AT&T U-verse Austin

I finally had enough of ATT’s nonsense and switched from gigapower to Grande today.
If you are considering going with Uverse /​gigapower in Austin you may want to reconsider.
Points to consider from my experience.
1. The install process can be harrowing. For me, I was promised the cutover from my old house to new one would be a piece of cake. You will see from my first review that it took 4 – 5 DAYS for them to get it working properly and this is on a brand new house! Since I mostly work from home, this cost me several days of vacation while getting up and running.
2. The agreement with ATT gigapower allows them to track everything you are doing and sell that information. Grande does not do any of that. I think you can allow ATT to charge you more and not use your data but why should you have to do that? Now that I’m on Grande, I’m kinda pissed I paid ATT all these years and allowed them to sell data about my internet usage. That’s crap.
3. Samsung tablet I was promised when I signed up never came. It took me approximately 4 – 5 hours of legwork to get ATT to agree that they owed me one. Luckily I took a screenshot of the final deal I signed up for or I think it may not have happened. I did finally get it, about a month ago, eight months later than I should have.
4. Grande is a local, Texas based company and getting support is simple. The guy who signed me up gave me his personal number and he always answers when I call. Having something like this on the ATT side might have helped and I had several days during the install process where the ATT tech left for the day WITHOUT getting things working and they told me I’d better get on the phone and get in the queue for tomorrow.
5. The final blow to ATT was when I called to tell them I didn’t need my phone line anymore. I was paying around 110/​month for internet (70) and phone (40). When I told them I wanted to get my bill down and really didn’t need my phone they told me cancelling my phone wouldn’t really save me much anyway because I was on a bundle. In other words, they could take the phone off but if they did that my internet price went off «bundle» pricing and I’d only save about $ 5 or so monthly. Ridiculous! How bout I just fire you guys and hire someone else then? How’s that sound ATT???
It was terrible customer service, seriously, the worst.
I’ve heard similar things about Time Warner but as far as I’m concerned
AT&T is the new Time Warner.

And so the story continues. Our internet service stopped a couple of weeks ago, poof! Called to schedule an appointment and the serviceguy, a very nice young man, told us our wireless router had died and since it was the «old style» he would replace it with a new one. THREE HOURS AND 15 minutes later, he was spent. It was running but not like it was supposed to, by his admission.
I had to call them and request a more experienced tech?! The next guy came out and spent THREE MORE FRICKEN HOURS and he got it running the way it’s supposed to be. I’m glad they have nice techs but there is something seriously wrong with this company. Google fiber can’t get here quick enough!!!

Love it. That been said, one all my perks expire, not sure what I’m going to do.
TV is awesome! Internet is a little slower than I’m paying for, but still faster than TW.
LMAO. oh wait, I’m moving by October 31. No worries.

I have had to deal with tech support for my home internet through Comcast, TimeWarner, Verizon Fios, AOL (way back when), and probably a few others. I have never had a positive experience until today. Not only did Ray from ATT Uverse not leave me furious after the call, I actually felt like he could improvise, was not just reading off a script, and that he was actually in a customer service role. Maybe I wont switch to Google Fiber when it comes to Austin.

AT&T is engaged in consumer fraud by ignoring their promise of technical support. Add this to an astounding degree of personal and organizational incompetence and you have one of the most incredibly unfit business organizations you will ever encounter. If you are ready for that go ahead on…
Despite the deluge of TV commercials of bug-​eyed Austin musicians beholding unexpected speed, Gigapower tech support is not available yet! Well actually neither is the speed. They rolled out a limited speed version of the service to get a jump on Google, but neglected tech support. Lack of tech support should not be taken lightly by the early-​adopting consumer. No tech support you can readily access can help you with basic Gigapower issues.
If you have technical issues you are best advised to give up immediately. If rebooting doesn’t work quit and hook your old service back up.
The details are quite gruesome — suffice to say that Ma Bell, perhaps the oldest communications bureaucracy on earth, is intentionally unable to communicate effectively with its customers and among its employees.
I’m betting against the gigabit rollout due by year’s end.

Only reason we use them for cable and VoIP is… there really isn’t another reasonable choice. But oh no, it’s not a «monopoly», nu-​uh! Customer service reps on the Uverse side have been unhelpful, script-​based, and tend to transfer to other reps (i.e., throw caller back into the phone tree). Last several calls about the same billing issue resulted in most reps either reading line items from the online bill (I can do that myself) or basically saying they can’t do anything. There is a serious disconnect between the Uverse/​Wireless/​Unification departments and processes. If you like spending 2+ hours on the phone with reps, listening to bad static-​infused music, and hanging out in phone trees, AT&T Uverse is the ISP for you.

