U-Verse DVR series scheduled recordings are not functioning

@gr8sho  Is there any way you or one of the other ACES can help us get this issue moved up the chain of command or over to the correct department?  It's obviously a known issue, but I'm guessing only an engineer far outside where customers can contact would be able to determine and solve that?

@denirose I informed the twitter customer service agent AaronC that the workaround is only working a single time and is a temporary fix as we expected.  I also confirmed that it was the same for me with workaround shows not scheduled on monday 5/2 when guide now goes to 5/3.

I thought maybe I was making some progress, but then the agent started asking me about deleting old recordings again, which is ridiculous and doesn't interact with any of the affected systems.  So once again I think we probably need to get much higher up before anyone will even understand the problem yet alone actually bother to solve it. 

Don't let them bully you into deleting all your recordings, it's just an item on their ridiculous checklists they force you to go through.  Over the last decade I've deleted dvrs numerous times and even when the issue was the phyiscal dvr hardware it NEVER solves the problem.  
but in this case it's super ridiculous because even if you swap for a different dvr the series set to record and scheduling is identical, because it's stored on the cloud/server unlike the actual recordings which are stored on the local hard drive.  so they are completely separate systems.  

And the agent AaronC works sat-weds so i'm guessing i'll be stuck with another new agent or no response after today.  

@madmax988 @ATTHelp 

All your observations make perfect sense and you clearly see the obvious but they are not trained to do that. It takes the patience of a saint to deal with these people when they don’t listen, show no curiosity or initiative to problem solve, and insist on their useless script despite what helpful information we give them. I got pretty fed up on my call and resorted to telling the agent we were wasting time, she clearly had no knowledge of the issue, and I wanted to end the call since she had no solution. She proceed to boot my system down without asking me and I really got mad at her. I said why did you do that without asking me and now I’m missing my recordings in progress. She waited till I was done and then she insisted on doing more troubleshooting. I kept telling her I was done and she said she didn’t understand what I was saying. I finally said “I’m saying goodbye. Do you understand that?” She just didn’t get it. I can’t imagine going through that again. Let me know if there’s something else you think I can do that will be helpful like tweet or start a new thread. I’ll keep following in the meantime. You’re doing loads of work. I hope some of it pays off. I’m not optimistic. Best hope, like you said, is if large numbers of customers discover this and complain. Then maybe . . . .😖 Hey @atthelp are you listening? 

@denirose ugh I just wrote a long response and the system didn't post it.

long story short,

for the future for other issues

always ask for a domestic representative and be prepared to wait anywhere from 10minutes -3 hours on hold. but it's better than talking to useless untrained overseas representatives, who literally aren't allowed to do anything but the absolute basics anyways.  They will act like you are being a racist (Edited per community guidelines) for not letting them help you, but the thing is the physically do not have access to many of at&t's systems because at&t does not trust them and spends approximately 7 minutes training them.  Just keep refusing until they attempt to connect you to domestic representative, note half of them will fail to properly make the transfer.  Do not ask for a manager as they just hand you to another random rep sitting next to them and you have to start all over.  For basic issues the time different between domestic and overseas is astounding domestic rep time to order a swap of a piece of equipment? 10-20 minutes.  Overseas? minimum 1 hour-3hours.  Time to solve a complex issue?  domestic rep 1-6 hours if it's solvable  overseas infinity hours because they will never solve it.  

For some wiring and hardware issues there are some advanced teams as well above domestic tier 1 and half support.  one is called the "last chance repair department" another is "advanced repair" but I don't know what the name of any of the software departments to ask for them. and only some of the customer retention agents even know the extensions to connect you to the advanced teams.  If they don't know the # or claim it doesn't exist hang up and call back until you get an agent who does. 

for anything not tech related call and speak to customer retention department.  Most Customer retention agents can't do much if anything about tech issues.  They also answer immediately usually with less than 3 minutes hold time max. 

@madmax988 Sooooo enlightening. Everything I wish I knew for the past 20 years in dealing with tech help desks. Last week I went through one of those calls with ATT (not tech but wireless billing). A (so I thought) fairly simple issue. Went through 5 transfers and disconnects, as well as a “manager” (haha) who was way more ignorant than his predecessors, to eventually land over an hour later with a person who knew the answer. I was by then grateful he even understood the question. I’ll hang onto your advice and no doubt will have a chance to use it soon. I don’t know if I even have the patience to go through all that with this issue. Maybe tomorrow. I might also post something on my neighborhood Nextdoor site and maybe Facebook to see if anyone local has noticed the problem or is having any success. I’ll post if I find out anything useful. Thanks!!

