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I ordered AT&T service on Monday and am still waiting for them to turn on my line even though I have my own equipment. I've been less than pleased with their responsiveness and customer service so far - Billing is the only department who seems to be able to find my account.
I called Northland and the earliest they can turn on service is next Tuesday.
I am about to go get a MiFi card from Verizon because I need to get work done.
I guess I'm spoiled by Comcast. Stop at the office and in the 15 minutes it takes to drive home the service is on - that and consistent 15Mb/s down 9Mb/s up.
Sorry for venting but this has been very frustrating. I guess I'm just looking for some opinions on whether I should stick it out with AT&T or take the setback and go with Northland - if their service is worth it.
I experienced a similarly dreadful initial scenario with AT&T (customer service for U-Verse) in Greenville. Now that my service is connected and in use, I have no additional complaints, but am NOT looking forward to dealing with any technical issues in the future.
You will need to keep reminding them to send a technician to your residence and be prepared for a connection delay potentially lasting weeks. Apparently they do not believe in holding to their word when it comes to a schedule. Additionally, read the fine print regarding your television plan. Despite what the channel lists indicate for each plan (without any astrisks for clarification), you can only watch HD channels if you purchase a separate receiver and pay an additional monthly fee.
I've had no technical problems since being connected to U-Verse (TV, Internet, & phone) and have actually saved a fair amount of money so far. Just be prepared for lousy customer service.
I guess I'm spoiled by Comcast. Stop at the office and in the 15 minutes it takes to drive home the service is on - that and consistent 15Mb/s down 9Mb/s up.
What type of plan are you an that gets 9 up. When we were on cable (Road Runner in FL) we never got close to 1Mbps up, even when we were getting 15+ down.
Connectivity is the only thing that I'm going to miss when we leave FL, since we have Verizon FIOS and I have a 25/15 plan.
Believe it or not it's the Blast service. The upload rate I actually see (Speedtest.net rated) is much higher than the advertised speed of the package. I actually regularly see the same above advertised speeds on the downstream too - up to 19Mb/s.
I've known for a while that in State College, PA we are in a bit of an Internet service nirvana - great speed at a decent price (based on talking to people from the West Coast. Not sure whether it's a side effect of the huge pipes Penn State maintains to the trunk in Pittsburgh or the fact that we are conveniently located in the center of the state between Coudersport (the former NOC HQ of Adelphia - now owned by Comcast), Pitt, & Philly.
Update: I was just thinking about it. MY earlier claim of 9Mb/s is a bit exaggerated due to Comcast's Blast service which significantly boosts upload speeds for the first few seconds. Sorry for the misrepresentation.
However, I will stick to my claim that I have consistent up/down at the advertised speeds - if not over those speeds (I'll attribute that to Blast).
Trust me Skunkz - I would be dreading leaving FIOS behind more than I'm dreading leaving 15Mb/s service behind. Except for college football my cable TV is hardly ever used, Netflix, Hulu, and the like have become my HD entertainment bread & butter.
I had AT&T DSL service in Clemson (Central) for several years and the thing I can say is that it never ever went down. I couldn't get the speeds that Northland was advertising but it was fast enough and as a college student is was more important to me that it was reliable. I can't say for sure how the customer service is because I never called them after it was set up because it never had problems.
Also for the Greenville readers, I ended up moving to G-Vegas after college (yay!) and switched to U-Verse based on my experience with AT&T reliability in Clemson and have been absolutely pleased. The U-verse price is technically a few dollars more than Charter's "promotional" price but the difference is I don't have to run in the Charter promotional pricing hamster wheel where I have to call back every 6 months and beg for affordable cable. The other thing is that the U-verse hardware is alot newer and sleeker. The receivers are tiny and you can record stuff in the living room and watch it in any room. I know I sound like I'm pushing their stuff but I'm just a satisfied customer. Reading some of the previous posts it sounds like customer service can be better and I'm not in a position to dispute that because I've never had to call anyone after the initial setup in either situation. Charter is an inferior product so I consider it a better tradeoff if the AT&T customer service is inferior, especially considering that the AT&T stuff has never gone down. Charter customer service probably gets more practice that AT&T because their stuff is always going down. Just my two cents.
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