Friday, February 27, 2015

AT&T: the nightmare continues

Today a technician from AT&T showed up to try to restore our uVerse internet service that was cut off a week and a half ago for no apparent reason.  After three hours, one factory reset, and one new modem, we are still without service.  The tech told me that the underlying problem was that our service had been "upgraded" from DSL to vDSL, and this was incompatible with our house's wiring.  (Our house is only five years old, so the wiring is not exactly ancient.)

OK, so can I get switched back to regular DSL?

Maybe (the tech wasn't sure) but to do that, I am going to need to call AT&T and start an entirely new work order.  So a week and a half into this nightmare I am back to square 1.

3 comments:

Luke said...

I suggest keeping a record of time spent on this, and then estimate a bill for them at the end based on a reasonable hourly rate. I was joking around that someone should do a Kickstarter for this, so that people can show how terrible tech support is by how much money they lost in having to deal with tech support. Of course, verifying accuracy would be a nightmare if even possible, but as pipe dreams go, this was a pleasant one.

Ron said...

> I suggest keeping a record of time spent on this, and then estimate a bill for them at the end based on a reasonable hourly rate.

Yeah, I'm sure AT&T will pay that bill right away.

> verifying accuracy would be a nightmare if even possible, but as pipe dreams go, this was a pleasant one.

Theoretically, all these interactions are being recorded. Of course, AT&T has access to those recordings and I don't. I should probably start making some recordings of my own.

BTW, if I seem a little testy in the 31 flavors thread, this probably has something to do with it. (I'm actually on the phone with AT&T even as I type this.)

Luke said...

Oh of course AT&T won't pay the bill. But you can nevertheless post it on your blog, and make it clear that you are trying very hard to properly estimate the matter. If enough trustworthy, competent people were to do this with tech support costs, I wonder what would happen.

I hear you on the testiness. Yesterday I found out that I missed a major strategy for the meeting at Caltech on Tuesday, and that we might not obtain our objective because of it. The sad thing is that I should have seen this. I should have pushed back against the advice of another person. And now, someone's life may continue to get screwed over as a result. Talk about weight... Somehow, screwing around with a new language and framework all by myself ain't too appetizing right now...