AT&T is a bad company period. They screw everyone over and do everything they can not to compete. After years of gouging me with 30 Mb «elite» internet and TV for almost $ 160 a month they say oh we can do gigapower with 300MB internet and the same TV package for $ 120 the second Google rolls in. Thanks Google!
I upgraded of course since Google won’t be in my area for at least a year and low and behold 300MB a month and Netflix still skips other streaming sites are still terrible and yea I do have 300MB a second but only to
located in Dallas. Everywhere else is still slow. Not only that there has been 3×24 hour long outages and my Uverse TV pictures still freezes when watching local channels.
The only reason I give them 2 stars is that they’re better than Time Warner Cable hands down.
When the Early termination fee goes down to a reasonable level I’ll switch over to Grande.

Worst customer service I’ve ever experienced. Any suggestions on any other business Internet providers in Austin?

After threatening to cancel several times, I was finally told late Friday afternoon that the problem was fixed. Despite the delay, they could not schedule installation until the following Tuesday (today), which is TWO weeks after the initial installation date.
The guy comes and yet again says that there is a problem with the outside line. Apparently, both times the work order has been processed as complete even though no one actually came to look at it. He said there must be a glitch in the system but had the nerve to tell me he was 100% sure the problem could be fixed. I guess he expected me to continue to wait indefinitely until someone actually came to fix the problem, for the third time, and then to reschedule installation. Nope. Cancelled my order. I find it very misleading that the website claims cable is available at my house, yet after three tries in a two week period I still have no cable. Something is wrong with that…

Terrible, terrible, terrible.
AT&T advertises that you can move service easily so when we moved from Round Rock to Austin we got a quote for $ 95 for cable and internet and scheduled service to move.
The tech arrives and informs us that we are a new account, and that he cannot/​will not hook up our old equipment. Okay that was annoying… goodbye everything on dvr, but oh well.
Next the bill come and it was around $ 200!!! We were quoted $ 95, after calling immediately I was told they would fix it next billing cycle but to go ahead and pay it. Grumble grumble okay. Next billing cycle again $ 200, call no record of a fix, they say this time they really will fix it and to go ahead and pay it, next month will be fixed with credits. Next month, wrong again, $ 200, and we are told the same thing and guess what we lose service. I’m told that there is an outage from San Antonio to Austin, oh okay. Then I find out my friends in the neighborhood and downtown still have uverse, so I call back. Oh there is no outage, the equipment is malfunctioning, they need to send a new router and tech and we will need to pay for the tech visit. I decline the tech and say we will plug in the router ourselves. It arrives and no dice cable/​Internet still down. I call again, and guess what it is apparently shut off for non-​payment… WTF?
Apparently my old account was still open and AT&T was sending that bill to my current address, and the new account bill to no where. Do now I start receiving two bills, oh also I find out they had bumped my old bill from $ 130 to also be $ 200 a month for no reason. So we play the game of I call and ask them to fix this cluster a couple more months, and finally they did. At which point I had overpaid about $ 700. I asked for an immediate refund and instead they wanted to just credit my account, again annoying that is my money and I would never has prepaid 6 months in advance (a-​holes). But whatever done dealing with them on the phone, take forever to get a person and even when they say they fixed it 99% of the time they didn’t and you will be calling again next month.
Fast forward to now, apparently our promo rate of $ 95 a month ended and boom bill of almost $ 200, I call and best they can offer for same exact service is $ 160 so I decide to drop cable and just keep Internet. That takes it to $ 50 (besides we barely watch cable anymore what with streaming Netflix, Hulu, and such). So they won’t let me cancel cable immediately but instead on next full billing cycle, so I have 3 months of $ 200 bill :(
So then it is cancelled and I get my bill $ 200 for a month where I only had $ 50 Internet. Sigh. I call and they tell me even though I didnt get the service I have to pay it and I’ll get refunded next month. I tell them NO. I had this issue before with incorrect bills and I’m just patently refusing to overpay and I want a correct bill period. They say AT&T is incapable of giving me a correct bill, and I have to pay a bill four times higher then what it should have been. I again say no, I then say if they fix it next month I’ll pay it then, and request my autopay turned off for March’s bill.
So and keep in mind my patience with them for 6 months earlier, but now tables turned and they couldn’t wait for next months billing cycle, impatient b&)(:tards. So I get my service off on a Monday mid billing cycle. I call and hear that they did this even though I had expressly stated I would pay but only a correct bill an if they could ONLY do that next month fine I’d wait.
So I ask what I owe now and they said $ 114 that might be right if it’s March and April with a late fee, but I ask this and they can’t tell me what it is from. So I cancel my account and they send me to customer retention. She tells me that she doesn’t want to see me go and will be my personal rep and gives me a really low cost on fast Internet so I agree, then the call drops she doesn’t call me back, I call back and AT&T can’t reconnect me and says they don’t do personal reps… sigh yet another time I was told something untrue and bad communication… The rep starts talking about what she can do and honestly I don’t care, I’m so done with AT&T. Unfortunately grande doesn’t have service in my neighborhood and so I called TWC which actually has even lower reviews so I’m sure that will probably be terrible too, but still at least it will be not AT&T!

