Bonsall: Bad AT&T Internet? (live, cost, land)

[Angstromm]

Update:

I have to admit that ATT has been pretty diligent about trying to resolve the problem since filing a complaint with the BBB.

That said, our line quality is still terrible. They've tried all sorts of stuff (changing out area router, rerouting lines at our house, new DSL modem in our house, etc. No improvement. It remains fairly clear to me that the service out here is simply over burdened.

Check out the attached image of a typical 24 hour line test I've run. All the vertical red lines represent pings over 500ms--there's a ton of them concentrated in the morning and evening hours, during typical high traffic times.

[Angstromm]

Here's our petition:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/498/509/331/tell-att-we-wont-take-bad-internet-service-any-more

[Angstromm]

Update: AT&T still hasn't fixed our issue, after about 2 months. I don't know if they're trying to wear me out or if they can't find the core issue or they are simply incompetent. They have been, for the most part, communicative.

They did, however, tell the Better Business Bureau that they considered the case closed without first letting me know that they thought this was the case. They did so because there were 4 days I was too busy to return their calls. Seems they think that I should put my entire life on hold to help them fix their problem? Who knows. All I know is they have not improved our service one bit and have not, of late, been responsive to my emails.

Tiresome in the extreme. Do I need to file another complaint? What does it take?

Out of curiosity, I ran line tests at my sister's house, and at two other friends' houses using the same testing application I've been using at home. The results were not surprising. In a 10-hour period, only one red spike (indicating a ping over 500ms, which is bad) appeared out of all three tests. Our home tests are simply loaded with red spikes and extremely high rates of jitter (a measurement in the variation in ping rates—high ping means it takes a packet of data longer to reach the intended destination/server. High variations in ping = higher rates of jitter. Practically speaking, these higher rates of ping and jitter mean that you’re going to wait longer for webpages to lode or will experience interruptions in streaming content, like YouTube, Netflix, etc. Ideally, jitter rates would be zero. But, of course, transmission of data isn’t perfect, so a range of 0 to 30’ish. All the lines I tested never spiked beyond 20 and ran well under 10 98% of the time. Our jitter is well above 60 about 50% of the time. And lots of dropped packets, meaning lost data that has to be resent, again and again.)

Golly.

[Angstromm]

Update:

Following up on my complaint to the Better Business Bureau, here are some remarks AT&T posted to the BBB in closing out my complaint:


05/26/2015 WEB BBB RECEIVE BUSINESS RESPONSE : AT&T … sent the customer a new Internet modem. The customer confirmed receipt of the modem….

06/30/2015 WEB BBB RECEIVE BUSINESS RESPONSE : The customer is using third party equipment [a modem] which AT&T cannot troubleshoot or support. AT&T conducted multiple tests and no issues were detected in the AT&T network.
AT&T considers this matter closed.


Note that the first quote from AT&T to the BBB says that they gave me a new modem, but the second quote says that they cannot troubleshoot line because I’m using third party equipment, which is to say, a non-AT&T modem.

Anyone detect a problem here!? They delivered and installed the modem. I called them right away to confirm it. So how is it they can’t check my line?


AT&T gave me a modem so they could run more tests—that’s what they told me. After modem was installed, I contacted AT&T to let them know there was no improvement. I ran extensive line tests over a period of 5 days with terrible results and the line noise, jitter, high ping rates, etc., were clearly originating on AT&T’s side. I sent this data to them and requested that they run 24hr line tests over the next week. Never heard back from them. The next thing I heard was that the case was closed. I left several messages with the Office of the President and received no return calls. So much for customer support.

Something is terribly wrong here. At best, AT&T is completely and remarkably incompetent; at worst they are lying through their teeth.

[1AngryTaxPayer]

I hate to say it but this is the summary I expected. No, actually I don't hate to say it. This is why I wouldn't use them again if it was free. Worst customer service of any service provider I have ever dealt with.

[1AngryTaxPayer]

Originally Posted by Angstromm

From what the tech's have said our wire is fine. A tad far from service box, but not terrible. It's supposedly the box itself that needs upgrading. They all said that engineers need to be brought out to access the situation. We're close enough, in any event, to qualify for 6mb/sec data pipe. We went that route for a time to see if it helped with the stability of the service . Nope (our data rate did increase overall, though). So we went back to 2.5mb/sec...no point paying extra for just as crappy service.

Just noticed this, I was talking about Cox. Not sure if that was understood. They may be able to help if enough neighbors chip in.

[Angstromm]

Originally Posted by 1AngryTaxPayer

Just noticed this, I was talking about Cox. Not sure if that was understood. They may be able to help if enough neighbors chip in.

Thanks for your posts!

I would love to have Cox out here in Bonsall! No such luck. AT&T is slowly rolling out U-verse, which i think is part of the problem we're experiencing--they simply don't want to invest in fixing a community-wide issue while they're investing in a new technology.

Update:

After posting a response to AT&T's closing of our case with the BBB, I actually heard back from AT&T and they are reopening our case. That said, it's been a week since they said they were going to initiate further testing a contact me. Haven't heard a peep. No real surprise there!

Upshot: One should never have to go through all the trouble, time, effort and fire-lined hoops I've had to deal with just to get adequate service. We are PAYING a premium for our DSL internet and it's utterly terrible and unreliable (in a very consistent way). This is truly tiresome...

[Angstromm]

Just a reminder about our petition:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/498/5...vice-any-more/

And FB page:
https://www.facebook.com/bad.bonsall.internet

[Angstromm]

Well, AT&T finally closed the case saying that they found nothing wrong with our internet. This after several of their techs reported otherwise. Also, the last tech I worked with said he saw issues with our service and I asked him if he was going to say that in his report back to the Office of the President. He said yes. When I asked Maya Neely, the rep. at the Office of the Pres., she said all reports indicated there was no problem on their end. Sigh.

I have a new petition up. Please sign it if you've had issues with AT&T.

And please feel free to contact me. If enough of us make noise, AT&T will have to do something to improve our service!

Thanks!

Improve ATT's Rural DSL Internet Service

[mauialoha]

If all I had was bad dsl, I think I'd move.