i might want to hold off on getting this DSL now.....

wow, this is even worse than my time warner experience...

Maybe AT&T wants to keep the easy customers and lose the expensive-to-fix customers.

If they can't fix Ben's problem maybe their bottom line comes out ahead by having him go away rather than having to invest expensive resources into finding and fixing the problem?

Yikes. I use AT&T for my cell service and I've consistently had good luck with issues that have arisen. It seems clear that AT&T does not have such a strong grasp of their internet side of business. Ben, I hope you get a response soon, but in the meantime, let's see that blog!

Create a free account at DSLReports.com and post your information in the AT&T Direct forum. Only ATT techs can see what you post and they actually know what they're doing. They should be able to help get this all sorted out.
Here's the forum link [www.dslreports.com]

I may be incorrect in this, but I believe that when you ask for help online you are often speaking with a computer rather than a real person. This does not, of course, excuse the fact that the help tickets keep disappearing, but it may explain why the OP was unable to get anything more than a rote response.

[forums.geekspeak.org]

Fourth post down, I wonder if that's the same Ben.

@Spencer Nash: I also dropped AT&T's Twitter account (ATTNews) a note to this page.

This is exactly what I went through. We paid for the "high speed" dsl (which in itself is ironic) and they kept forgetting to up the speed. Then the service would screech to a halt and I would go through the process of chatting with these idiots to get some tech to come out and say the issue was somewhere in the NOC and they would "take care of it" which you and I know meant nothing. Needless to say we are on cable and the uptime has improved.

Sadly, the letter will get nowhere addressed to the San Antonio address. Randall and the rest of AT&T packed up and moved headquarters to Dallas, TX.

I totally have sympathy for the OP, but I wonder if the OP could have been in a more rational tone, especially with a live chat CSR.

I give no excuse for AT&T, but calmer heads still need to prevail.

I mean, if it's one thing we already know about trying to get any customer service with bad operations is that if you don't act civil, it only makes things worse.

Just a thought.

Bye.

@Joseph Beck: Bingo. They decided to stop servicing the area where my parents live (kind of on the edge of town but still urban). They still want them to pay $40 month for sub-DSL speeds but are unwilling to deny service (with no contract I see no reason why they can't just say "sorry we're not offering this in your area anymore"). I have been told several times that if I were to call up and ask for new service we'd be told there is no service in our area. Every year I call them up and ask for a service discount - my mom doesn't care about the crappy speed, just wants to read her email, and is willing to pay $25-$30/mo like new customers do for faster speeds. Every year it takes us six months to actually get the billing straightened out. I asked a manager once, so you'd rather charge us ridiculous prices and drive us away then just properly serve us and handle our issues, and she said, yeah, pretty much.

This obviously should not happen. And removing phone jacks? What, they might be leaking bandwidth as well as radio frequency interference?

That four-month thing: something there? I worked at one company that had trouble every Monday starting up the corporate mainframe - after a few months, it was traced to a factory next door that started its machines at about the same time, with a severe effect on line voltage. But what happens at four-month intervals?

@gumby101: The problem is that when you deal with inept CSR after inept CSR who keep trying the same fixes/solutions to a problem that have not worked and you can't get anyone to, you know, actually have a rational discussion with you about the problem, you're going to be pretty pissed.

With the lame canned responses, I don't blame OP for being upset.

@STrRedWolf: That's great and all, but how bad is it when a customer that has ELITE service has to resort to such insane measures to get a simple problem fixed properly?

@Saiwen Chen: My TWC experience with random drops went like this when the tech got to my house and opened THEIR box on the outside of the house:
"Wow. Who wired this crap job up?"

