Not Cool!!!!

rfresh187

The home that I own used to have DTV. The cable that was running ws over 16 years old. When Uverse came to hook up my cable and internet, the damn tech used the old coaxial cable running from my DTV line!! I was never aware of this fact until about 7 days ago. I was outside doing some yard work and walked over to my part of the house where you can see the exposed wire. I wa shocked to see the tech just split into that line, and didnt even bother to use cat 5e, or even cat5. I went to BB and purchased a roll of Cat6 cable to be installed tomorrow.
Im sorry, but I find it highly unethical of a tech to do such lazy work, especially using the main competitor's old ass coax cable. They have been to my house 4 times in the past week. They cant seem to see eye to eye with the service calls. Im 2 steps away from dropping my receivers on their front door step. I live very close to power lines, which in turn kills my wifi in the back part of my home.

I need another hard line ran back into my bedroom. I lose signal almost every single day. Uverse is not what I expected. DTV will buy back my contract from Uverse, but where I live in FL, it doesn't matter what type of dish or where it is pointed, i get signal drops if the wind blows in the wrong direction. My replacement VT50 arrives tomorrow as well as another tech from Uverse. I have a feeling they are gonna show up at the same time. Im gonna run it hard wired instead of wifi. I hope this clears up my issues..

ITALIAN926

Are you saying the AT&T technician used the DTV coax running within your home? Didnt you cancel DTV when you switched to Uverse? I dont understand why youre upset. If the coax in your home is adequate, the technician will use it. If you were willing to pay for new coax, they would install new.

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Former FiOS technician
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TrueBoolFalse

Yeah, why run a new line if they don't have to, it is not being lazy, it is being smart... If the line passes tests and you get TV then it is fine.

rfresh187

The old line was the issue. Uverse had to come to my home 4 different times this past week. The initial wiring was one of the issues at hand. Im now running a double bonded hard line in my back bedroom. I decided to stick with cat 5e, even one of the techs said this was highly unprofessional, given the fact of the shape of the coax cable was in.

"exact words" sir, excuse my French, but you had a lazy technician tap into your 17 year old coax line. I would never use a cable that old, or in that kind of condition to install a new Uverse package" end quote. The 4th technician that came to my home was training a new guy. Guess what, he ran the wires backwards after being at my home for 5 hours. It got too late in the day for them to fix it. I called At&T, and said do not send someone to my house who is still training, no disrespect, but this is getting ridiculous. The senior tech rewired what he had to do but my old receiver was not compatible with the new double bonded layout. If I was a jerk, I could call and demand a free month or two, but thats not my style. I dont like having tech after tech enter my home, as I live in a gated community off of PGA Boulevard.

Ive never seen such horrible miscommunication in my entire life. Trust me, you would be annoyed as well, especially when everyone leaves, and I run out and say" Hey my back bedroom is not hooked up". This was my response after 5 techs at this point. "Sir, I apologize, but I do not enter the inside of the house, Im an outside tech, please call customer service" end quote. The bitch of it is, the dude was inside my home to check wires, its just plain lazy! Nothing anyone here can change my hand with this god awful service. Im not a tech, but I run my own business, and worked in 5 star hotels for over 20 years, I know horrible half ass service when I see it. Just my experience thus far. If I could get quality signal from DTV, I would switch back in a hear beat. anyways, just sharing my experience with Uverse.

jkkyler

Sorry for your experience but thanks for relating it to influence future decisions and possible cust service issues. I had been considering a switch so that info comes in handy.

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ITALIAN926

......... and once again, the age of the cabling has NOTHING to do with the situation. Its either adequate , or its not. They should test the coax before they leave. Yes, they are lazy if they skipped that step and left you with bad service. You continue to imply that "old" cable is the issue, and its simply not true.

rfresh187

Sir, You are correct, the cable wasnt the issue at hand. I can say this however, My picture come in clearer and I experience 80 to even 90% less signal flickering, (for lack of better words?)

I suppose i was just angry due to the amount of techs, time spent on phone with CS, the fact that no one was able to see eye to eye, in regards to the technician's, the fact that I ws working on a 2 hour Paper on Amino Acid's , and analogues that got wiped out by a tech that was working on one of my outside boxes at 8:08 a.m, without any warning, thus causing me to lose in depth article attributes. Thee are just a few minor complaint's that i had.
In conclusion, everything seems to be 100% up to par, things happen, I realize that part. The way it was handled is what was making me upset, and causing me to lose money. The double bonded pair did the trick.

Demiurge

I also had issues with coax on UVerse, the vast majority of which vanished when I switched over to Cat5e. Pretty simply to run and install, did it all myself to 4 rooms.

rfresh187

Thank You!!! thats all I was honestly trying to point out!! Cat 5e, yes, very easy to run. wise choice...

zip2play

My situation was just the opposite.
I moved into a new building 25 years ago and there was some sort of proprietary microwave feed for TV that was sold to larger cable companies as the years went on. Picture was pure crap becasue microwave fails even with FOG, but the WIRING was terific, all done when building the place. It was in the walls and invisible.

So in came Comcast with REAL cable and they tried to sign us all up. I thought GREAT, just hook up to the existing wiring in the closet. But NOOOO, their story is that they must run new wires along the baseboard because the old wires won't carry their marvelous new signal. Yeah, like 50 feet of in-wall wire was going to degrade the picture quality.
So I said "no thanks."
Many neighbors got the new wires and the work was really shoddy in some cases the wires were just laid on the floor under a sofa or chest complete with ugly splitters just laying there. Sometimes they ran cable under carpets...can you imagine?

So months went by and I softened and asked for an install and an installer arrived who didn't look particularly ambitious and he said, you know we COULD just hook up to the old wiring. I was THRILLED. I needed exactly 8 inches of new wire in the closet...nothing else needed to be touched except to switch set top boxes.
I jumped with joy. Of course the old wiring worked every bit as good as the new ugly spaghetti my neighbors all had.

rfresh187

Im glad that it was as simple as 8 inches of wiring, and some basic hardware adjustments.I bet that was breath of fresh air!!!

Emil

The problem with old cable is that it may have weather dependent issues because of deterioration over time. It may have tested good at the moment but when the weather gets bad it may not. A new properly installed cable assures you that you will not have environmental issues for a long time.

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zip2play

Indoor wiring not so important.