U-Verse DVR series scheduled recordings are not functioning

@denirose

UGH I'm getting so sick of this, AT&T is the a(Edited per community guidelines)olute worst customer service of any company. and everytime I deal with them they manage to top themselves even further.

A new twitter agent joined my DM since AaronC is off today.  "JaTasiaR" claimed she was talking to technical support, but then just proceeded to start running me through the same basic troubleshooting (Edited per community guidelines) checklists.  Telling me I have too many recordings and to erase dvr.  Then wanting to swap dvr.  She clearly doesn't understand the issue at all.  

The forum customer service agent DM told me:

"The escalation process has begun. We have taking this up to our operational management. We will let you know via this direct message."

but that's all they said and couldn't give me a timeline so I'm not holding my breath.

I guess ill be setting a lot of manual recordings via workaround this week.  Might need to start checking out comcast pricing and availability.  

@madmax988 UGH is right. It’s maddening to deal with them when you understand the issue and they don’t have a clue. Meanwhile they stubbornly stick to their script. It took me over an hour and about five different people to explain to the billing department that they bill a month in advance and, since I quit their service (yay me) they owe me a refund for overpayment. One of them (a so-called manager) even transferred me to the Collections department to solve it. At least the guy in Collections understood that his job was to collect past due accounts. I was screaming at the walls by the time I got off that round of madness.  

Hopefully your efforts have pushed them to get it escalated. You’ve probably done all you can do so don’t waste time with these untrained people at least for a while.  Reset your recordings and that will buy you a couple of weeks. Definitely look into Comcast if they have the channels you want. I do remember when U-verse customer service was good but it hasn’t been for at least the last five years. 

Once again I wrote a long post and it erased itself before I could post it.

@denirose Did you cancel your wireless service? or did you cancel uverse tv and all your at&t services?

I'm so done with twitter DM. So JaTashiaR was being useless running through script and not understanding issue and claimed she was talking a to a manager.  So I asked to speak directly with the manager or with tech support.  All she did was stall and then ignore me until her shift ended where she promptly signed off.  A new Agent GanishaW took over and immediately started at the beginning again.  I wasn't doing it again so I asked for manager again.  When I mentioned possibly cancelling. Ended up getting transferred to social media customer retention BryanR, even though I specifically asked not to be transferred to customer retention.  BryanR transferred me to "tech support" which brought me back to...GanishaW....  AT&T truly has more than 7 levels of (Edited per community guidelines). 

Then I tried calling customer retention for real (via direct line available with google searching, but not allowed to be posted on forum).  I had them transfer me to Last Chance Repair, who claims to be the highest tech support available to customers(maybe true maybe not).  
Talked with John, nice guy, at least he understood the issue and was able to search for it in their internal system.  The problem is the issue comes up in their search, as "scheduling does not work for some or all shows" but when he clicked on it nothing comes up describing what causes it or how to fix it.  

So then he and his team lead spent some time looking through my recordings/schedulings via their system, but for some reason its just 1 big long list of shows on their system and doesn't even say if they are already recorded or scheduled to record episodes.  So I have no idea what they expected to see from that.  They were worried I have too much recorded which again doesn't really make any sense why that would have any effect, to placate them I raised my empty space from 7% to 12% by deleting shows ( I also happen to have a 1tb dvr so it's quite a few GB of available space for the dvr to use, the normal 500gb drive dvrs do slow down significantly and have issues  if they go under 10%, but I've never seen an issue on my current 1 tb one even under 2%)  j

They also claimed they saw line issues on my home so they now want to send a technician out.  I'm confused by this, since I have had tons of line issues in the past, but since the last fix in November where they actually replaced the bad wire splice my systems has been more stable then it has been in 5 years.  Since I last reset my gateway 4 days ago, I've had 0 CRC errors and only a few hundred FEC errors, so I have no idea what kind of line issue they think they were seeing.
They basically ran out of ideas on how to fix it, so they put it off to the technician hoping he solves it, since they claim they can't do anything more with line issues present.
So now I have to deal with an incompetent field tech on monday who is going to laugh and ask "why am I even here?" when he comes out and the internet is working and tv is working and there's nothing else he can do.  The only hope is maybe he has some way to tell his manager and maybe 5 managers up through the local dept they eventually have a way to contact some systems engineer who actually works with the server/software.

I also tried to explain it's a regional issue and not just affecting me so none of these other supposed problems/solutions are going to do anything to fix it.  but they refused to admit it was a regional issue.  When I asked if they had anyway to even see regional reports, like when there is an outage or something affecting multiple customers.  He responded they used to have a tool but its no longer available to them.  Great work at&t!.  so even if 1000 people called in they would have no way to know it was a common issue unless they all happened to talk to the same agent.  Ridiculous waste of time system.  

