Aug 28 Across the AT&T U(ni)-verse - a Precautionary Tale
The following is an email that Phil Clark sent to us. Phil has allowed us to share it with you:
Hi HT guys!
I just experience 24 hours of "hell", involving a failed install of AT&T's U-Verse, from which perhaps some of your listeners might be able to get some recautionary tips from. It's a little long, but I'll try to summarize as much as possible, and maybe you can as well!
Some background: I live in a suburb of Chicago, about 40 miles directly west of the best city in America (Go Bears!!), called West Chicago (go figure eh!). By some strange quirk, my lot is unincorporated, but we ARE slap bang in the middle of civilization, with a new housing development not more than one block south of me. My lot is very wooded with old, established white oaks, many of which are 80+ feet high.
We've been here about 10 years, and when we moved in we found that we did not have any cable service to our house despite the fact that our neighbor, about 300 foot away did. So satellite, DirecTV, became the main vehicle for obtaining TV signals, as the OTA wasn't that good either (more on this later). It took me 18 months of exploration to find a good spot where my dish would pick up the standard satellite signal - I found one, and pointing through a crack in the trees and getting 100% signal on nearly all channels. I did get a slightly larger dish to the normal one (off ebay!), so that snow and rain fade are not a major issue.
All good so far!! But then along came HD, and of course like most people I was excited and asked DirecTV to install it.
Full stop there - because the HD channels are carried on different satellites, the dish would need to point to a slightly different location and guess what! Yup, mother nature had grown a large oak tree right in the path of the signal.
I hear people saying, cut down the tree. Aside from that being an expensive proposition (have you ever contracted a tree feller - mucho bucks), we love our trees, and trees in general, so this was not an option. I learned to live with OTA HD signals via an HD antenna, on an extended height pole. Come the digital changeover this year, the local channels actually come in better but I still have to turn my antenna from time to time to accomodate weather and wind conditions. OK - I get the Bears in HD, so I'm OK with it for now.
A Shining White Knight?
In the meantime, in a phone land far far away, the great digital leader, ATT, was proclaiming great things for his empire called U-Verse.
Yes, I had heard about this and longed for the day when they brought this to my door, seeing it as a savior of digital media. After all, I had phone lines, and DSL internet albeit at the 1.5mb speed (from AT&T already), because they told me I was at the end of the drop so would not get a faster speed.
U-Verse, FIOS based, it seemed would be the answer because it was faster and broader and would deliver TV, phone and internet in one cool package. And as I was refinishing my basement to be a home theater - English pub combo, I had invested in some good equipment to match that (Samsung UN55B7000, Denon AVR-2309CI, and a set of KEF 3000 speakers - Oppo DVD player to be purchased later based on your review!!)
The AT&T sales people did a good job of selling, spending a good hour explaining how it all worked and answering my questions. However, there was one crucial question that needed answering and one crucial point that was not discussed that we will reveal later.
Came the install day. I arose excited and happy about my pending move into the full HD world!
As i work from home, I had risen early complete my days work on the computer as I felt that as some time they may have to disconnect my DSL to switch over. As I had my DSL on a second and separate line to where the U-Verse was being installed, I felt confident that it might not be a lengthy outage. WRONG!!
And here's the first lesson learned:
U-verse and DSL do not live together, even if you have two phone lines for each separate one. You cannot have them on the same outside phone block!
So AT&T had politely put through a DSL disconnect order, which came about at least 4 hours before the install was scheduled, and in this case continued for a full 24 hours!! Maybe not a biggie for most people, but if you work at home it is huge. Plus, and I hate saying this...do you know how much we rely on the internet now!! Without it, you feel alone and stranded on an island. Eeek!
Ok - to continue....
The installers arrived and the first job for them was to test the line for quality and capability. Full stop!
They told me that as I was at the end of the line, the signal might not be strong enough, and even if it was I might only be able to view/record one HD channel at a time. Still hope!
A line technician was dispatched and did an outstanding job of cleaning and tweaking the line to match the specs for what was needed for U-Verse. He failed, but at least I have one of the cleanest internet and phone lines in the neighborhood!
Second lesson learned:
If you are looking at U-Verse, then please ask them to test the line ahead of time, or at least ask them where you are in relation to the main phone box, so you can get an idea if it is even possible to get anything!!
So, I'm back to my limited HD reception again, using my OTA to bring in only the local channels.
There is a good note at the end of this debacle that I should mention to be fair to AT&T - after I managed to reach a customer service manager to complain about all the problems I had had that day (and I had many more than listed here, mainly with the poor coordination between DSL and U-verse departments), they did compensate me with discounted services, for the loss of service and the angst and personal stress. At least they realized they screwed up!
Back to my problem of obtaining good HD content, I would like to ask you and your listeners if they have any bright ideas as to how I can get this?
My next calls are to my village to ask whether they have any cable companies who might run to my house, and to DirecTV to see if they provide access via OnDemand to HD programs that I can download, despite not being able to receive the live HD signals.
Great show, keep up the good work, and I know that someday my HD prince will come....
Cheers!
Phil Clark
Landlord
www.thebritandyankee.com
Reader Comments (3)
Update on my last two attempts to find a way round my problem.
The village had no suggestions - its a utility and down to Comcast to bring it in.
Comcast - if you are out there, please help me!! Please!!!!
DirecTV couldn't help me either as their system does not allow for you turning on HD channels without my account saying I had an HD receiver. Oh well, worth the old college try I guess!!
Phil.
Seems to me the only logical way out of your HD mess is to move.Good excuse to move is that someday one of those monster size trees is going to come down during a wind storm and probably wipe out your residence.That would get me out of there sooner then later!
My U-Verse install was very different. The installer knew how far we were from the distribution point.
The install was flawless. They even replaced the 2-wire from the pole to the house.
I think you will have a better chance of AT&T adding a new distribution point before the tree falls.