Saturday, March 22, 2014

AT&T Screwed Me And They Still Are

     So, at this posting I have kinda-sorta got Internet service, but no dial tone; apparently, the particular combination of damn-fast Internet and POTS I opted for require some changes at the local switch and -- guess what? -- unlike installers and line techs (of which we have had one each for nearly four hours), the crew there does not work late on Saturday.  Or at all, on "routine" matters.

     ...Which, if I had known when they were giving me the darned routine on Friday, would have prompted me to delay the install, but "yes, yes, we can do it all on Saturday, Ma'am, yoo-betcha."

     They lied, they can't, and we almost got left with only phone servuce, except Elliot the nice installer was good enough to call back and tell me it was either/or 'til Monday and ask which did we want?  I told him, and having Internet was harder to do, which is why he and the installer worked late today and we'll see him again Monday.

     Elliot: WIN.  AT&T: FAILDeath Star, it's only your best people who save you from yourself.

     Upside: 7.74 Mb/s down, 1.86 up.
     Downside no dialtone, no DC, no tip&ring.  Sadness.

14 comments:

Old NFO said...

It's damn sure NOT the AT&T we grew up with... sigh... At least you had ONE good tech/installer...

Bear said...

Couldn't wire the split bank? You sure your telco didn't get bought by FairPoint?

Rob K said...

When I was a freshman at Purdue, a friend of a friend had a poster of an X-wing looking star fighter labeled BSD flying away from an exploding AT&T logo labeled SysVR4. In fairness, they *did* give us Unix, C, and C++.

And Google Voice will give you a free phone number from which you can make/receive calls to/from land lines for free, so that your lack of a dial tone wouldn't hurt too badly.

Rob K said...

Here ya' go! Thank you, Google! http://www.shrubbery.net/jokes/MtXinu42poster.jpg

Keads said...

Ah, the more it changes the more it stays the same. We had a joke back in the day that there were two types of customers. Those waiting on a phone and those waiting on a dial tone.

The transition from circuit switched to packet switched networks has been a steep learning curve for the *cough* Bell System. Still.

I hated the Death Star logo when it came out, but it was a hella better than the coffee cup stain of quality logo (Lucent) that came next!

Short answer? The Bell System went to crap after I left. That is my story and I am sticking with it =)

Best of luck to you!

NAVIGATOR said...

ROBERTA
THERE IS ALWAYS CW

DOuglas2 said...

Even Google voice can leave one without a phone-line -- we spent about half of 3/17 without the ability to make or receive calls via any GV number -- although fortunately incoming calls were being directed to voicemail, for which soundfiles and "transcriptions" were emailed to our gmail.

But as someone with a fairly transient lifestyle, GV is a godsend, especially when I've had cell-phone hardware crises (such as loss, touch-screen damage, or just forgetting the thing at home.) It's easy to get a burner phone and then a few clicks on line and all calls to your normal number come though to the new prepay hardware.

I must say it's a bit creepy to be talking about estate-planning with my sister on the phone, and then have coffins showing up in my web-browsing via google adsense ads a few minutes later.

Anonymous said...

My parents were early adopters of the AT&T Taxus-Poetry or whatever it's called. TV, internet, and voice, all on one SPOF line!
Funny thing: for the next year or so, though the TV and internet generally worked pretty well, the voice service, despite arriving on the same cable, was wildly unreliable, sometimes being out for several days at a stretch.
Seems that The Phone Company has forgotten how to do Phone.

jed said...

I've been without landline phone service for about 7 years now. I don't miss it. Naked DSL and a mobile phone has worked well for me. The only real downside I can think of is not having the instant address location for a 911 call. It's also less comfortable to talk on the Android plate than my old Trimline with the shoulder rest, but I don't talk on the phone much anyway. In fact, it's surprising how much I ragchew on 2M, since nobody I know would characterize me as a chatter box -- far from it.

The day is coming when there will be no dial tone available. Your "handset" will be some wireless gadget doing SIP / VOIP, and that's about all that will be available. And all us luddites who want to keep using our Western Electric 500 will have to wire up a circuit to send / receive audio to a SIP node.

rickn8or said...

Just wait until AT&T starts sending you twice-weekly mailings about the great deals on their faa-bulous TV service. Maybe I should tell them I don't have a TV...

Funny thing, I never got any such mailings until I dropped the AT&T landline. Like Jed, I'll probably never have dialtone in the house again.


Roberta X said...

I get those and I get the "Please come back! Pleeeease!" letter from the satellite-TV people I used to use, too. 'Scroom, sez I, they are lucky I didn't sue 'em for sellin' brass as gold. (And it was not them so much as it was the providers, and it's the same mess of gimcrack thieves on cable, selling BS as science, fantasy as history and crummy crap as artful entertainment. Makes me wanna urp.)

rickn8or said...

Yes, in a former life, I spent considerable time in the break rooms of banking establishments.

Invariably, the TV was locked-on-pain-of-death to the worst of daytime fare: Jerry Springer, Tara Banks, "court" shows, etc. Made the time I spent there more excruciating.

Yes, it was crap. But, thanks to people like you, it was crap with EXCELLENT audio and video. But it was "unmodulated." (You know, " no intelligence on a carrier.")

Roberta X said...

"Unmodulated." Oooo, +1, +1. :)

rickn8or said...

Yes that question was on every rating exam I ever took.

The question "How many TACAN channels are there?" (Ans: 126) was on every NATOPS written exam and was asked on every checkride...