He tricked me into the technician appointment, by saying at first that he thought he could finally get me hooked up to fiber internet, that att has been promising in my neighborhood for 7+ years.  

and then to top it all off the social media manager finally called me from a random phone # 1 minute before I got off the phone with last chance repair, so I didn't answer and he didn't leave a voicemail and didn't leave a callback or extension #.

@madmax988 Any luck? The person on Nextdoor said she got a call back from a supervisor today and was told they’re still working on it. No other details though. Another person posted she had the issue and was going to call it in. I might try a second attempt to call later today. Watching my 12 days of recordings dwindle down to about 6. Soon will be starting manual resets again. Ugh. 

@madmax988   I asked the person on Nextdoor that got the callback if she had any additional info about what they said or what department they were in. She just posted that she used to work for AT&T years ago and she has some contacts there and one of them checked it out for her. 

@denirose  I haven't had time to deal with them. I've been busy & had to reschedule the technician who was supposed to come out today 10-2pm.  I had also scheduled a 1pm phone call from Last chance repair,  My hope being they would call while technician was still here so they could talk to each other.  The Last chance repair agent John, never called, but I'm not sure if he got alerted that I rescheduled and that's why he didn't call.

I did receive this response from the forum DM:

Ok in speaking with IP-ARC, which has replaced the SEP team, don't worry, we are stilling escalating, but I am not leaving this alone until I get an answer from our operational management. However, in speaking with IP-ARC, they see the following. Possible Issue 1: the older series of recording have become corrupt. Which, could cause newer recording to stop working. Possible issue 2: (This is why a tech is needed): We are unable to talk to your router. We cannot see the errors for the FEC as well as other transmission errors, which are occurring. So that, is the current update. Since a tech is being sent, let's start with that. They could resolve the communication of the router and the DVR/STB's and in turn that could fix the problem with the recordings. I do want to rest assured that I am attacking this every thing that I have, and I am looking at every avenue and opportunity to find a resolution for you."

I have no idea what IP-ARC or SEP teams are and google doesn't seem to help solve that.  

I'm still 99% sure having a technician come out is going to be pointless.  They claimed they wanted me to do it because they claim there's some sort of line issue.  But my lines show way better than they normally have been and that makes absolutely no sense.  Even worse I'm so annoyed, because I looked at the order status paperwork for the technician appointment and it shows them changing my 50/10mbps internet to the 24mbps plan.  Lowering internet max speed can improve line issues if you are too far from the node, but It's not like I suddenly moved my house and again I have basically no errors and fairly stable connection, when previously for years I had 1000's of errors per hour and multiple disconnects per day.

In case any techs are reading this and want to comment I'm currently pair bonded at 66/13mbps with a max attainable 136.5/23.6mbps  split fairly evenly across both lines.  7 days current uptime 0 crc errors and a total approximately 2000 download fec errors and 10000 upload fec errors spread across both lines.  so a total of only 71 fec errors per hour. 

It mostly seems like since they knew they didn't have the power to fix the actual problem, their solution is to just try everything the can possible due from their normal list of very limited options, in the hopes they accidentally fix it.
So now I'm going to have to call customer retention/loyalty again before tech comes (next schedule not until Saturday 4/30) to make sure they don't change my internet to 24mbps plan which I wouldn't be able to work on, due to crazy low upload speed.  If I had to choose at that point I'd probably cancel at&t and get comcast, or at least get comcast for tv.  The internet is more important than tv obviously.

@denirose They also keep acting like some old corrupted recording or the fact that my dvr is too full is causing the issue.  Which again makes no logical sense.  Just curious to other customers what is your current percentage remaining available on DVR? 
They told me to keep mine over 10-12% and given my 1tb drive, that 100gb+ of space should be plenty. 

@denirose  It's good to hear that she might have a contact.  Honestly getting this issue in front of someone that actually has the ability to track down the correct team who has the ability to actual fix the bug on the server is the only way we are ever going to see a permanent solution.  

If you guys are going to try calling in Last chance repair via customer loyalty is probably your best bet for speaking someone.  At the very least you won't waste 2 hours getting through the offshore "tech support"

@ATTHelp I haven't heard from the forum dm in 2 days, I was hoping there might be an update or some sort of information from IP-ARC team.  

I really hope at&t isn't waiting for my Saturday technician appointment before they keep working on this.  

@denirose  or anyone else, has anyone heard anything else?  Were you able to talk with last chance repair?

@madmax988  No I haven’t had a chance to call them but I have time now. How do you get to speak with “last chance repair” and bypass the offshore? Also, no further updates via “Nextdoor”. 

@denirose you have to call customer retention/loyalty and ask to speak to last chance repair.  They may or may not be able to connect you if the agent you get doesn't know the extension ask for a different agent or just hang up and call back.

to get to customer retention google for the phone # (it's against forum rules to post it, so they'll delete the post if I write it here).  

However far you get with last chance repair make sure you either get them to give you their call back # (they rarely give you this) or schedule them to call you back to follow up (and then pray you don't reject the call thinking its a spam call when they call you from some random # a week later, lol)