AT &T FORMERLY SBC

I have had some difficulty with the TV. When you call them with a problem, it will take you at least an hour. However, everyone who I have had contact with is very nice.

My experience with the technician that came out was great. My experience with the company was lousy. It took 5 days for them to come out and fix my phone problem. They weren't timely and were not at all responsive to our needs.

Ordered as a result of door-to-door marketing. Choices & offerings well explained, but none of the details of the order ever provided in writing, just a work order with no definition of choices. Techs came on time (actually early), were pleasant & professional. 1 of the computers was not connected as agreed (techs said it couldn't be), & there were problems with both the wireless network & digital TV, requiring several calls to tech support for help. Results of some helpful, some useless, some wrong. Finally had to have techs on site again. The other computer connected & most problems with TVs solved. More calls. All in all, results ok, but I estimate I spent over 50 hours working on my own & with various techs on the phone & in person (different one each time) to solve problems. Wide variation among techs in knowledge & ability to communicate. Serious problems created by failure to consider all the facets of a problem before providing a solution. Was a most frustrating experience.

The service is OK, used to have outages all the time. Customer service is a joke, tech support is decent. Billing is difficult. I hate At&T but they have the best speeds/prices for the service. Had a bad time getting the wire installed, turned off service w/o consent to do work. Caused us to shut down our business w/NO notice for 1 1/2 hours. Total nightmare, but after it was in I get 6+ kbs.

If you can tolerate a few minutes of dealing with a menu, they are very efficient at getting to the source of the problem. The first time I reached a real person, he was very helpful and solved the problem quickly. With the second problem, I just stuck with the automated menu and it worked out well. The problem was solved in about 5 minutes.

Ordering the service is easy. I checked on-line to determine availability. (All you have to do is input your phone number.) We called a number, ordered the service, and received the hardware and software to get it going in a few days. Actual installation was a real pain. Their software refused to load properly. The CD contained almost zero help FAQs. The modem was by 2Wire and 2Wire's website also has minimal support FAQs. Because I'm knowledgeable with computers, I searched the CD, found the installation files I needed, and manually installed each individual application. I also needed to call their tech support to get the router configured properly. It was actually easy to do; their instructions were just so poorly worded. It wouldn't work without help from me or tech support. My friend had problems convincing tech support there was even a problem. They refused to believe it wasn't his house wiring.

My husband and I have used voice mail for a long time to get messages while we are on the other line (instead of call waiting), but we finally got rid of our answering machine, and have found that having remote access to retrieve, save and delete messages is very helpful. The set up is fairly simple.

Overall we have been pleased with the service, even with the phone tech support.

AT&T/ABC picked a good partner in Yahoo. The yahoo mail service is good. Some of the premium services are useful. For each DAL account you can have quite a few e-mail accounts. The email accounts have dial-up service from remote locations, so if you have a family member or two or three that only needs dial up service, they can free ride on your DAL account even if they don't live with you.

I called the company about my phone bill, wanting to eliminate a charge for a ringtone service I had gotten on-line and to see how much it would cost to add DSL. The service person was able to recombine my phone services into a new package, and with eliminating the ringtone thing, I was able to add DSL without raising my phone bill! The special rate will last for a year, then I may have to make some adjustments. Calling the phone company is always a hassle & a long time on hold, but for now I am very happy.

I called to see what the cost would be to get internet service, and the person on the phone was able to help me make enough changes to my telephone service so that adding the DSL didn't increase my bill! (at lease for the first year's ''introductory'' rate). To do this we combined some of my services into a new package, & eliminated a ring-tone service I had gotten via the web. I have had a couple instances where service has gone down. The first one, tech support could not figure out, but it came back on after 5 days, day before service was supposed to come out. The next time my service went down, tech support gave me some very helpful advice on how to fix the problem in the future, & we got it up & running right away.

Place order over web for special rate. I received DSL modem overnight. DSL was activated a day before commitment date. Manual install doc was very descriptive and easy to use. We had issue with our email program getting email from old provider after setting new email. Called tech support and got a very helpful tech. I have had a good experience SBC's DSL.

We are very pleased with the speed and price of the DSL. We previously had cable internet service. We switched to the middles speed AT&T Yahoo DSL service, and believe it is just as fast as the cable internet at a much cheaper cost.

Representative still offered online discount. She explained different service options. She arranged to have a technician come to my home a couple of days later between 1-5 and advised me that I would have to be present. After about an half hour I plugged in a phone and determined that the phone service was already on. I called AT&T and asked if it were necessary to wait for the technician to show up. She informed me that he had already connected the service from the outside. I should have a received a courtesy call to let me know the job was done. I could have been waiting until 5pm for a technician that wasn't going to show up.