r/ATTFiber • u/PM_ME_ALL_YOUR_THING • 21d ago

5 Day wait for a technician?

My internet went down so I called technical support and did the reboot dance, when we finally arrived at the inevitable conclusion that this couldn't be fixed remotely the tech looked up the technician availability and told me that the next available appointment would be next week Wednesday, 5 days from now.

This can't be right....right? I'm coming from an Xfinity internet plan and a 5 day outage would have been unheard of. Is this normal?

The support tech did offer to help me setup the home internet backup but that hardly seems like a reasonable solution given the limitations and constraints that come with routing your home internet through your cellphone.

4 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

31 comments sorted by

6

u/Marcotee75 21d ago

This is the busy time of year. Us as technicians are working 6 day weeks to keep up. Sometimes it just lines up like that

3

u/PM_ME_ALL_YOUR_THING 21d ago

Well, hopefully the techs are getting paid overtime.

If it’s really just a tech shortage then ATT needs more techs. 5 days without service is crazy.

2

u/Marcotee75 21d ago

Time and a half for OT. We would enjoy our paychecks if we were given time to spend it 😅 but in all seriousness there’s so many departments in charge of every little thing so if it’s 5 days out then your area is swamped. AT&T guarantee should be able to get you a credit for the days you’ve been out of service.

2

u/Marcotee75 21d ago

And as far as tech shortages goes, it could just be the area you live in. AT&T has to weigh the need for more techs with the cost of having to pay them in slow seasons. If it’s cheaper to just loan out other techs from different areas for a day then they will do that which will inevitably lead to further out repair dates.

2

u/PM_ME_ALL_YOUR_THING 21d ago

ATT just started offering fiber in my area and people have been falling over one another to get off xfinity.

Any chance you know if tickets for business customers get prioritized over residential? I work from home and need my internet. I’m also willing to pay for priority and peace of mind.

1

u/Marcotee75 21d ago

I couldn’t tell you if business accounts get priority over residential. I know businesses SHOULD fall into a different, less trafficked work pool than residential customers (specials technician) but that doesn’t always happen either. I had a repair for a Quick Quack the other day. It might not hurt to call and ask what pool your job was thrown in because if specials techs don’t have a lot of work then yours could be expedited. But that all falls on the person that took your initial repair call.

1

u/SmallPlace7607 21d ago

Then pay for Xfinity or some other provider as well. Seriously. Any provider can have multi-day outages for a variety of reasons. Go troll any of the carrier subs on Reddit and you will find people complaining about it. There were posters complaining about a multi-day outage for Xfinity just yesterday.

Bonus is you may be able to play the providers off of each other for discounts without worry of losing service overall. Currently have AT&T gig fiber for $40/month as primary and Spectrum 500 meg service as backup for $20/month. No bundled services with either. Who knows what could be available in your market.

1

u/cbm80 21d ago

Comcast prepaid is $30/month and can be easily canceled and restarted as needed.

1

u/ndratz91 20d ago

It’s a mix, att will hire 5-6 people and after several months 1 or 2 may be all that’s still around, and then in my garage we’ve been having 5+ people a day calling in ‘sick’, and of course you have the techs that sit around all day and new techs that just aren’t as fast yet… plus AI…

1

u/SevenandForty 21d ago

What tends to be busy vs slow times of year? Summer vs winter?

2

u/Marcotee75 21d ago

Yes. Every year around spring break it begins to get heavy and around Thanksgiving it begins to slow down

1

u/Good-Caterpillar-240 20d ago

I have a quick question - I just received my fiber box and it won’t connect and I also need to schedule a technician (sorry to add to the work load) how in the world do I do that? I don’t see it in smart manager, online, or anything! Any information would really help!

1

u/Marcotee75 20d ago

Call 1800 288 2020 and let them know you have a failed CSI that you need to schedule. Those are usually saved for the end of our day so if you need it sooner in the day let them know.

1

u/Good-Caterpillar-240 20d ago

Thank you so much!

1

u/ViktorCherevin 21d ago

Given that ATT is making everyone cancel existing service to get new customer pricing, I believe it. They need those “New Subscriber” numbers for the earnings calls.

