AT&T

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Phone
(866)SBC-YAHOO
Website
[WWW]http://www.att.com/gen/general?pid=6431

AT&T, formerly known as, SBC Global, formerly known as Pacific Bell, formerly known as AT&T is a national telecommunications conglomerate. AT&T Mobility used to be called Cingular and prior to that it used to be Pacific Bell Wireless. There was another AT&T Wireless company that competed with Pacific Bell Wireless but it eventually merged with Cingular long after Cingular acquired Pacific Bell Wireless. The Internet service uses [WWW]Yahoo! as its content provider.

The FCC has approved the merger of SBC and AT&T, and the SBC name has been dropped in favor of AT&T.

[WWW]AT&T is the provider for local phone service and the physical provider for DSL service, both coming from their Central Office.

SBC Global was the name of their high-speed internet (DSL) service.

    1. Universal Lifeline Telephone Service
    2. Broadband - DSL
    3. SBC Customer Service
    4. Customer Testimony

Universal Lifeline Telephone Service

Through customer fees collected under the [WWW]Federal Universal Service Fund , AT&T offers the [WWW]Lifeline plan for lower-income households which brings the cost of basic phone service down to five dollars and change. Check the website to see if you are qualified or call AT&T. You cannot be claimed as a dependent on someone else's income tax return. But it is worth checking out in case you do qualify, or if one of your roommates does.

Broadband - DSL

Customers must have phone service in order to order DSL. DSL speed is dependent on your distance to the central office located Downtown (at the corner of 3rd & C) or the [WWW]remote terminal that serves your home. Several service tiers are available, depending on what you qualify for, including 384k-1.5m down/128k-384k up, 1.5m-3.0m down/384k-512k up, and 1.5m-6.0m down/384k-608k up.

A contract is not required for service but lowers the monthly cost considerably (i.e. ~50%). SBC now only requires a 6 month contract. Installation can be performed by an SBC technician for a fee or by yourself (or a friendly geek) for free.

SBC Customer Service

Most customers and former customers concur that it sucks. Plain and simple.

Overseas: Technical support for DSL has been outsourced to India and the Philippines, where they stick to a script (more apparent in India). It is painful. You can tell them to stop apologizing immediately as it is nothing but a waste of airtime, especially if you are calling from a cell phone. Oh, if you do not want to sit through the automated menu, you can just keep hitting 0 (zero) for each prompt until you get a life person on the phone.

Notice: if you call during busy hours for the SBC Home line for the dialtone side, you can get dropped by the automated menu if their call volume is too high (i.e. "We're unable to take your call at this time, please call back later."). A work-around if you insist on it, is to call their DSL tech line and explain your problem, then they will tell you that you called the wrong number and they will (they must) offer to transfer you to the proper line, so then you'll be in queue.

About those overseas guys, if their accent is so bad that it frustrates you, ask to speak to a manager. You are not paying SBC enough to deal with crappy overseas support. When you ask to speak to a manager you are making them aware of your lack of satisfaction.

Another interesting point: those guys are not allowed to hang up on you. If your call is ended, they will give the standard "thanks for calling" but they must wait for you to hang up; they physically have no button or command to disconnect your call to them (although they can probably call a manager to do so if you don't hang up after an hour).

Now, that said, if your tech support call is lasting a long time and your tech rep asks for a call back number so that he can "run some tests which will take a while" and then he'll call you back? Do not hang up on him. Check the clock to see if it is near the top of the hour. If it is, chances are that it's the end of his shift and he is just saying that to get you off the phone so he can go home. I had this happen to me once. The guy never called back. When I called back to the tech line, I got a rep in the Philippines; it was so obvious that the shifts in India were over. And they will almost never call you back on your alternate number even though they ask for it. They will always call back on your account number and then leave a message there and never call your cell.

Stateside: The dialtone side of SBC support is located stateside and more specifically will be in the area, Sacramento, I believe. The tech support guys I have had come to my house to fix the lines and such have always been very cool and they tried to be as helpful as possible (one DSL tech, one dialtone tech). Billing and such will also be stateside.

Customer Testimony

In lieu of describing SBC Global, I will describe recent dealings my girlfriend has had with them. If you feel this is not the place for me to do this, feel free to delete this page (there was no SBC Global page when I started).

I have one further disclaimer: the more excited my gf gets, the harder it is for us to understand each other. :) The fine details might be blurry. Now, to the story:

The trouble began when my gf's roommate moved out at the end of the lease. The apartment's SBC bill was in her name, so it had to be changed over. Now, I understand there are legal things to arrange, but this shouldn't be very difficult. In particular, they shouldn't have to *return the DSL equipment* and wait for the *same* equipment to get shipped back to them. That might be a good default policy, but there should be simple alternatives.

That was a minor inconvenience, however. More annoying things were:

Last, I'd like to do a bit of advertising for them by quoting a section of their webpage:

"Help cover our charges"... hehe, isn't that what the REST of the bill is for, too? In my opinion, what that quote means is

Finally, I would like to add that I wouldn't have written this if I didn't feel it was indicative of a larger trend. Nobody I've talked to has pleasant things to say about SBC.

