AT&T Uverse Experiences or Reviews??

[jwfla422]

Wondering if anyone could share their experiences or reviews of AT&T Uverse?

Posting on budget board because it can save us a lot of $$$ by bundling with our internet and phone (which we already have through AT&T). I've heard mixed reviews, someone mentioned they love it and another told us that they stream everything through one line so if there are too many tvs going or computers it can knock out the signal?

Of course the clincher for us is that it's not available in our area yet, they think 3-6 mths. We want to upgrade to HD but will wait if I hear more positive feedback. We currently have Directv and I really don't want to upgrade and commit to another 2 yrs if we can save over $100 a month.

 

[brekin67]

I'm very happy with Uverse. Just got it last month when we moved, switched from Cox. We were given one year of free HD, and a $250 visa card and a $50 gift card. We ordered the 300, but when we called, the worker said to order the 200, then he will call and ask me to upgrade to the 300 for free. The upgrade is free, if you don't add it when you order. Ours was hooked up on June 3rd, so maybe the promotion is different now, be sure to ask. I can't really tell a difference on HD channels, so after the year, we will probably drop it.

 

[justbishop]

We just recently switched to Uverse from Direct, and it's livable. We got a package with all the same channels that we're used to (everything but the movie channels and a few other obscure ones), and our bills for TV + Internet are going from $130ish/mo to about $85ish/mo.

Our main gripes are that we miss our awesome DirecTV remote that worked on a radio frequency and would perform whether it was pointed at the TV or not (the Uverse remotes we have are horrendously difficult to point correctly), and the fact that the channels that we don't get still show up in our channel guide the same as those we do (they showed up greyed out on our DTV guide). But for a $50/mo savings, I'll take it.

Oh! I will mention that we went from having 3 boxes to 2 (we found we didn't use one of the TVs we had hooked up to DTV, so we didn't get a 3rd when we switched), but we do have HD and room to room DVR on both TVs we DO have Uverse boxes on. With DTV, we only had HD and DVR on our living room TV. We'd have had to pay even more to get additional HD boxes, but I guess with Uverse, once you pay the per month HD premium, you automatically get HD boxes for each TV you rent a box for.

 

[powellrj]

We have had it for 3 years and love it and wouldn't go back to cable. We get pretty much all the channels, HD and have 4TVs hooked up along with wifi for our computers.

Love having DVRs on all of our TVs. Customer service has been great! In 3 years they have only had to come out 1 time and they fixed the problem right away.

We never got service like this from comcast.

 

[ellone]

We switched from Comcast (whom I hate with a passion) to Uverse over a year ago. The router they give is great. My hubby used to have a very weak signal in his office, but now he has no problems. Internet for us is more reliable - never have had a drop out yet (got them all the time with Comcast). Router has a back up battery so the couple times we lost power we could still go online with our iPad since the router was still up.

Like the TV - especially starting a DVR'd show in one room and then continuing it in another.

They actually sent me a promo for free HBO for 3 months recently, which I took them up on since I was going to turn on HBO for True Blood anyways (now I just don't have to pay for it!!)

 

[jwfla422]

Thanks for the feedback, this is something we definitely need to consider when it comes to our area then. It would be great to save $$ and to get more than what we have now, well just icing on the cake.

It was a bummer when we got our new HD (3D) TV last month and we don't have HD with Directv, ugh. I can see how good the picture is when we play a Blu-Ray Disc, so we'll just have to be patient and hope that it really will be 3-6 mths.

We also don't have a DVR now either so I welcome that as well. I was looking at the U-200 plan as that would be fine with us. (Thanks for the input on that one though brekin67) We only have HBO now so we wouldn't miss any of the other movie channels. Justbishop, thanks for mentioning your experience with the remotes. We had upgraded our Directv boxes a yr or so ago and there was nothing that was upgraded really...they are more difficult to use than the old ones and we have some issues sometimes with them so I will not have high expectations on the U-verse ones (we'll see what happens).

I was most concerned about the signal. ...does it go out during rainstorms, we've become accustomed to that with Directv...

 

[justbishop]

I wouldn't say that it goes out any more or less than we experienced with DTV. Hope that helps

 

[ShelliRenee]

We were very worried when we got it about 4 months ago because we had heard that the quality when talking on the phone, being on the tv and doing internet is very bad. But the sales guy told us that the entire grid where we live was recently updated, we shouldn't have quality problems and we haven't. We really test the system out as well, with 6 TVs (4 of them being HD), 4 Computers and the phone system, Still no problems.

