Brie would like U-Verse service from AT&T. Well, that’s not quite true: she had DSL until five months ago, when she reports that the company disconnected it without notifying her first and said that they would be laying fiber and connecting her house soon. By “soon,” they meant “January.” Then they needed another six weeks. Six weeks later…well, that’s when she wrote to Consumerist, so you can guess how that turned out. AT&T isn’t really in a hurry to connect her to the Internet.

She writes:

AT&T disconnected our DSL line (without notice!) in October of 2012. When we called to find out what was going on, representatives told us we were being forcibly upgraded to AT&T U-verse, but first they needed to lay the fiber optic line. “We’ll have it done by January 9th,” they said. Why they cut the line before laying new fiber is beyond me. Two and a half months later, January 9th came and went. No one showed up, even though we had an appointment for a person to be at our house, and no one called. When WE followed up, they told us that there were some issues with the line and they needed to send an engineering crew out. Surprise, suprise, we never received a call and no “engineer” visited our property. When we called again, they told us they needed more time. “It’ll be resolved on February 22nd,” they said. That was almost 2 months away, but we trusted that the company would do what it said it would do and complete the work so we could have internet.

A representative showed up today to complete our installation. Guess what he found? The lines outside aren’t working. And guess what he told me? He’d talk to his manager. He’d escalate it. He’d get engineering out. He didn’t know how to fix it. He couldn’t tell me when or how or what needed to be done and no time table as to when the work would be complete (as if your time table is reliable). Everything I’ve heard before.

WHAT ELSE CAN I DO? It’s been FIVE MONTHS!

No other internet provider runs line to our property. Surely if they did, I would have internet by now. It should be noted that my neighbor, 10 feet away, has happily had AT&T UVerse for the entire five months that we’ve been without.

It’s too bad the neighbor can’t run an Ethernet over to Brie’s house to get her by in the interim. We’re going to reach out to AT&T for help, but she also could also try the world-famous executive e-mail carpet bomb or reaching out to the CEO’s office all ninja-style.

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