I had a very similar experience last year when I had to move out of my apartment (psycho roommate) and transfer my DSL to my dad's house to avoid paying their huge cancellation fee. Even though I followed the customer service (service—yeah, right) rep's instructions, I was charged $200 because I was misinformed... I had to call a total of 25-30 times before everything was ironed out. Absolutely ricockulous. SBC sucks ass. I agree that the bullshit SBC pretends is policy and customer service is part of a larger trend in which the businesses are screwing the people. My roomies and I were discussing the evil of big business last night, and were wondering if there are any alternative options for high-speed internet in Davis... —SummerSong

Comments:

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2005-07-29 22:09:38   Omsoft. —NickSchmalenberger

2005-07-30 03:19:05   My experience isn't as bad, but when I moved out of my old apartment (at Heritage House, if you were wondering), I just called SBC and told them to cancel the service at the end of the one year contract we signed, and let my (ex-)roommate call SBC and take care of signing up for the new service at the old apartment (which he's still living in). When he called, I think he decided to switch over the names on the account because the e-mail address for the old service is still working. Oh well, as long as I'm not being billed. —StephenHo

2005-08-29 14:59:11   If you need to cancel your SBC DSL a couple of months before your contract is up, the can be convinced to let you pay the last couple months of data service, and close out the account, which allows you to not have to pay for the phone line for those months. —RyanCastellucci

2005-08-29 17:41:56   AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!! I would appreciate it if SBC's salespeople actually knew the technical details of what they were selling. I love that DSL is advertised as $14.95 right now when they require an additional $17 of "long distance and special features." Not to mention the startup fees for those "included" features... </rant> —CindySperry

2005-09-02 02:31:35   I'm leaning towards having SBC be the main page and not a redirect to here. I'm assuming that more people have SBC phone service than have SBC Global DSL service... —IrenePark

2005-09-02 23:30:53   SBC actually sent my girlfriend a check for 1 cent after she overpaid her final bill. Gotta love computers ;) —RyanCastellucci

2005-11-03 12:18:48   Student Discount expired on 10/31/2005 —KeithPieper

2005-11-03 14:36:35   Horrible service. My girlfriend had a helluva time canceling their plan. They were even lied to flat out when they original signed up and other employees later confirmed that it was a lie and "apologized" over the phone for two former employees intentionally deceit, but said there is nothing they can do. Unless you need a phone, a phone line (the most basic plan) + dsl is within a dollar of Comcast broadband - broadband without a promotion, which Comcast does PLENTY of. And worse than it all, the cheaper DSL plan is a one year lockdown, compared to monthly no-contract with Comcast. —ES

2005-11-04 09:01:00   SBC's DSL service works great — once you get it installed. It's getting to that point that's always been a constant hassle for me. I've installed their DSL 4 or so times now, and every single time, something has gone wrong. By far the worst was a few years back. Anticipating moving into our new place, we called SBC to have them set up DSL. They told us they couldn't set it up without an active phone line, and even though we knew what our phone number was going to be, they wouldn't do it until we moved in and that number was activated. Fine. We moved in, called back, and went through the process. A week later when nothing had happened, we called back, only to learn our order had been canceled. Why? Nobody seemed to know. We placed another order. We called back a few days later: cancelled again. Turns out they'd entered our address in the system wrong. We fixed that. And order, another cancellation. We started going up the management chain because we were getting pissed, and the manager all promised to help, but nothing changed. After the 5th cancellation of our order, my girlfriend called up and got a manager who was SO NASTY to her, that she made my girlfriend cry. Nice service. After the 7th cancellation, we finally got someone who got us straightened out. Then they sent us the wrong modem. Furthermore, their PPPOE software is absolutely horrible, and the installation CD spams your computer and browser with Yahoo tie-ins. Avoid both at all costs. However, once the service is up and running (using a DSL router to do PPPOE), it works VERY well, with almost no downtime. It's just getting to that point that always makes me cringe. —AlexPomeranz

2006-01-10 06:26:09   From the breakup back to AT&T. Revenge of the Deathstar. Who woulda thunk it would come to this. —SteveDavison

2007-02-12 20:28:17   AT&T owns joo? —GreggAlexander

2007-07-14 02:10:06   I have DSL Elite at Fountain Circle (North Davis). I get 3.0Mbps, if that helps anyone decide anything. —WaylandLee

2007-08-27 02:12:46   Er never mind. I have DSL pro, which is 1.5-3.0Mbps. I get 2.5Mbps approximately.. the previous comment was made up of bad estimates :) —WaylandLee

2007-08-27 02:15:15   hows their service compare to omsosft, comcast and sonic? anyone? —KaiWan

2007-09-05 17:29:19   How much IS this FUSF cost here in Davis? —JasonGu

2007-09-10 15:56:04   On my last AT&T bill, the Federal Universal Service Fee was $0.49. What you might be asking about is the Federal Subscriber Line Charge, which was $4.28. Total "surcharges and other fees" for local service was $5.04. In addition, "government fees and taxes" totaled $0.63. These numbers fluctuate a few pennies from month to month. You would also pay additional "surcharges" and "taxes" if you subscribed to long distance services, but there are no additional surcharges or taxes on DSL service. —RyanCoates

2007-11-06 13:57:49   This is idiotic. I just got off the phone with AT&T to try to change the name on the account (roommate moved out). My roommate put in a shutdown order on the account last week, which was supposed to go through today. Apparently that's necessary in order to change the name. The shutdown hasn't gone through yet, and once it does, it will take 2-3 business days "for the system to update" before they can put in a new name and reactivate the phone and internet.

