I am writing to you with the hope that someone can assist me with having my service repaired. I’ve attempted numerous times to work through the AT&T support system but so far have not been successful. The timeline below details my communications and challenges so far since my outage began. If anyone would like additional details on any of the points below I’m happy to provide more details wherever possible.
Friday February 3rd
Service loss for internet and TV was noticed at approximately 8:30 AM when I started work for the day from my home office. A call was placed to AT&T’s 800 number for tech support at approximately 9 AM ET and initially the helpdesk rep wanted to send me a new modem rather than initiate a repair ticket. In a previous experience with AT&T Uverse, I’d waited almost 2 weeks with no internet and TV while they sent me a new modem which never showed up. In every incident I’ve had so far at my house with Uverse it has been an outside wiring problem and was not going to wait a few days for them to ship me a modem which would not resolve the issue. After discussion with the rep, a ticket was opened for an outside wiring tech to be onsite between 4-8 PM that evening. One specific note about my home, upon initial install of my Uverse service 2 years ago the exterior NID jack is actually installed in the basement of the house so any access to the NID requires someone to be home.
At approximately 10 PM I called back into the 800 number since nobody had been to the house and I had not heard from any tech saying they were on their way. When I spoke to the help desk they informed me that they weren’t sure why the tech missed the appointment but the next available appointment would be Sunday, February 5th between 8 AM and noon. I said that was not acceptable as they had already missed my initial appointment and felt there was no reason I should be placed at the back of the service queue. The help desk representative agreed and a service ticket for an outside wiring tech was placed for Saturday February 4th between 4-8 pm.
Saturday February 4th
At approximately 4:15 PM I received a phone call stating that an inside tech was on the way to my location. I inquired why they were sending an inside tech when it had been determined an outside tech was needed as no signal was entering the home and their response was some mistake must have been made. The ticket was then changed to an outside tech and I was told I would receive a phone call from them once they were on their way. At 6 PM I called back into the 800 number to check on the status of the service call and was informed the ticket was placed on hold and that no service was scheduled. After explaining the situation to the help desk rep and their supervisor, I was informed that they would send over an outside wiring tech that evening before 8 PM. No phone call was received, no tech had arrived, and at 10 PM no service had been restored.
Sunday February 5th
At approximately 8:15 AM an outside wiring tech named Kendrick showed up to my home unannounced to fix the service. After investigating the issue it appeared that a squirrel had chewed on the house wires attached to the pole at the street. The outside wiring tech was seeing very limited signal in the house initially. After replacing the line from the pole to the NID he stated the line tested fine and was ready to go. However, the modem was not syncing and the outside tech said the modem would need to be replaced. He did not have any modems with him since he was an outside tech and an inside tech would need to come out to replace the modem. Initially he stated I would need to call in to the 800 number to get an inside tech to come out. After speaking with him, he agreed to go ahead and put in the ticket for the inside tech but I would need to call the 800 number and escalate to a supervisor to get them to come out before the 4-8pm window that evening.
After calling the 800 number and escalating to a supervisor an inside tech was scheduled between then and 4 PM – it was roughly noon when the outside tech finished with his work. When the inside tech arrived around 2 PM, whose name was Martin Reyes, the line was tested and he said that an outside tech would need to come out as the line was not capable of supporting the 25mb of service I currently had and that tech’s were not allowed to downgrade service to get things operational. While he was at my house, the inside tech did a test downgrade on the line to a 19mb service and it operated fine so we knew the modem was functional and that it was indeed a line problem. He informed me that they would need to send another outside tech to the location to service the line again; that would be between 4-8 PM that evening. He also said that he was not authorized to downgrade the line permanently but could only do so for testing.
After escalating to a supervisor on the 800 number again, an outside line technician was sent to my house just before 4 PM but when he arrived the service had started working again. I asked the tech if the line was set for 19mb or 25mb and he replied it was set for 25mb. Since the line was working and seemed to be operating correctly, we agreed to leave the line as it was assuming that the inside tech had done a modem reset or some configuration change which kept the service operational.
Monday February 6th
After arriving home Monday Feb 6th I noticed service was once again not functional. I called into the 800 number, escalated to a supervisor, and asked them to drop my connection profile back to 19mb so I could continue to work from home this week and would schedule a service call on Saturday, February 11th when I could ensure I would be available as I’ve already taken a significant time away from work to deal with these issues. They said it was not possible for a customer to request a profile change and that they would need an inside tech at the premises to change the connection profile. This was in direct contrast to what I was told by Martin on Sunday. The supervisor / Tier 2 representative I talked to was Melba (operator ID MP855E) and she was as helpful as she could be under the circumstances.
After escalating to several supervisors and Tier 2 support, I gave up on trying to get service restored and instead scheduled a service tech to come onsite between 8-4 AM on Tuesday, February 7th. I suggested that both the inside and outside techs come onsite at the same time to work through the issue but was informed AT&T techs were not allowed to do that. They said that they could have the techs wait until the other arrived, but that they were not both allowed to service the location at once.
Tuesday February 7th
After waiting until 10:45 with no word from the outside or inside service tech, I once again called into the 800 number and asked to speak to a supervisor. I was finally able to get into touch with Melba after being on hold for almost 20 minutes and was informed the service call had been scheduled for Saturday the 11th and not for this morning, Tuesday the 7th. Melba rescheduled the service call for Tuesday the 7th between noon and 4 PM. At 3:30 PM I received a voicemail from the automated system notifying me they would be unable to meet the 4 PM appointment time and a technician should be out later this evening.
As of 4pm service remains down for both TV and internet access. At this point I’m not sure where to go next – I’ve been a happy Uverse customer for several years and believe the technical aspects of the service, such as internet speed and video quality, are superior than competing products but service on my account has been a roadblock to resolving my issue and without a functioning service the good aspects of my experience are quickly being eroded.
Thank you for any help you can provide,
Daniel