We switched to U-Verse after hearing a virtually one hour spiel from the sales rep who was canvassing the area informing us ATT had just finished installing it’s fiber optic network in our area and that U-Verse was now available.
There is no rejecting it’s less expensive than Comcast which, in this time, was the real reason we made a decision to go ahead with it.
We were told by the sales rep that installation would not take any longer than 2 hours. After seven hours of rewiring ( installation ), we found out we were sorely misinformed on many points, far less the length of installation time. First, he informed us if we installed the DVR boxes on two of our Televisions ( HD plasmas ), that our two other less used ( analog ) televisions would still work getting only basic channels, but that was fine for us. We’ve argued and won that point and will now have another box installed at no charge from ATT because of the sales reps disinformation. One TV will go new till we choose to pay to have one more box installed. The sales rep & installer never discussed that if your PC’s home network is working thru a wireless router, or unless you’ve got a completely wireless set up (including wireless printers / faxes, etc ) and you are switched to ATT web with their wireless adapter, a (wired) printer will not work thru a remote PC ( networked ) PC unless it’s hardwired to the “gateway” (read modem) that ATT installs – which, in our example, was installed in another room away from the printer.
The sole answer from ATT, when we called after we realized this, was to purchase a bluetooth wireless adapter for the printer at a price of $50-$100, or run wire all of the way down the hall so it may be hardwired to the gateway. There’s also no network file sharing working on our PCs now either – which we just discovered ATT does not support at this time, so for a fee they can send somebody out to mend it.
Unfortunately, for us, it suggests another who-knows-how-many hours of rewiring when they come, when all ATT wanted to do was have competent sales reps and installers who could answer the queries we posed when we were signing on the dotted line and in the installation process. We’ve also come to find out the sales rep was from a 3rd party company who was representing ATT. Perhaps that is the reason why he let us know all these things would work, when basically, they now don’t.
( Comcast never offered even two channels to be taped at once ). And, whilst their TV program guide is a touch more confusing and harder to read than Comcast’s, it’s tiny stuff like that we are able to live with compared to the monthly price difference.