It did take about a month to get used to everything, some channels we had with ComCast, we didn't have anymore with AT&T (Like the Halmark Channel, I will admit my uniqueness at loving the Waltons and Little House on the Prairie) But we have picked up some new and exciting channels we didn't have, like Nat Geo and The Smithsonian Channel.

Anyways, I hope all of this helps you!

 

[mom_of_3_mousketeers]

We had DirecTV along with AT&T for phone and internet. Last August Uverse became available in our area and we made the switch because it saved over $100. At first, Uverse was very choppy and pixelated. It would freeze up and we also had issues with the voices being off from the actors mouth movements. My husband reset the master box a couple times, jiggled wires, ect (he's pretty tech savvy, so I don't know what else he did) and nothing seemed to make a difference. We were getting pretty fed up and then it started working and we haven't had issues since. I don't know if they just had to work bugs out or what, but it's been a good 9 months since any of that has happened. Now we love Uverse and are happy for the switch, but it was a little worrisome in the beginning.

 

[mom_of_3_mousketeers]

I was most concerned about the signal. ...does it go out during rainstorms, we've become accustomed to that with Directv...

We live in a pretty open, remote town, so we get big/bad storms often. We had a blizzard in February of this year and not one time did our TV go out. We wouldn't have had TV for days with DirecTV. It went out if the sun set wrong.

 

[jsgrand0]

Didn't read the other posts, so not sure what was said, but we used to have u-verse.....VERY happy with the service, great features and service...however, it was extremely expensive...not sure if their prices have gotten more comptetive or not..and I guess I'm not comparing apples to apples..but we had JUST u-verse TV...with the dvr or whatever it was...a regular expanded cable package...and after tax was somewhere around $77....now...we have a BASIC CABLE thru Charter (no dvr), unlimited home phone AND 12 meg wi-fi internet...and my total bill is $77!! I'll take it any day..I think I have an AWESOME deal to have ALL 3 services for such a small price!

 

[JulieEck]

We've had U-verse and their internet since February when we switched from Directv (which we loved but couldn't get HD because of the trees and we'd bought a new HD tv...) and we love it. We really like having the HD channels. We signed up for the 300 package to get the bigger DVR. The $25 off per month promo ends soon and we'll be dropping down to the 200 package. The only time we didn't have TV/internet is when the power went out. No problems with storms, etc. like Directv. We don't have any home phone, just the TV and internet, since we just use our cell phones instead.

Hope it comes out soon!

 

[5stljayhawks]

We came from a small cable provid. was sorry to leave, but ATT has way more HD channels. NO way I was going with charter.....

Have internet and HD and am very happy. Little more that I wanted to spend, but I can live with it. had a few tech issues, but calls to tech support have been really good, same day or next day service.

Would recommend.

 

[JB2K]

Uverse is a far superior product to traditional Cable TV (especially, if you happen to use an HDTV set) - that's because AT&T uses the same technology which drives the internet to bring video in your home.

Also, I have experienced very few service outages in over 3 years of being a customer.

However, as with all video providers, you should know up-front what may not be carried on the service, so that you are not disappointed, later.

With AT&T U-verse, the "Hallmark" family of TV networks are no longer present, and in the St. Louis market, some Cardinals MLB games on Fox Sports Midwest may be blacked-out due to carriage issues between AT&T and FSN.

 

[NotUrsula]

We switched over about 2 months ago, and we did have something happen over the July 4th weekend that was a major PITA. We have our home phone, internet and TV service combined on UVerse, and we lost ALL of them over the holiday weekend.

Luckily our cell service is with a different provider, so I was able to call AT&T to report the problem. Long story short, it took 3 days to get any of the service back, and they had to send 2 crews to get it done. Our service had been completely disconnected, not only at the network, but off the pole; someone had made an error somewhere and mixed up the accounts. The most annoying thing was that Customer Service at first refused to believe me when I said that ALL the service was completely out; they said it wasn't possible.

We do have quite a lot of static sometimes on the phones, and it takes a good 15 seconds to get a dial tone when you pick it up. They can fix the static with a re-boot from the help desk, but it's kind of a pain to have to call them and go through the tree everytime it gets bad.