I recently had an experience with utter AT&T incompetence that I have been seriously debating writing up and sending to Consumerist. I am the IT Manager at my job, and we have an AT&T T1, which functions as our sole data pipe for both internet and our VOIP phone system. This is a service we pay roughly $1300.00 per month for. Last week our T1 was down hard twice, for a total outage of around 50 hours. We were basically out of business for half of the work week, with no phones, email, or internet. Our Account Manager (Salesman), was no help (he just didn;t care and always does as little as possible), and the customer service line for our product was outsourced to India, where they basically would initiate a trouble ticket and not much else. The service was no different from $19.99 per month DSL customer service. Over 50 calls were made to varying departments in AT&T, and it took escalation to the Executive VP level before we saw a restoration of service. I understand outages happen, but I cannot begin to describe the total lack of caring and communication shown towards our company during this situation. After over 30 hours of outage, we still had not received confirmation that a technician was even dispatched to work on the problem. I have never been more certain that AT&T is just too big -- they function like a government. We made it through the week by having our primary phone line forwarded to a google voice phone number, which then forwarded to a couple cell phones (took 36 hours for AT&T to get the forward in place), and for a WAN connection I hooked the entire network up to a 3G router and air card. So to Ben, the original poster, you are not alone in your frustration with AT&T incompetence, and it doesn't matter what you spend, you cannot buy quality customer service from this company. We will be leaving our contract if at all feasible.

@Joseph Beck: AT&T wants to keep the clueless customers and lose the customers that actually know something about technology.

@teqjack: Aliens.

I guess the first question is does he have any alternatives? If his only choice for broadband is AT&T, then he has to go the distance. FWIW, AT&T (which used to be SouthWest Bell or SBC) had the reputation of being the least customer-friendly and the most avaricious of the Baby Bells. Ben, I wish you luck.

The letter was composed so well - but i would be embarrassed to attach that transcript after I had been a jerk like that. Kinda nulls out the well written letter.

This is why the company I work for is working to get out of a three-year contract for T1 service with AT&T that we only signed for in March.

I'm saving this for ammunition in our case...

It almost sounds to me like this is a computer or bot that is responding. Thoughts?

I feel bad for the poor chump that took the chat request for this problem.

The OP is rightfully upset and stated it in the beginning. Coming out swinging like that is not the right way to go about getting help.

I'm not proposing that he suck up to them. The guy taking that chat request tries to calm him to be productive and the shots keep coming.

/and also... Don't they have ticket numbers? It is hard to lose a serial number... or at least you can see if the number was closed by some jackass trying to skew his performance numbers for the better.

@teqjack:

I have installed DSL and DSLAMs. The extra phone jacks are called bridge taps and may have a detrimental effect on the performance.

The taps are actually undesirable reflections of the signal and they cause more trouble when they're close to the DSL modem and are short in length.

[www.iec.org]

I wasn't there, but the constant issues and removing the jacks sounds like they're grasping at straws. If they wanted to get to eliminate the inside wiring, they should run a new inside line just for the DSL.

My guess is that something is getting wet between the house and the central office.

@H3ion: Since he's in California, he's stuck with AT&T, an ISP that leases their lines, or dial-up. There may be wireless service in his area, but that tends to be expensive and/or unreliable.

Interesting. Here in the Indy area I've had close to no trouble with 6mb AT&T DSL. It's been fast and reliable.
Not that I'm trying to sell people it. I do feel sympathy for the guy in the article. No/slow internet = ultimate suckage.

I had one of the WORST customer service experiences in my life with AT&T DSL, so I'm not surprised. Long story short, I tried to sign up for it, they sent me a modem and install disks that didn't work with Linux. (Linux is not a problem for Time Warner, by the way.)

Upon discovering this, I immediately returned the modem and install disks that AT&T had sent, and canceled the service. Later, I got a bill for a month of Internet service I never used, and was charged for the modem I returned. It took MONTHS to get the charge removed, and several hours spent on the phone with AT&T customer service. Which should be renamed AT&T Clusterfuck Service. I would call customer service, they would transfer me to Billing ... who would then transfer me to the DSL department... who would then tell me I needed to talk to someone in customer service.

