Posted on 12/30/2008 3:11:09 PM PST by GRRRRR
Thinking about dumping comcast and going to Att-Uverse. My sis-in-law has it on her analogue TV, with wireless to her laptop and she likes the DVR.
What to my fellow FReepers have to say about it?
I want the 400 channel lineup, max Internet and their Voice phone service...all for about $200/mo. saving me about $50/mo with Comcast. Would have it for three HD sets, desktop and two laptops.
Read lots of on line reviews, both pro and con, however, FReepers always have the best advice. Do they have to rewire with fiber-optic cable all over the house?
G
I am getting U verse installed this week switching from DISH. Any tips or advice on U verse from users?
Mine is a double pair. They test the line(s) and use one if possible, but add a box if they need to use two.
Works great! And we CAN watch 4 HD programs at once.
Also, channel surfing is pretty quick and almost as good as cable.
I compared OTA Channel 5 WRAL (1st HD commercial station to go on air and a VERY technically-astute crew) to U-Verse and I could not tell the difference on a 50” Pioneer KURO plasma set.
FREEPER HELP: KeyLargo request any input on the above.
TV: image quality is utter trash. The worst “HD” picture you’ll see. Comcast, Dish, DirecTV, etc all look better.
Phone: good voice quality. Phone number availability is linked to the uptime of your U-Verse DSL box and power supply, however. If your power goes out, AT&T will give you a battery backup that will kick in, but once that battery is depleted, your phone won’t work.
Internet: not the fastest, but pretty decent speeds for the price. Comcast and especially Verizon are faster, though with Verizon FiOS you’ll wind up paying for that speed.
Customer support: I’ve never had a problem with them over the last 10+ years, though that was back when they were Bellsouth.
We got U-verse about 3 years ago. We started with TV, internet, and phone (Mrs. RWA wanted phone). We had a major outage on the average every 4 months or so. We were the only house affected.
I went through the excruciating service people on the phone every time. They all sound like they come from some other planet. I could give you a long dissertation on that but not now.
After farting around for a half-hour or more of unplugging, plugging, rebooting, moving router, etc. they always told me, “We need to send a tech out. We got appointments five days from today.”
(At this point we dropped the phone since it went out when the internet did. We also dropped the TV since we didn’t really have the time to sit and watch.)
Each tech came and scratched his head each time, called the mothership, ran tests and eventually told me one of the wire pairs was bad and he was going to use another.
Another time we had an outage the guy replaced a plug. Another time they said they switched the wire pair again. Nobody ever thought to find out why the wire pair was bad. Seems like a logical thing to do.
Finally, after over a year, a tech tested the wire and said there was a problem, just as everyone else said. This guy actually LOOKED at the wire from the interface device all the way to the router. The first guy had run about 100 feet of cable on the outside of the house. The new tech found a staple through it. One wire appeared to have been almost totally severed and eventually broke. The insulation was compromised on all but one wire in the cable. Water was getting in and causing big problems.
He ripped out the long wire, installed a short one, and put the router in a better location.
Bingo! Good service since then for about a year.
I hate the AT&T company. Until recently, they had THE worst online bill paying system in the developed world. We have uverse internet, a land line, and DSL that we provide for our daughter at another house. It took forever to get these three bills paid. I explained the problem to them about three different times in increasingly sarcastic emails to them. Finally, one day, they actually made improvements! It’s still a bit strange, but it goes a lot faster. Instead of having one user name and one password for the whole company, I ended up with three different ones. At least it feels like you are talking to one company. Before if felt as if there was a separate company for each account.
Another thing I hate about them is that about once a week I get an offer in the mail to add services. The ones I dropped some time ago.
In some cases AT&T uses a 2nd pair to get the speeds they need, but you are correct, in most cases they are using one pair to the house.
A buddy works for AT&T and they had to do that to his house. He does really big stuff doing backhaul for cell towers and such.
I dumped Time Warner and got uVerse a yr. or so ago. Like it.
We DVR almost everything we plan to watch so we can skip through the commercials.
Can record 2 HD +1 reg channel while watching another channel.
It goes out occasionally, had the DVR replaced once or twice. Not perfect but I like it better than the cable service we had.
I have relatives in Kentucky that have ATT U-verse and they like it. My sister has Verizon Fios and the picture is much better than Time Warner which I have.
Ignore the date question. I noticed the new post to the old thread.
