{"id":594,"date":"2017-08-06T16:08:35","date_gmt":"2017-08-06T20:08:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ericstechblog.com\/?p=594"},"modified":"2017-08-06T16:08:35","modified_gmt":"2017-08-06T20:08:35","slug":"att-fibermania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ericstechblog.com\/index.php\/2017\/08\/06\/att-fibermania\/","title":{"rendered":"AT&T Fibermania"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ok, so I finally decided to replace my T1. I already had Comcast Business as my secondary (but preferred) ISP at my office. I was a bit reluctant because I use a block of static IPs to host a lot of services \u2013 for many years (that\u2019s over 20 years!). So, I didn\u2019t want to have to change my IPs. But I would if I had to. A T1 these days is pathetically slow. More reliable than most (including Comcast) services, but still pretty bad. It was great in it\u2019s day \u2013 but\u00a0now it\u2019s slow and still expensive.<\/p>\n

Then AT&T Fiber called.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

They promised the world.<\/p>\n

They said they\u2019d move my IPs over. After all, my T1 was also through AT&T. Wow! \u201cGreat, let\u2019s do it!\u201d, I said.<\/p>\n

Several months later and quite a few unexpected visits (their install techs\u00a0have a habit of\u00a0just showing up) and some not so pretty orange fluorescent lines painted on the parking lot and sidewalk (to show where the cable will be run, but with no warning) \u2013 and voila! Fiber was installed. Finally. So, let the billing begin. It\u2019s about 50% more than my T1 but about 20 times faster.<\/p>\n

And what of keeping my static IPs I\u2019ve had for two decades \u2013 almost a quarter of a century (God I\u2019m old!)? Um. Well. \u201cWe can\u2019t do that\u201d, they said. The wrong fiber service was ordered by the AT&T sales rep. So, I never used it. I had them cancel the fiber and order the correct one. Which requires more visits \u2013 even though they will use the same fiber run and fiber switch they installed.<\/p>\n

About three months later, it\u2019s installed again! Meanwhile, we\u2019re still being billed for the original fiber. \u201cNo problem, they said, we\u2019ll credit you and take care of it.\u201d The AT&T sales rep had long disappeared. We had to deal with customer support. Well, my office manager did. God help her.\u00a0You can see where this is going can\u2019t you?<\/p>\n

So, they billed for the new fiber. They did get the service installed and my IPs moved to the router. I had to install the router myself. They mailed it to me, which is funny. With all the visits from the installation techs, you\u2019d think one of them could just install the router on the wall. Thank goodness I\u2019m an IT tech!<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a few more months and every month we call because we\u2019re still being billed for the old fiber we never used, the new fiber (those bills I\u2019m paying) and the old T1! Are you surprised? Really. So, finally we received a\u00a0credit for the old original fiber service. But, the balance was still $600 in AT&T\u2019s favor. Do I pay it just to make it go away?<\/p>\n

So, I\u2019m standing in my office, staring at the bill, avoiding the tired, distraught look of my office manager. I\u2019m thinking to myself, in what other business can you be given a service that you never use, be billed monthly for it way beyond the time it was cancelled \u2013 with each month accruing the same monthly fee \u2013 and finally get a credit, but not enough to zero out the bill? And after all that, I\u2019m still tempted to pay them $600 to make it go away completely. For the sake of our sanity.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the orange fluorescent graffiti is almost all washed away.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ok, so I finally decided to replace my T1. I already had Comcast Business as my secondary (but preferred) ISP at my office. I was a bit reluctant because I use a block of static IPs to host a lot of services \u2013 for many years (that\u2019s over 20 years!). …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2gH3K-9A","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericstechblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericstechblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericstechblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericstechblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericstechblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericstechblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":596,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericstechblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594\/revisions\/596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericstechblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericstechblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericstechblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}