@denirose I don't have att for wireless so i'm not sure how there customer retention department works.

The problem is there are relatively few people who still su(Edited per community guidelines)cribe to U-verse tv so unless it's affecting all customers in the region the odds of finding other people having the same problem are pretty small.  

At it's peak uverse tv- had like 16 million customers nationwide, but they've lost millions to people just streaming and many millions got converted to directv and directv stream customers.  And the remaining few million are spread out across the country.  The good news is the remaining uverse customers are usually either very enthusiastic tv watchers like myself, or older people who don't like the hassle of changing providers, or trapped with uverse as only reasonable option.  

UGH my conversation with twitter is not going well... things have devolved... the agent became less useful and seems to just be running through standard basic troubleshooting.  Now in addition to wanting me to swap dvr and lose recordings he also wants me to waste the time of both me and a tech, having a technician come out to my house.  I guarantee you when the tech gets here he's going to laugh and be like "da fuq do they expect me to do?"  Literally all a tech can do is swap the dvr.  

he says its a "similar situation, but also a new situation" it all is starting to just sound like (Edited per community guidelines) and that he still doesn't even understand the problem.  

And he won't tell me anything more about the "escalation team" which I'm starting to think means he leaned over to the guy next to him and said got any ideas?  

And I only got a response because I tweeted publicly again...and he did not like that....Mostly he's just ignoring me and i'm guessing stalling until he clocks out for his weekend.   

Until I can actually speak with someone with any actual authority this is never getting solved, I better get good at the workaround.  Time to start considering the other devil that is comcast.  The devil you know? or the more expensive devil that makes big promises they probably won't keep?  

@denirose 

An agent "Matthew" got back to me on the forums DM: "Thank you so much. Now in looking at the old thread that you gave it looks like there was, at that time something put in for the SEP team. I am not sure that team even still exists. That is why I am escalating to management. Now you said that you identified the problem. Can further explain?"

This is promising! Finally someone who read the forum post about the bug.  It's too bad the SEP team(whatever that is) doesn't exist anymore, but hopefully they left notes somewhere.  

@madmax988 That’s got a very encouraging sound to it. The best sign of a breakthrough so far. You know the ropes and you’re persistent. Thanks for the work you’re doing and for keeping us (or me, since there doesn’t seem to be much other activity) informed. Very interesting comments earlier about the U-verse shrinking customer base. I sensed it but didn’t really know. Helps explain why I got no responses from Nextdoor when I solicited comments. I know if I this doesn’t eventually get fixed I won’t want to keep putting up with it. On the other hand the options are meager. I will not get satellite. I only stick with U-verse because they have all the regional sports networks. But this could be a dealbreaker if they don’t fix it. 

@madmax988 I just posted an update that was confirmed posted but then gone. Maybe it didn’t like that I cut and pasted in a comment. Anyway, a S. Florida neighbor responded to my post on Nextdoor saying she definitely had the same problem. She called and got a supervisor who assured her they are working on it. She has a follow up scheduled tomorrow for an update. In the unlikely event they give her anything useful I’ll post an update. 

@denirose That's good to know, that definitely means it's pretty widespread, since nextdoor posts are usually only seen by your specific neighborhood and a few surrounding neighborhoods.  It might even be all uverse tv customers in the region.  And the region could be anywhere from a small part of Miami to the entire state of Florida.   If you are able to ask them, see if you can find out what department the supervisor is in?  if it's just normal tier 1 or tier 1.5(domestic) tech support she will 99% never hear from them.  If it's a dispatch to a local technician she'll hear from them but they won't be able to do anything about it.  If it's a tech from a special higher up department tier 2 or 3 tech support, advanced team, last chance repair, she'll actually get a call back, but it won't necessarily be tomorrow it'll be whenever they feel like and often from a random phone number or even blocked phone number.  It's so annoying because there is no way to return the call if you miss it since they hate giving out direct line phone #.  and who answers random phone numbers/blocked numbers these days with the # of scam calls att gets paid to let through.  Although last chance repair did once give me a call back # with a passcode to use it, but it expired a few weeks later, usually at the end of the month...which was sooner than they had solved my issue.  

Yea I saw 2 notifications you posted and only 1 actually  posted, I could only read the 1st half sentence of the 1st post.  Posts get auto-deleted if they certain phrases or words at&t doesn't like that make them look bad.  like certain legal words/terms such as "saying we should (rhymes with pew)them"  or "i hate the (a-word we can't say-tion) clause that their contract forces us to sign.   
They claim it's just to filter swear words but once your censoring people.... why not protect your corporate image and do whatever you want? lol

Keep us posted.