The whole thing was finally resolved when I eventually found a "Ms. Fitzpatrick," who said, yes, AT&T had received the returned modem, and that she would credit my account the $75 "right now."

Which begs the question, why didn't someone credit my account as soon as the modem was received, instead of waiting a few months for me to find Ms. Fitzpatrick?

@gumby101: Did anyone else notice the "when you reached at the home"? Hardly sounds like the person on the other end is a native English speaker, so talking to the Live Chat CSRs is probably not a worthwhile endeavor.

Long live AT&T's poor customer service! My business thrives on this fact.

@dragonfire81: It's close to a lawsuit. OP may want to switch service now and consult a lawyer if things get worse.

I signed up for AT&T dsl in january after I moved to a new place. They offered me a discounted deal since I have their wireless service ($10 off for the elite service).

The saleswoman on the phone told me they'd send a self-install modem kit, and that no on-site technician was needed because my place was already wired. They said the turn-on date was next friday.

then, I received a mysterious voicemail 2 days later from a different woman at AT&T saying she had just completed my signup for service, and that my turnon date would be the tuesday after the day i had been told. I work tuesday! So i called the next day, and nobody could explain anything. i asked about an installer coming in, and the csr said that one would be coming, and that they always have to come! she didn't know what the salesperson was talking about. I explained that i work tuesday. she moved the install date to the friday after that. yay.

then, a few days later, i received two identical packages with 2 modems in the mail. I call and they say there are 2 accounts. they cancel one of them, and tell me to mail the other modem back. I do this.

then the tech comes a day earlier than he was supposed to. i am about to leave for work but i want my service, and i do not want a reschedule. he installs the service. it can't work until i do a setup, which i have to do later. after work, i check, and my internet works. but it's too slow.

then i receive 2 bills in the mail, even though one account had supposedly been canceled. i call and they claim to have fixed it. i do not pay either of these bills since i do not trust them by now. if i pay the wrong one, they will shut off my service, and they have a 50% chance of being right telling me which one.

also, the bills are for a TON more than i was told. I was explicitly told that the modem was $50, no shipping, and the service was $35. both bills had also charged me $15 shipping for the modem, and then all sorts of other fees. they were each for $120. they should have been 85 exactly. the csr told me that they never do free shipping, even though I had asked the salesperson if there was shipping, and she had said no.

Finally, these bills (and the modems too) were not sent to the correct address. I also had a rebate coming on the modem, which was likely stolen, since it was sent to a busy hallway with no protection. I had explicitly told them to mail the stuff to my secure address, and not the location of service. they had not done this.

a few weeks later, my internet slowly crawls to its death. then it stops working. i call (india, since it's night). i talk forever, as usual, and the guy promises a tech will come the next day. he also promises to freeze my bill so i don;t have to pay, since i'm not about to give them money then ask for some back for the issues. they haven't earned any of my money.

this new tech comes and seems to know his stuff. he tests the line, and says that he knows the problem. I had ordered 6 mb/s internet, the fastest they offered in my area. however, my port can only take 4. so he has to downgrade me to the 3 mb/s speed, since they do not offer 4, and you have to have a speed lower than your capability, or else the whole thing jams to a crawl. I ask why they didn't check this from the start, or before signing me up for 6 and charging me. he said AT&T residential was run by idiots. It is.

Happy ending: I ended up moving shortly after to a place that already had internet access. I called AT&T and said I gave up, I wanted a full refund, and to cancel service, since they had not provided the promised service to me and could not. I based this mostly on the fact that I agreed to 6 mb/s for a good price, and only got <1 for a while, then only 3. I said that I did and would not agree to pay for the 3 mb/s plan. They agreed with me, and refunded all the charges on the accounts, so I never had to pay them a penny.

Moral of the story: don't pay the bill until you get the service, because they are more reasonable when the money isn't already in their hands.