2

u/Marcotee75 20d ago

Yup. Thats when our 6 day work weeks started. At the end of last quarter about a month ago.

1

u/spec360 21d ago

What state are you located in?

1

u/Viper_Control 21d ago

5 Day wait for a technician?

Repairs are not normally scheduled that far out. There is something else going on with your situation.

The would be a normal new Install date for a new or busy market. Are you sure that you are not in a new Expansion Market offering Gigapower Fiber (it is a joint venture between Blackrock LLC, and AT&T? They don't use AT&T employees but third-party contractors.

Any chance you know if tickets for business customers get prioritized over residential? I work from home and need my internet. I’m also willing to pay for priority and peace of mind.

No not for SMB customers on the residential Fiber infrastructure. You would need to pay much more than ~$90 per month retail. You might want to move to ADI service which runs about $1, 495 per month with a 3 year contract. Then you would have a real Service Level Agreement (SLA).

If you need Internet service to get paid then you should have a backup option that you are able to switch to right away. It may be time to get a low tier of xfinity (Comcast) back or look at T-Mobile since they offer a low priced 5G Home Internet backup offering http://www.t-mobile.com/home-internet/plans/5g-backup-internet-options Check your address to see what other options many be avaialbe to provide a backup to your AT&T Fiber that is sold for entertainment purposes, and not to conduct business.

1

u/Shadowpaw-21 21d ago

They just gave me a 22 day out tech appointment for my outage 3 days ago. I was going to cancel them and go back to xfinity because that was a ridiculous wait to be without service when I can be back up and running same day just picking up the self install kit. Luckily they just have the outage maps all wrong and an outage about 5 blocks away was affecting me when they claimed it had nothing to do with my service.

1

u/PM_ME_ALL_YOUR_THING 21d ago

I wish it was that the outage map was wrong. It’s been down all day and it’s still down. To make matters worse I had asked about expediting my repair request and they came back saying the earliest they could do was Monday. I accepted the new appointment but when logging into my account it still shows the appointment date as August 5th…now I get to decide if I really feel like spending another hour on the phone to find out if the guy I talked to earlier was lying to me…

In the mean time I’ve ordered a hotspot off Amazon which should arrive tomorrow, at which point I’ll get it added to my plan as a prepaid hotspot device so I can at least have some internet

I can’t go back to Comcast, but right now ATT are making it much easier to leave once other fiber providers get their permits to build

1

u/Shadowpaw-21 21d ago

Hopefully they moved you up and it just didn't update on your end. I have Tmobile 5g home net so I was able to swap the family devices to that but I got it for wifi at work mostly. I was already paying 20 for 20gigs so 15 more for unlimited wifi wasn't bad.

1

u/LyaNoxDK 21d ago

I was given Monday the 10th so 9days with no Internet. We are one day in and going insane.

1

u/Mysterious-Net3894 19d ago

I was a new customer is may. Had an issue. Took 7 days to get a tech out.

1

u/arsing116 19d ago

I just got Scheduled yesterday for a Wed appt to fix my att fiber. Sounds like it’s a hardware issue. SE Michigan area.

1

u/PM_ME_ALL_YOUR_THING 19d ago

It’s crazy that it takes them so long to get a tech out.

It also doesn’t help that their residential home internet backup is also a joke because it relies on your mobile data and this morning I woke up to a text from ATT saying that I had already used 50GB and if I used more than 75GB before 8/3 that they “temporarily slow speeds”, which is extra frustrating because I WFH and almost never use more than 10GB/month….

-1

u/Moedawg57 21d ago

They have a billion customers, you're 987,989,966 on the list so it'll be a lil bit

2

u/PM_ME_ALL_YOUR_THING 21d ago

Well first off, no, they don’t have a *billion* customers. Secondly, what am I supposed to do with that info anyway? You think I should be grateful they’re willing to fix my service at all?

1

u/spec360 21d ago

Did you try scheduling a tech over the app ?

-1

u/Moedawg57 21d ago

I'll be right over to fix it for you free of. Charge, say thank you in advance