Trapped, frustrated, and ultimately defeated

I want to start by saying everyone I've dealt with at AT&T has been excellent. The technicians and customer service people are polite and helpful. I tip my hat to them.

I'm writing to tell my sad and frustrating story with AT&T. It started years ago. I was an AT&T customer, getting 6MB DSL for $20/mo. A reasonable price for a reasonable service. When the deal expired I switched to Comcast. I was a happy Comcast customer. Then I moved.

I moved to an area not serviced by any cable provider. I had to get AT&T. So I look online at the bundles for TV and Internet. First gotcha:

You must rent an AT&T modem. That’s right. There is no option to just buy a u-verse modem off eBay and skip that 7 dollar a month charge. For that matter, with my TV set-top being Ethernet (read below), why can't I just use my old DSL modem from before? Are u-verse packets magic packets?

So the technicians come out, and it's the usual inevitable drama with DSL. The lines are old and crappy and the modem won't sync. They pull a new cable from the pedistal to my house. It took a few hours, but the service got going. A week later, someone comes to bury the cable. Both technicians that came were excellent. I give them a 10/10.

In the days that followed, my moving van arrived and so did my possessions. I decided to run my own Cat5 cable along the carpet from my modem (bedroom) to my TV (living room) to support my gaming consoles, etc. With Comcast, I had the cable modem next to the cable TV. I had also noticed that the TV was constantly freezing. Next gotcha:

U-Verse TV works poorly over coax. That's right. The cable that Comcast is pushing 100 MB a second on, and 5 TVs, U-verse can't utilize. Of course, when a house is built, what do they put by the TV, TV cable! Not data cable.

U-Verse comes out to investigate my TV. They tell me that coax isn't recommended, and since I have cat-5 at the TV, they switch the service. Fine. They also tell me that my Netgear router could be causing problems. That's right You must use the U-Verse router in the modem. Got your own router that does VPN and other cool stuff. Too bad, so sad, you have U-Verse!

Now the TV is working. I have U-family. It's 160 channels right? Wrong. It's actually 80 some-odd music channels, a mountain of home shopping, and a handful of local channels, with some bare-bones basic cable. Want to watch FX, TNT, AMC, Comedy Central? Too bad! U-Verse has basic cable channels as a premium package for an extra 11 dollars a month.

So this is a good time to catch up. In my old place, I had Comcast. For 70 bucks a month I had channels I actually wanted, 15 MB internet, and my own router, and no Cat-5 taped to the rug. Now with U-Verse I'm paying 80 dollars a month for 6 MB DSL and the Andy Griffith show!.

I'm dissatisfied, but I'm resigned to accept it. A month goes by, and I think, "hey AT&T never sent me a bill", so I login and look. Uh oh! It's past due! That's right, AT&T can't be bothered to actually send their customers a paper or electronic bill before the due date. So now I'm 3 days past due, and probably with a bad mark in my credit file, forever crushing my dreams of home ownership, all because I was forced into service from a vile company. The really frustrating thing is that the billing cycle was one day (my activation date). That means AT&T had a month to mail a bill, and never did.

I'm very upset. I call AT&T. Uh oh! No answer after 7pm. That's right: AT&T doesn't have customer service when people aren't at work!. Probably explains how they get away with these atrocities.

The next day I get home from work, and lo, in my mailbox, is a bill from AT&T. Fascinating. I open it up, and it's 200 dollars. 200 dollars for 6 MB DSL and the Andy Griffith show?!?. For 200 dollars, Comcast would come and tap dance in my living room.

I'm almost blind with rage. I call AT&T. I get the useless robot asking me if my cell phone is the phone on my account. I tell it no. Then I tell it my phone number. It tells me it sees I just made a payment, and asks if I want more information. I tell it "No. Talk to a person". This is important, the phone robot got my account information from just a phone number. I get on with a person, and they ask for my phone number, the same phone number the robot just successfully used, and the agent tells me they can't find my account with that number. The AT&T robot and the AT&T agents don't have access to the same information?!?!!!. I want to cry. I've nearly lost faith in humanity. The agent tells me my bill is actually 79 dollars (1 month), and that it's due in 12 days. Nice right? When AT&T does bother to send a bill, they give you less than two weeks to pay it. I thank the man for his time and hang-up.

Remember when I said I logged in to AT&T's website? Well I decided to do it again periodically. Every time I login, it tells me my password is invalid. Every time. I get a temporary password sent to my email, use it, set my actual password, and when I try to login a few days later, it tells me the password is invalid! AT&T's password reset doesn't actually work!.

I'm at a loss to cope with my utter dissatisfaction with AT&T. Comcast is legendary for their poor customer service, and as a loyal customer, I can say it's true. They couldn't schedule their way out of a wet paper bag, and the office is lined up for hours. But AT&T is evil. Pure, unadulterated evil. It's a sad state of affairs in America when monopoly companies have left consumers with a choice between incompetent (Comcast) and evil (AT&T).

I don't understand how AT&T is a business. Who, when given a choice, would pay more for less? Who would pay more for slower internet and less channels? Anyone out there reading this, if you live in an area serviced by Comcast, please trust me, you want Comcast. You need Comcast. It's faster, cheaper, better and smarter. I pray every day to the Lord Jesus himself to deliver me from the evil which is AT&T and bring salvation in the form of Comcast. When that day finally comes, I will pay whatever price to break free of my AT&T contract, and watch TV again a free man.

Thank you.

#IMissComcast