I'm flabergasted by all this "k" nonsense in both the email and the chat logs. Thousand WHAT? Bits? Bytes? Per second, I assume, but considering this guy claims to work in IT, why isn't he being clear about it?

Since the speed is the primary issue here, shouldn't there be at least ONE mention of speed (units per time period)? "Ten thousand" is a number, not a rate.

I'm the ben who sent this letter. To answer the question on speed which I do believe is relevent. I am talking about actual download rates. So so where i would normally experience a download rate of nearly 500k-600KB download rate i'm currently experiencing 10KB download rates.

Now if i run a speedtest I get:

200kbps-600kbps download (25KB-75KB)
275kbps-450kbps upload (35KB-55KB)

Their service is supposed to provide:

Downstream Speed: Up to 6.0 Mbps
Upstream Speed: Up to 768 Kbps

However as I stated earlier, I'm seeing actual rates around 10KB when I stay connected. It's not uncommon for my connection to drop several times a day. I've tried multiple laptops and desktop, multiple network cables, with and without my router. It could be a modem issue since I can't swap that out. My guess is it's a billing screw-up of some sort but that doesn't explain the horrible 10KB rates I'm seeing. I just want someone to do something other than tell me to log a ticket. I've had this modem a good 5-6 years. Router is recently replaced.

@Stephen Schenck: I assume he is saying that he is getting download speeds of 1000 Kbps (1 Mbps)and he should be getting 6000 Kbps (6 Mbps).

@shakes: Uh - he said 10K and 600K - think you're missing a zero somewhere. Then again, if this was just spelled out correctly in the first place...

We had Bellsouth then AT&T bought them and we have never had any problems with their Tech. Support. Actually, maybe one time, but we just asked for a supervisor and the problem was solved! They have an Advanced Tech. Dept. now and they have been extremely good!

In 5 years I have been on at least 15 different pairs. The last time which was last month, the first tech came 6 hours late. I wasn't home told my daughter that my speed problem was due to my password. Duh.. The second one changed pairs again. I ran a speed test, told him it was .49kbs he said great, let me check one thing, he left and never came back. The third tech finally fixed the problem this time. It was the dsl filter outside. Two weeks of talking to some really stupid people. Two really stupid line techs. My dsl will run great for 6 months, then there is some kind of problem, and two weeks later it will be fixed. Then I will have to go back to square one, its my modem, its my machine, which one out of 26 they don't know. But lets clear the cache, reboot, remove the router, La La La.. Same stuff over and over. At&t loves customers so much they removed the complaint page form.

I would like the out come of this. I have been having the same exact issue. It's a dead on match.

Wow. I was on the phone with AT&T today about my Elite DSL and was planning to blog about how frustrating it was. But reading Ben's account here, now I feel lucky things aren't worse.

Half the problem I have with them is that everything accountwise is linked to your AT&T phone number. If you just have DSL and no phone service, that screws up a lot of things. Half the pages on their website will accept the account number in lieu of the phone number, but the other half won't. So you're stuck calling them, and when you do that, the automated system doesn't understand anything but a phone number either. When you zero-zero-zero through to one of their people, the scripts are outdated and they send you to web support links that have been deactivated or transfer you to departments that are closed for the day. Of course, none of those dead ends are obvious right away; there's a lot of clicking through or waiting on hold before you hit them, just to maximize your frustration. It's a mess.

And here's the best part. If you try to register to use the account manager online, you have two options to receive your registration code: 1) A phone call, which can only come to your AT&T phone number. 2) US mail.

US mail?

US MAIL?!?!

Are they fargin' kidding? What is this, the 19th century? Why not a telegram, or smoke signals, or Pony Express? This is a major telecommunications company, and the best they can do for sending a high-speed DSL account website login registration is to use the post office?

I switched to AT&T DSL from Comcast cable internet. The service itself is faster than Comcast. But I didn't think any customer service could be worse than Comcast, and I know better now. It's almost worth paying more for a slightly slower connection to get away from AT&T's customer service nightmare - and when you find you're nostalgic for Comcast, something is dreadfully, horribly wrong.