At the time I posted it, they only did single pair. Bonded pair was in trial phase and not accepted for field deployment.
We use AT&T (nee Pacbell, BellSouth) for POTS (yep!) and DSL. WORST customer support ever. But we stick with them because I hate switching.
1. May years ago, we used to have two bonded B channels on ISDN. When DSL was installed, we switched over. Network came up, but no email. POTS people pointed the finger at the DSL people who pointed the finger at the Internet people who in turn pointed the finger at the email people. It took a MONTH to get email service restored. We must have spent 25 hours on the phone with them. They finally dispatched one guy to the house who knew something and was able to talk to the right people to restore email service. It wasn’t network related, but they couldn’t figure that out.
2. Our internet service stopped working about three years back. “It must be your DSL Modem; here, install this new one.” My wiring closet is not very accessible, so that was a pain. No luck. Several truck rolls and tech visits, but no Internet. Tests showed the problem was in the outside plant, but they kept insisting it was inside. Finally the ONE right guy came out and found water in the pedestal at the end of the block. He cleaned that up, replaced some damaged equipment, and resealed the box. Bingo, back in service after about a week-long outage.
3. Our internet service stopped working about 6 months ago. Several visits from techs said the problem was in the outside twisted pair wiring from our house to the pedestal. They said they had to rewire the entire neighborhood — no more pairs available and the wiring was dated! A week went by and nothing at all from them - no returned calls, brand new CSRs on the phone every time we had to re-educate from ground zero. Drove us insane again. Finally got the ONE right guy out who knew how to trouble shoot and he found squirrels had gnawed through our pair on the pole a few doors down. A simple splice and we were back in business.
My advice? Well, I’ll leave that up to you to figure out.
POF
I’ve had Uverse for about a year and a half.
The one problem I have is that the HD video quality isn’t as good as I would like. It’s a bit too heavily compressed, so you can see the compression artifacts. I’m a photographer and am very sensitive to video artifacts.
On the plus side, they have almost every channel you would want, and the prices are a bit lower than cable.
I have been very happy with the internet service. I pay for 12 mbps and get the speed I pay for. I subscribe to Netflix and MLB.TV and the picture quality is amazing.
The one real negative for some is that if you have conventional home phone service (I don’t), they must convert that to the Uverse IP phone to give you service.
Oh heck! I didn’t realize that was an old thread that had been resurrected! LOL
Post 21 was dated on July 10, 2012 1:53:01 PM by KeyLargo, prior to that the comments are two or three years old.
A few comments can be found in the below:
http://helpme.att.net/esupport/main.jsp?ct=9000842
http://uverse-universe.com/forum
http://www.ehow.com/way_5326884_att-uverse-motorola-tips.html
http://ezinearticles.com/?Tips-to-Using-ATandTs-U-verse-More-Efficiently&id=2305725
http://reviews.gethuman.com/tips/AT-T-U-Verse/
Thanks for the reply.
There seems to be all old information from 2008 online.
I’ll wait and see when u verse is installed up and running.
Since DISH dropped AMC and now charge customers 10 bucks more a month for worthless Blockbuster movies it was time to drop DISH for me and a lot of other customers.
Yes, you need to get that 1 out of 5 or 10 U-verse service guys who know what they are doing and want to solve the problem.
Well, I made a big mistake in having AT&T U-Verse installed since my post inquiry about getting it.
The service was installed only three days ago and I have had very few hours of service out of this AT&T system.
The service continually disconnects. Sadly, I should have read all of the negative comments all over the internet about poor customer service from AT&T regarding U-Verse.
I am waiting for another tech person to come and replace the modem. When I called tech support yesterday they said that they would send a modem to me in a few days! I had to complain that I did not sign up for this U-Verse for a do it yourself program.
Bottom line.
I’m going back to DISH so that at least I will have a home phone that is not disconnected everytime U-Verse goes out.
DO NOT WHATEVER YOU DO GET U-VERSE.
I will be expecting AT&T to honor their guarantee.
U-verse® Choice Bundles
FREE activation online
30-day money-back guarantee
Professional standard installation
Total Home DVR® with most packages
AT&T Wireless customers save even more with exclusive bundle offers!
I believe I told you that we had DISH for several years, but in the last two or three years we were only watching less than a half dozen or so channels.
I finally dropped DISH.
Our existing TW cable has several HD stations and we never had a problem with TW’s service (plus their monthly charges are much less then DISH's).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.