A couple of problems when I first had all my services provided: cable, internet, phone.
CABLE: Tech had to come out a few days after initial installation because one of the cable boxes was bad. I had DirecTV for the last 8 years and I must say that the U-​Verse interface is not nearly as intuitive (e.g., DVR capabilities, etc.) and the selection of On Demand choices fails in comparison.
INTERNET: So far so good… knock on wood!!!
PHONE: This one is a doozy! When they connected my land line, the tech somehow crossed lines with one of my neighbors a couple of streets away. So, for over 3 weeks I was receiving all these «wrong number» calls. including a constant stream of attempted collect calls from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (uh huh… an inmate; young kid, bad decision, really sad actually). And yes, I accepted and spoke to him once because I felt sorry for the guy and subsequently contacted his father via cell. That was when WE, not AT&T, figured out what the problem was. Apparently, the moment I began receiving his calls he wasn’t getting any incoming calls, but could call out (just like me). So he and I had both been making many phone calls to customer service and both getting the «I don’t see any problem» response. Rrrrrr… if I would have written this review at that time I would have given 1 star; however, since all the mayhem (tots crazy) I’ve been fairly pleased with their services. Fingers crossed.

I have spent the last 6 days dealing with the worst customer service on the face of the earth. Having been a steady customer with the 18mb plan for 2 years in northeast Austin, when I received the advertisement for Gigapower, I jumped.
I wish I never did.
Install went smooth with a full day having to be taken off of work to accommodate the 4 hour re-​cabling from cable to fiber, but the technician was wonderful. I had 320down, 298up for the entire rest of that Thur evening.
Friday was when the roller coaster started. I came home from work to everything– internet and cable– completely dead. I called tech support who informed me it was an account order issue that wasn’t closed properly and needed until midnight to roll over to the gigapower pricing. A little peeved, but hey it happens, I went to bed expecting Saturday to work from home.
Saturday came and all I saw was red lights on my modem. 5 hours later on then phone I had several orders pending from people NOT UNDERSTANDING that you cannot simply turn back on 18mb without the hardware I no longer had and the cable ran that I longer had. I was told it was escalated and «please wait 24 hours»
Sunday came, still nothing. Called for 2 hours until I got the truth– I had been escalated to a group that did not work the weekend, it’d be at least 48 MORE hours and no one had even looked at my account to deem service. I requested that day for my account to be closed and reopened with a new account to get service that day. Response? «I’ll call you back» with nothing all day until I called night shift tier 2 technical support back where a lovely technician worked for several hours with me TRYING to close my account, albeit unsuccessful.
I received a Monday morning surprise of red lights again (surprising!) where I spent half my work day on the phone getting nowhere again other than «it should be on when you’re home from work». Needless to say, it wasn’t again and the night tier 2 technical support group finally put me on a call-​back list for Tuesday support after telling them I no longer wanted service with AT&T.
Tuesday, more of the same — rinse and repeat «please wait 24 hours» until I received a phone call at 9pm saying it was fixed– THEY HAD TURNED BACK ON MY 18mb SERVICE — which I still cannot use. I was beyond livid. As awesome as the person was that listened and empathized, it got shoved to day shift wed again.
Today (Wed) I officially canceled my 2 years of service with them because I was told that it would take at least 48 hours for my service order to clear.
I really hope others look at this and realize that google fiber will destroy this company in the following months. And when they do, at the very least I can thankful that someone out there is competition for this crapshoot. It’s severely upsetting that this affected my personal life and my career as I work from home 5 – 6 days of the week after I get home from the office.
In the meantime I have no other service providers that serve the area I’m at. I’d rather just get a sprint hotspot at this point.

AT&T has continued to figure out a way to suck the money from my bank account. Called customer service and stayed on hold for 37 minutes only to eventually have the rep tell me they were having an outage. Why couldn’t they just tell me that from the start? Seems like they haven’t figured out how to keep their service consistent. I am currently searching for a replacement provider. Maybe I’ll just fore go television altogether. Wish I could give them minus stars.