Our savings wasn't that big, except for the taxes on the home phone. Because the service is digital, the usual federal phone taxes don't apply. The total savings is about $40/mo, but we did get more channels and the DVR service out of it. (BTW, I agree that having your unsubscribed channels show up on the guide is really annoying.)

PS: If you have HD equipment, remember to be mindful about streaming HD video on multiple devices simultaneously; there is a data cap in place, and HD video is a serious data muncher. Netflix is currently 720p, which will get you about 108 hours under the UVerse cap, but if they go to 1080p that will drop to about 30 hours. Also, uploading to cloud services is bandwidth-intensive, too.

 

[jwfla422]

Overall still sounds like we should switch when it comes available. I know nothing is perfect when it comes to technology... but it's worth a try because I know we've not had a lot of good experiences with Directv when it comes to upgrading anything and I am really ready for HD. Directv's sub-contractors in FL are terrible, at least where we live.

I have looked at the channel line-ups and they have pretty much all of the channels we watch. We were told about the 300 promo but not sure what will be available when we are finally able to get it. I would actually be fine with the 200.

Thanks for your input everyone.

 

[RCSpur]

We have Uverse and love it. Only had it go out one time and that was due to a power outage. I have the 300 and internet and it's no more than $120 a month.

 

[tinkmom2]

I had it for a few years but switched back to Time Warner Cable. Our bill was about $180.00. (you really have to watch it. This is not the amount they told me my bill would be. ) We were just on the edge of the coverage area so we were only able to watch and record two shows at a time not 4 like they advertise. We also had to pay for the HD channels and $7.00 a receiver. My bill with our DSL was around $180.00.

With TWC I get hi def for free and my bill comes in around $130 month.

 

[Duchie]

We switched in January mostly to upgrade our internet from what we had before. We use to have DirecTV and a cable modem w/speeds of roughly 3 mbps. Uverse was promising 12 mbps, but we're getting nothing close to that. Our speeds are often only 1 mbps or worse. It's so bad that we're already looking for alternatives (both DH and I work out of the home so the higher capacity is a must for us).

As for the TV, it's fine. The user interface is poor compared to DirecTV's. A PP mentioned having to see all channels in the guide, even ones you don't get. It took me a while but I finally figured out how to eliminate channels we don't get or watch from the guide, and how I did it ended up being very weird and non-intuitive. So while the picture quality is good, the controls and menus are not.

Our phone service works just fine, no complaints there. We used to have Vonage and it would just randomly drop for no reason. We don't have that problem any more and call quality is great for us.

 

[ray6511]

After 18 months of service with U-verse, we have switched back to Bright House Networks. U-verse TV service isnt bad, but one thing that wasnt reavealed during the sales pitch or installation was "streaming limitations". Simply stated, the maximum number of permissable streams is four; three HD and one SD. What does this mean you might wonder? Well, AT&T will give you a HD DVR and as many HD converter boxes that you need for all the TV's in your house, but you will only be able to watch live programming on four TV's. If you are recording one program, then you watch live programming on three TV's. AT&T touts the ability to record up to four shows at once.....that is true, but if you do, you will watch live programming on NO TV's. Four streams is any combination of recordings and live programming. Once you have enough recorded programming saved to the DVR, this limitation is a little more tolerable.

As for U-verse internet......it sucks. I'm a computer/network systems engineer. U-verse proclaims to be a fiber network but that is not 100% true. Verizon FIOS is a pure fiber network. U-verse is fiber to the nearest DSLAM, then it's POTS lines to your house. We subscribed to U-verse "MAX PLUS" option and never saw anything close to 18 Mbps and "MAX TURBO" wasnt even avilable.

As they say, the straw that broke the camel's back was U-verse service. I've been an AT&T wireless customer for many years and have always been satisfied with their customer service. U-verse customer service is a different world. Over the course of 18 months, we had several outages in varying degrees of severity. The most recent was three days with no internet, no TV and no home phone. That is simply unacceptable and was ultimately the reason we went back to Bright House. Oh yea, we're also paying about $22 less per month. AT&T will lure you in with lots of promotional offers, but pay attention to the duration of those offers. Our U-verse 450 combo package inceased almost $80 per month after 12 months.

In short, if you're single or perhaps a married couple with maybe one child, you might be happy with U-verse. But if you're a family of four or more, with multiple TV's, laptop and desktop computers, mobile devices and a game console or two, AT&T U-verse just doesnt carry the bandwidth to satisfy all of your connected devices, period!