It's awfully tempting to switch over to Comcast here and now. —TomGarberson

2007-11-06 22:18:13   DSL is still not available in our neighborhood. We live in Evergreen, across the street from Arroyo Pool. Our neighborhood is 10 years old and still no DSL. The only high-speed internet option is Comcast at $60 per month. I don't understand why AT&T DSL is not available in our neighborhood. I have friends in various areas of Davis who are further away from the Central site and they have DSL. —musicamyl

2007-11-08 18:34:42   Update: The shutoff went through late Tuesday night. Wednesday I put in an order to have internet reconnected as a new account under my name. Did the credit check and everything. It was slated to go on on Friday. The DSL light on my modem came on today (Thurs.), though, so I went ahead and called in to activate. It turned out they had put the new account under the same damn name as the old account, instead of my name, the same name they got the SSN and DOB for. So they had to cancel it yet AGAIN and reorder a new one. The rep I spoke with said she took care of it, so I thanked her and asked to talk to a manager. I asked him to verify that everything was all set. It wasn't. The previous rep had NOT cancelled the misnamed account order and had NOT placed a new one.

So incredibly incompetent. —TomGarberson

2008-06-13 20:55:17   Great service. —jrendler

2008-08-20 10:27:17   So Phillipinos and Indians have to take the blame for for the "crappy overseas support" that ATT extends to its customers and for "sticking to a script" etc. . I wonder, why ATT does not switch over to inland technical support, if its customers are so frustrated? And about the accent part, some people better start getting used to different ("bad") accents. After all some of the biggest companies in the world with global presence, in all sectors, are owned by people with "bad" accents. However, since many of them have a significant number of employees with "good" accents, let's hope that good accent will accentuate.

2008-09-05 22:24:10   Here is my issue: I have the 384k-1.5m down/128k-384k up "plan" at $29/mo. for AT&T DSL and recently did a Bandwidth Place Speed test and found it to actually be at a speed of 46.23 kilobytes per second. Correct me if I'm wrong but my DSL is actually SLOWER than the 56K dial-up modems that we all ditched almost a decade ago. I took a screenshot just because I was in such disbelief. I'm very tempted to just ditch this whole DSL thing and use my phone for the internet... has anyone had any luck using their iPhone as a tether? If so send your comments my way please!! —LeaShell

Thanks Nick! I needed a lesson in bits vs. bytes - a lesson i learned shortly after i posted but neglected to edit my comment. I live in Wildhorse (very north/very east davis) so who knows... it's probably perceived "slow internets" since I'm used the T1 at work...

2008-11-28 16:27:21   ATT also offers DISH satellite TV. Can someone who uses this service comment on the quality? —andy402

2009-03-20 14:28:59   Infuriatingly obtuse and incompetent service. All I have is a plain old telephone set and dial tone service. It's most important task is to allow my wife's tivo to call home. The line goes dead, coincidently with the ATT tech working on the junction box outside my home. I end up wasting at least 2 hours testing the line, digging up silly codes on my bill and being stuck on hold. Even though it's their fault, they won't come out for 3 days to fix their screwup. —JimStewart

2009-05-06 13:55:09   Anyone in the area of 5th St. and Pole Line Rd. who has any information about observed latency and bandwidth? Connection reliability? I'm considering getting AT&T's DSL (since it's less expensive than Comcast) and I'm wondering how it is. You know, beyond the normal nickle-and-diming stuff. —RobertM525

2009-07-29 12:03:16   AT&T seems to be offering Naked DSL in Davis (DSL with no phone service): see [WWW]http://www.att.com/gen/general?pid=11523

Has anyone had experience with that? I could only find out about it by saying I was a new customer and giving my address in one of their boxes. If I told them the existing phone number it didn't seem to want to get me to the availability pages. Here is a comparison of the available plans: [WWW]http://www.att.com/gen/general?pid=11575 —j-beda

2009-09-15 15:34:10   For anyone curious, at least for me, ATT DSL has been pretty solid. I have the Elite package with 6 mbps and I get around 5500 kbps done by speedtest and the system is pretty stable. It didn't start off that way because my phone line was damaged and I had a crappy initial modem. ATT guy came over and upgraded my 2wire modem to a business class motorola modem and even replaced my phone jack for free. With the rebates and no installation fees, this is a worthwhile investment compared to Comcast. The initial period with ATT sucked, but ever since I got the technician out here, it's been smooth sailing. —Wilfred

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