I really hate AT&T

J

JOhnH

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Right Seater
I called my phone/ internet provider a little after 6pm yesterday. By 7pm they determined that the problem was with the cable they lease com AT&T. I left AT&T for dozens of really good reasons and my life has been much simpler ever since until now. I was on the phone with my provider about every hour or so all night. They escalated to the point that I have been getting calls from AVPs and VPs all day checking up on progress and apologizing. It is now almost 3pm and I still don't have phones, fax, internet and my credit card machine doesn't work. The company forwarded all calls to my cell phone and it has been non stop. People can't get through. One person drove almost 50 miles to find out how their sick cat is. You just can't run a hospital without any communications.

The AT&T guy showed up around 10am for about 10 minutes and said the cable problem was "down the street". I haven't heard from him since.

I hate AT&T!
 
Had the same problem. Dumped them.
 
Same problem. Sounds like you're using a CLEC that uses ILEC's cables. FCC mandates that the ILEC (ATT) provide the "last mile" to the CLEC. But if the cables "happen" to be bad, oh well.

I had exactly the same problem in San Antonio with ATT. Complaints went nowhere. I finally dumped the CLEC and went back to ATT after the CLEC told me there was nothing more they could do - and that ATT was stonewalling. Too small an entity to get any attention from the FCC or the state.

Verizon is avoiding having to deal with CLECs by forcing folks onto FiOS, which is not subject to the competition rules. No copper, no requirement to give the CLECs access. CLECs forced out of business.
 
Wireless is petty good but why aren't you guys on VoIP at this point?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
marcoseddi said:
Wireless is petty good but why aren't you guys on VoIP at this point?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

I am on VOIP. But the IP is delivered through the AT&T (T-1) cable.
 
I found that the only guaranteed way to get AT&T's attention is a letter to the state Public Utilities Commission. It's amazing the amount of personal attention that you'll get then.
 
Old Geek said:
I found that the only guaranteed way to get AT&T's attention is a letter to the state Public Utilities Commission. It's amazing the amount of personal attention that you'll get then.
Click to expand...

I have also found using Twitter to address issues also works well. Used twitter to get Comcast attention numerous times.
 
Old Geek said:
I found that the only guaranteed way to get AT&T's attention is a letter to the state Public Utilities Commission. It's amazing the amount of personal attention that you'll get then.
Click to expand...

Some things don't change. Forty years ago that is how I got problems solved fast with AT&T. That was back in the days of the Bell System.
 
Can't be worse than Comcast. Most providers have horror stories these days.

An elderly neighbor lost her phone and internet service. She borrowed a neighbor's cellphone to call us for help sorting it out. We're near Salt Lake; the support rep is in Denver, speaks broken English, is reading from a script, and every other line is "reboot your modem."

After 20 minutes, they finally schedule a service call, guaranteed between 1 & 3pm. We sit and wait. When the tech never shows, we call back, and are told the tech cancelled the call because nobody answered when he called the non-working number which was the cause of the service call.

Worse - This process, including another no-show for the same excuse, is replayed again the same afternoon.

Xfinity. The future of awful!

When I left Comcast for my own home phone service years ago, I tried a traditional landline. Qwest (now CenturyLink) had decayed lines on my street, and couldn't solve an objectionable hum. They finally told me the problem was still within spec, so I told them my specs were higher, and dumped them.

I now have Ooma VoIP through a municipally-operated fiber system, and 50 MBPS up/download internet speeds to boot. I'm thrilled with both.
 
PW_Plack said:
When I left Comcast for my own home phone service years ago, I tried a traditional landline. Qwest (now CenturyLink) had decayed lines on my street, and couldn't solve an objectionable hum. They finally told me the problem was still within spec, so I told them my specs were higher, and dumped them.
Click to expand...