@wagnerism: That was no "guy" taking that chat request. "Jason" is a computer.

That conversation with Justin looks like it very well could have been entirely done with a computer program at Justin's end, instead of a real person (as if it would matter, since so many CSRs are as much a zombie as a robot these days).

when you reached at the home... For great justice ... ALL YOUR DSL ARE BELONG TO US...sorry i couldnt help it

@Spencer Nash: Thanks for this website! I'm having a similar issue as the OP, and the forums at dslreports.org have already responded to my questions and I'm hopefully getting my issues resolved. This is a great forum to know about for internet problems.

I feel for you! I hate it when I call support and the only people available are Indians or other non-english-speakers. As if trying to communicate with them isn't enough! Getting them to listen to your problem is even harder! And even harder than that is to get them to take responsibility for it.

I had a similar support experience with HP Business Support. I was really pissed with it because they never really listened to my problem, but were willing to offer every solution that didn't work. Being a technical person, I felt like I knew more about the problem and solution than they did--I just didn't have the equipment/resources to fix it. Then one day, I called support and found out that it had moved to Canada. I just about jumped out of my seat. I was able to resolve that issue that had dragged on for over a month with that Canadian in about half an hour.

I was really worried I'd have the same problem as Ben when I signed up for DSL. However, I happen to have a friend that is a supervisor for their call center. Any time I have problems, I contact him directly and don't have to deal with all the "that's not our responsibility" and not fulfilling commitments.

@post_break: Optimum Online gave us a 12 month trial of Optimum Boost for signing up. It even appeared on our bill for $0.00. After the trial ended, we wanted to keep the same speeds so we kept it for $10/month. Around 4 months after that, it came out that we weren't actually receiving boost service ever. They "graciously" decided to give us the 4 months back and then tried to activate the boost. That caused a service outage in our entire area and they decided that we couldn't get boost in our area.

@nospacesinmyname: Maybe, maybe not. I had a VERY good experience with at&t tech support this past week, but I've also had bad.The past week i'd had my connection dropping frequently, called tech support, they sent a guy out, between 1-5. 1:10 he calls me and says he'll be 10-15 mins, he was 17 (we live off a dirt road, so thats fine). He went through everything, explained everything, answered every and all questions, and even stayed around to test the connection. He even swapped the modem, because that version had overheating problems (despite it being 5 months out of warranty). Annoyingly, I can't find a way to contact AT&T to tell them of the really good job this guy did (and I'm not easily impressed)

I've had bad experiances too though, with people not listening. I had a DNS problem, and the woman on the phone kept sticking to her script about clearing cache's, rebooting windows, etc. despite the fact the modem's on board diagnostics couldn't access
any DNS servers (bellsouths, or openDNS or anyones). I escalated the call.

Also, for the OP, you don't have to be calling from the home line to have them test the line. I call in on my cellphone, because I have a naked DSL install (just DSL, no phone service) and they have no problems doing a line-test. I'm on the 6Mbit package, but get 8Mbit. I also know my stuff (I'm a researcher for a tech news site, and they still won't listen to me - even saying 'well you have the dial-up backup' which isn't much use when you've got no dial tone....

Escalated the call, complained to her manager about her lack of listening, and explained how I'd have to cancel my video conference with the FCC about network neutrality, and why (and that I'd be sending them a copy of the phone call for supporting evidence) and suddenly they were very helpful - surprising that.

What people have to realize is that companies such as AT&T are not really tech companies. They are not service companies. They are marketing companies.

Their focus is not on providing cell phone, land line, television, or internet services. Their focus is marketing those services and getting people to sign to long term contracts.

Here's a good example. Those techs that show up to repair your DSL line do not work for AT&T. They are independent contractors. Why? Because AT&T is not in the DSL business!

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