resort to that as a production environment practice. There's always a reason for a problem (RCA root cause analysis) and it can be found that's just an excuse. AT&T is not different in layer 1-3 devices than other companies, fiber, compression, protocols, standards, and equipment is really all the same. Delivery and service is what is different. Please show me AT&T fiber or copper, or AT&T TCP/IP, or AT&T IEEE standards. They don't exist and it is not proprietary. You just don't sound like you know enough are high enough up to understand. I was on the front lines as a tech and know how it goes.

If you really want to prove Uverse do a side by side comparison with Dish for example to their 250 package. Talk in terms of guaranteed bandwidth aside from using television. Talk about customer service experiences, the amount of trips and hours it takes to install, equipment required, HD on # of TV's, reliability, signal quality, uptime, and DVR functionality as examples. I have looked side by side between Dish and my separate internet provider versus AT&T and it doesn't compare simply based on speed and number of channels. That I can say is a fact.

I am in Atlanta. I have seen many of you complain about Comcast and Dish. The both suck for TV, no question. I have not seen anyone complain about DirecTV. I have 2 HD-DVRs, 1 HD Receiver and 4 SD Receivers..so my setup is pretty elaborate as both DVRs run through my AV system as well. I rarely have trouble with DTV except for bad weather conditions. I also use Comcast for internet with no problems, 18mb down and 7mb up. The only thing that I see Unverse does that DTV doesn't is the ability to watch a recordered show anywhere in the house. DTV also has channel 101 which has some pretty good "premium type" programming without commercials. So...can someone tell me why I should change to U-verse? I am keeping an open mind here.

I am in Atlanta. I have seen many of you complain about Comcast and Dish. The both suck for TV, no question. I have not seen anyone complain about DirecTV. I have 2 HD-DVRs, 1 HD Receiver and 4 SD Receivers..so my setup is pretty elaborate as both DVRs run through my AV system as well. I rarely have trouble with DTV except for bad weather conditions. I also use Comcast for internet with no problems, 18mb down and 7mb up. The only thing that I see Unverse does that DTV doesn't is the ability to watch a recordered show anywhere in the house. DTV also has channel 101 which has some pretty good "premium type" programming without commercials. So...can someone tell me why I should change to U-verse? I am keeping an open mind here.

Just wanted to add on here that due to the fact that you have U-Verse in your area, you will Never have FIOS. Due to th fact that as of right now, AT&T and Verizon do not compete over landline.. if you local company is AT&T then that is all you will have, or Vis Versa. now in some Majoir Cities yes this is not true and in some places they are both availible. how ever for the majority you have one or the other. Now you can get Verison phone service as a resseller but thats not the point of this. i am just covering my basses so someone doesnt try to attack my statement as people tend to do on here. And another peace of info, is areas that do have the U-Verse once it starts to catch on and AT&T make money off of it, they have plans to switch to Fiber to the curb (FTTC) and/or fiber to the home (FTTP) more likely is FTTC because it is more cost effective, but they want to see were it is more popular at, so they know were they want to spend that kind of money, because if you know anything baout the fibor, world, then you know it is not cheap to install, and the equipment needed is very expensive. but again it's in the works, may not be for like 5 or 10 years, but it's there...

From a customer's point of view, I love Uverse. I was stuck for 5 years with Comcast. DSL was not available as I am 26,000 feet from the C.O. and we did not have any DPG at my main SAI. I have the U-300 movie pack, and 10meg internet. Frankly, the Uverse speeds destroy Comcast's. If doing an online speed test, Comcast appears to have a fast speed, but that is only for the first 5 secs or so. AT&T's speed stay at a constant rate only held back by the website your are visiting. I opted for the 10meg because I host websites on a server at my house and the higher package included a 1.5meg upload speed. I have about 2000 people using my proxy websites daily, adding up to about 700+ gigs of data transfer per month. AT&T has not capped my data usage as Comcast had done. I will be setting up static IPs soon when I have the time.

From a technician's point of view, it is a quality product. I am the one called upon when the Uverse Prem Tech is seeing trouble on the outside line. I dispatch out and fix the copper pair to the house. It's true that the Prem Techs do not have alot of experience, but I can think back to my experience 10 years ago when I started with the company. We get virtually no training from AT&T and must pick the brains of our experienced co-workers to learn anything. And please people, throw away your garbage and move your dirty clothes out of the way before letting us into your home, lol.

Your faithful Uverse Repairman(and computer nerd),
kevin g.

Hey Kevin G

I do like your post, And one thing that i really want to point out, and agree with. PLEASE PICK THE TRASH UP BEFORE WE COME OVER. Being a U-verse Prem. Tech. myself. I have refused service to some home, one for standing water and Fecal Matter intheir basement were i had to work. another because they lit up a bluant in the same room as me and asked if i wanted some.. Come on people.. Please.....

And yes true SOME prem. Techs. dont know much they are lucky to get the basics of the system. someone like me started out as a CSS doing FTTN work, as well as other work, but the FTTN work allows me to know exactly how and why the signel works. As well as learning some little tricks that the company dont teach. so someone like me that got laid off and hired back for half the pay do know quite abit more then the the newbies to the company...
just one more thing, Yes Comcast does Cap their bandwidth, it is differant in all areas. So if your like kevin and have a server, even a simple voice server for gaming guilds, you may be cut off from Comcast.
Thanks

I have had Uverse since the beginning of APril and had many problems. After 2 months I have figured out that my problems are not within my apartment, but the outside lines called "dirty copper". I wish ATT would address this issue in a prompt manner. I have connection problems on a daily basis and that is very frustrating indee. The techs on the phone are very polite and helpful. The biggest problem (apart from the dirty copper wires) is that the have a terrible communication problem, as in no communications at all. Often I talked to a tech in the morning and call back to cancel an appointment, the tech still shows up because he was not contacted, and this has been happening every time!!! I have given up being a good costumer and canceling my appointments.
Unfortunately there is no easy answers for any of this. All I want ATT to do is to address the copper wire problem PLEASE.
There are days I want to pull my hair out but what can you do (-:
I will stick with ATT for a bit longer before I go back and sign up with another problematic provider.