That's about like my qwest/centurylink story. My phone lost dial tone every time it rained. Unsurprisingly the tech couldn't duplicate it 'cause they weren't there when it was raining. qwest never solved it and I stopped paying my bill. Of course the bill was sent to collections so I wrote a nice letter pointing out the problems: the fact that qwest couldn't figure out how to solve it, and that it is unreasonable to expect payment for the service. Never heard from the collection folks again.
 
Here in Atlanta, I swear I think our office is the ONLY Centurylink customer.
Last Friday, we noticed that we not only had no internet at the office, but the phones weren't ringing. A call out from the office line would ring our cellphones then give a busy signal, with the message on the desk set "check number". The cellphone would ring once.
Also, MORDAC (preventer of information services), our corporate IT guy in Conneticut has it set up so that we couldn't even print to our own printer down the hall, because our internet connection is down. It was a pretty quiet day, except for the cell calls to our IT gods at corporate. Our manager wants to charge all our time for Friday and Monday to IT. Good luck with that.
IT has lost sight of the fact that they are a SUPPORT group. They are not supposed to be in control. Rant off....

We finally got all restored Monday afternoon about 4PM.

Got us to wondering aloud about a lot of corporate wisdom in our organization.....:mad2:
 
I'm lucky enough to deal with these issues day in and day out. We've has a point to Point circuit that has been down for the past couple of days that EarthLink keeps telling us that they see it up and passing traffic. I happen to have a Verizon tech on site at one end of that circuit for another issue and asked him to just look at the smart jack to see if there was an alarm light.....There was no lights on the card whatsoever.

How the hell can the carrier (EarthLink) state that the circuit is up and passing traffic if there is no power to the smart jack......

This is just one of today's shining moments....
 
Keith Lane said:
Here in Atlanta, I swear I think our office is the ONLY Centurylink customer.
Last Friday, we noticed that we not only had no internet at the office, but the phones weren't ringing. A call out from the office line would ring our cellphones then give a busy signal, with the message on the desk set "check number". The cellphone would ring once.
Also, MORDAC (preventer of information services), our corporate IT guy in Conneticut has it set up so that we couldn't even print to our own printer down the hall, because our internet connection is down. It was a pretty quiet day, except for the cell calls to our IT gods at corporate. Our manager wants to charge all our time for Friday and Monday to IT. Good luck with that.
IT has lost sight of the fact that they are a SUPPORT group. They are not supposed to be in control. Rant off....

We finally got all restored Monday afternoon about 4PM.

Got us to wondering aloud about a lot of corporate wisdom in our organization.....:mad2:
Click to expand...

Oxymoron. IT is a pain in the neck here, too.
 
Verizon won't service copper in FiOS territory any more. You must go on FiOS if you have issues with copper loops.
 
I really hate AT&T

I see a common thread in the stories. No one found it worth engineering a backup circuit to these locations. If the lost productivity was less money than a backup circuit, this makes sense. If not, bad engineering or management. :)
 
Re: I really hate AT&T

denverpilot said:
I see a common thread in the stories. No one found it worth engineering a backup circuit to these locations. If the lost productivity was less money than a backup circuit, this makes sense. If not, bad engineering or management. :)
Click to expand...

I worked for a TELCO briefly. The ILEC/CLEC government forced relationship is interesting.
 
Re: I really hate AT&T

denverpilot said:
I see a common thread in the stories. No one found it worth engineering a backup circuit to these locations. If the lost productivity was less money than a backup circuit, this makes sense. If not, bad engineering or management. :)
Click to expand...
We have diversely routed redundant circuits to all critical locations.
 
momalley said:
We have diversely routed redundant circuits to all critical locations.
Click to expand...


Thus why you're just annoyed with the vendor with the outage, and the other posters are completely out of business while they wait.

Talking about CLEC/ILEC is like discussing Political Parties. The sheep sitting around talking about which wolf is going to eat them for dinner. LOL.
 
We started with AT&T when we arrived on Whidbey, and have been with them ever since, never a problem.
 
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