Had Uverse Internet in Chicago for a few years and it was a great service. Could not get the TV service because they weren’t available in the area. I know many people who really like their Uverse bundled services — including my brother who recently switched from Grande at my suggestion. He also got a $ 500 tablet for ordering his service which included a high end package, but no land line phone.
Transferred the Internet from Chicago but added the cable TV service. Must say service was excellent. Got an appointment the very day after I placed the order, which is unheard of in Chicago or L.A. Tony the Tech was professional and kept me apprised of the schedule. Turns out he needed access to a room that I did not have a key to and there was no maintenance guy around. He came back the same day (again, unheard of) — and got it all done that day. He carefully explained how to use the remote and DVR and offered for me to call him directly should I have any problems. All in all, outstanding service!
I was, however, a little disappointed that I could not get more of a discount, tho I did get some free premium channels for a few months. I am also to receive a $ 100 rewards card to use in a few weeks — which is quite nice.

AT&T GigaPower was good for the first 20 – 30 days, then they made a change and my upload speed is 35 – 78 on average with a lot of latency and my VoIP phones cannot send or receive calls. Multiple techs were dispatched on Friday and they were at my home for 7+ hours. They eliminated my home as being the source of the issue and other friends in the neighborhood are having the same issues.
We have been in this mode for 4 days now and I have spend most of today working with tech support with no luck. Customer service was no help either when I asked them to suspend billing until they got it working again, of course there answer was «we can’t do that».
I will loose another day of service when the tech (s) come out again tomorrow. Beware of AT&T’s GigaPower, it’s a myth so far and their techs ride on unicorns and most have no idea about any networking.

Finally I’m able to break away from TWC!
I loved having U-​Verse in the past and was excited that I would be able to enjoy it again at my new apartment.
Normally that would warrant a solid 4 stars, but the work of the technician they sent to activate my service put it over the top. JR was professional, punctual, and did an outstanding job with my installation. He responded very quickly when I had a follow-​up question about the install and I can unequivocally recommend U-​Verse to anyone who will listen because of the stellar job he did representing them.

I have enjoyed my U-​Verse service and experience ever since I moved to the Austin area about two years ago. I recently upgrade to the AT&T Gigapower with u-​verse. I am currently getting 320 mb up and down. Their router they have now is finally on the wireless N network. Too bad they aren’t on the AC wireless. But I don’t have anything wireless capable of AC yet. I just wished my house was fully wired when I built it but I will be running cables in the near future.
One thing I must say I don’t like and its just not AT&T its all TV cable providers. Even though AT&T is not a cable provider, I still don’t like the channel offerings. I wish they offered the sprout channel on their 200 package but I had to settle for the 300. I will still give them four stars because their customer support has been great with me. I truly enjoyed AT&T u-​verse ever since my father-​n-​law got me turned on to it in San Antonio. I will never go with another provider again unless Google offers something better such as pay for the channels you actually want to watch.

I am not the least bit impressed. After reading the reviews I signed up for service with very low expectations and wasn’t disappointed. The connection is flawless on the desktops, but sucks on my laptop and iPhone. The connection drops when I bring the laptop into the bedroom… Whatever!

After cancelling with the worst possible of all businesses for customer service (AT&T), I received a box in the mail. It was from RJS or some not descriptive business name. I never opened it, figuring the rightful owner would call for it. I got a bill from AT&T with demand from payment. I looked up the business and it is some sub corp or contractor for ATT. I called and they had me open the box to get the shipping label to send it back. This fits one of the 3 scenarios they were going ahead with, so I will contact the Better Business Bureau, which is the ONLY way to get anything done with ATT. Anyone hassling with these people, remember,
will take care of the problem, because ATT certainly will NOT!

AT&T Uverse Austin is a terrible, terrible business that I would recommend everyone stay away from. I run a small business. They wanted us to move to an optic-​fiber line (which was more expensive than DSL) and called relentlessly trying to get us to switch. Despite my very clear demands that they stop, they did not. They finally sent me an email thanking me for switching. I called the number and told them that I had not switched. They began calling multiple times a day trying to get us to switch.
Today, my office internet went down while I was away. My officemates called to tell me. Then I get a call from my secretary saying that AT&T would be by to install the new modum. They get here and very apologetically (it’s not me, it’s sales) say that they are aware of the problem with sales doing this and installs the new modum but leaves before everything is hooked back up. I’ve now spend ½ hour on the phone trying to get someone back out here.
Don’t ever, ever do business with AT&T!!!