As of 6 PM today, my U-Verse connection is working properly. Finally.

This morning, maintenance techs came out and replaced that line with a “little crosstalk” which “couldn’t have been the issue.” Only, their tune changed when a bunch of water came pouring out of the line…

That didn’t completely fix the issue though, so I had a premise tech dispatched as a last-ditch effort to replace the CAT5 line into my house.

Being proactive, I didn’t want to wait for the (ninth) tech to come out and scratch his/her head. So, I got on the phone with Tier 2.

Initially, Tier 2 also couldn’t find anything wrong. But, they said they’d pass it up to Tier 3 to “reset the data on everything.”

That apparently did the trick. I can only suspect that the NOC found something it didn’t like with the old line’s quality, for which none of the diagnostic tools could reported yet. Considering that 18 mbps is new, and there are probably plenty of added stuff that can go wrong with FTTL/ADSL2+ at those speeds… I’m not surprised the diagnostics come back clean.

Still, I don’t think I’ll ever know what did the trick. But, since nothing happened between the non-working period, and the working period, I have to conclude Tier 2 or Tier 3 did something on the backend that fixed it, especially since the connection started working properly within a couple of hours of my call.

Regardless of why, the connection now works as advertised. Consistent 18 mbps down, consistent 1.5 mbps up.

My upset today? First, the premise tech never came out as promised. I was going to tell him/her that everything was working when I got my pre-appointment call. Problem is, I never got that call. That’s probably the sixth appointment that AT&T never made good on. Do they realize that missing an appointment is one of the rare times that AT&T can’t just say “sorry for the inconvnience” with a straight face? They absolutely know that missing an appointment means damages, not inconvenience to the customer.

I like U-Verse, I really do. I just think the service has gone to dismal levels when dealing with the infastructure that AT&T has right now. There’s two parts to this: Union (CWA) FUD, and AT&T FUD. AT&T must make restructuring union contracts a priority, in order to improve customer service. If they don’t take a customer service focus to negotiations, they’ll continue to have these problems… and I’m speaking from experience here. Cut down the union-imposed walls to improving customer service, or AT&T could wind up like the Big 3 auto makers today.

Truth be told, that’s why I’m writing these posts… so that AT&T can improve.

On one final note, after being pretty good about it, maintenance techs tracked mud into my house late yesterday. I now have carpet stains thanks to them. They stopped walking on my carpet after I noted it… but now I have to have my carpets cleaned. So much for my $225 in cash back just for signing up. Thanks AT&T (not)! AT&T may wipe out my bill for the first month to cover all this… I’ll follow up if they refuse.