Resold AT&T service: What's normal when things go awry?

[plwww]

Our service has been down since Sunday. We reported it Monday. Wednesday an AT&T tech arrived but didn't resolve the issue; I found out from the next tech it was supposed to be resolved Thursday morning when their roving worker makes the rounds to the otherwise unstaffed CO's and plugs us back in, though it didn't actually fix the issue. Friday another tech arrived, found a new issue, and told me it would resolve Saturday morning when that worker again makes the rounds and swaps us to a new line at the CO. Saturday afternoon with no internet still, I'm told AT&T will have to schedule a new dispatch date but "the queue to call over there is quite long, and can take several days". This would match the cycle so far(report on day one, wait for schedule, then truck rolls day three).

I certainly can see the delay for the first cycle(report Monday, truck rolls Wednesday); but after two failures to fix across six days of waiting, is it normal to be pushed to the back of the queue like a newly reported issue? Is there some prioritization for length of outage? Am I already being prioritized but things are just that busy?

[jerrielm]

Hello!

If I am going to be honest our Dispatch times for AT&T can vary based on the issue. It seems the issue was placed properly but it might have been pushed back due to need of a construction crew or dig crew. I am not sure what is happening with your repair but I would love to look into it and see what I can do. Can you DM me your address or if you have a chance to call into our Support Team ask for Jerriel M in CES. I look forward to helping you!

Best Wishes!

[plwww]

Thanks. I sent you my address

[brycem]

It can take months to years if you have an intermittent issue like I have. Took well over a year to get the first DSL line fixed several years ago, been 6 months trying to line up the issue with a truckroll on the 2nd line. It's AT&T, what can you do? The only answer is be at home for weeks until they happen to be able to show up while you are there and the issue is taking place.

[plwww]

After 10 days, AT&T finally restored service. Most of that time was just repeatedly waiting for a new dispatch, because apparently it's not possible for AT&T to follow a repair from start to finish, verifying their repairs before discarding the trouble ticket. The individual techs have appeared as wanting to be helpful, but it seems like the system itself is designed against them being capable of taking a task start to finish in the same repair window.

I think I finally got a full picture of what happened: Friday AT&T construction crews switched over to a newly undergrounded cable as part of a highway expansion. Those crews left numerous wires unconnected. Sunday my service dropped, most likely because a tech stole my pair to fix one of the disconnected clients(as an aside, I recall Sonic giving this exact issue as one reason they required a live-service dial-tone on their copper Fusion product: to reduce the likelihood of a tech stealing active wires. AT&T has of course moved to IP based voice service on these lines). Monday they fixed those unconnected wires, but by then wires across town had been disarrayed as other techs tried to bring clients back up. Wednesday, the first tech found an issue, but was incapable by design of fixing it himself; the next morning when the scheduled repair failed to fix the issue, we got moved to the back of the queue awaiting the next appointment. Frustrating. Friday, the second tech found a new issue, scheduled another cable swap for the next morning(and appears to have made yet another mistake, leaving us on the wrong line from the house to the patch-panel up the road); again, there was no immediate follow-up to ensure the scheduled swap actually solved the problem, leading to another four day delay while a new dispatch was scheduled. The tech today sorted everything out, and we're running again(hopefully stable, only time will tell).
Still...10 days.

[spencerw]

We apologize for the extended time it took to get your services restored. You are correct that in a lot of ways AT&T's system can work against itself and cause repairs to last longer than they should. While its not out of the ordinary for the dispatched technician to diagnose a problem which requires a different technician to fix, it definitely can cause significantly more downtime, especially when that first diagnosis isn't correct. We appreciate you posting the additional information and timeline since it will help us hopefully avoid similar situations in the future.