I Need to Rant

"DaftRyosuke - So Long and Thanks for All the Fish!" (daft-ryosuke)
04/10/2018 at 16:00 • Filed to: Rant

Today, I’d like to take the time to rant about my internet service through AT&T. I don’t expect many people to read this or really care, but I just need to take the time to get some stuff off my chest, and Oppo is always a good place to do that. There is strong profanity ahead, so be wary.

Four years ago, after my parents divorced, my mom and I moved to our grandmother’s house to live. My grandmother lives in an area that’s quite literally the middle of nowhere, in a hole, surrounded by wood. She used AT&T as her home phone service, so that’s what we were going off of. We decided to wire her house up for WiFi before I moved, and I thought everything would be set.

Little did I know the headaches that would be coming.

When I first moved, I noticed the internet was, in a sense, shit. Loading times were slow, streaming was slow, everything was...well, slow. I thought to let it slide for the first few months as we just moved, and after a while we could call up AT&T and they’d upgrade our package or something, or do some technowiz shit that I wasn’t that accustomed with to upgrade our service to something faster, and that’s what we did. We called up AT&T after a while, they promised they would fix it up, and everything would be fixed.

Only thing is, they never fixed it. They claimed to, but the speeds never actually got faster. In fact, in some aspects, they actually got worse. We had many conversations with AT&T about this over the years, and each time it’s the same bullshit. “We’ll take care of it, sir,” “All it takes is a new router, we’ll get that sent over to you,” “We’ll send a technician to check it out.” The same fucking tripe over and over again for years, with no solution.

Finally, in around 2016, we finally got a considerate woman on the phone who told the truth. Basically, it’s not our package, or our router, or anything, it’s where we live. Remember me saying my grandma lived in the middle of a whole in the Boondocks? Basically, our area is not enough of a priority to actually consider installing a new transmitter for the area, or to lay fiber optic cables, or anything. We asked her if this might ever change, and she said, “Probably not. Sorry” (she’s probably lost her job since then for being honest, whoever you are ma’am, thank you for telling us the truth).

So now, all I can say is that AT&T can choke on the largest cock and die. They are a fucking travesty of a company, and it gets worse.

Many people have asked me why I can’t just switch companies. Well, the plain and simple fact is that AT&T has monopolized our area. They’re the only company that operates here and probably will be the only ones for a very long time. They’ve got my neighborhood at the end of the noose and are only going to pull it tighter unless we all pony up our money or something. Every one of my neighbors complain about the same thing, slow-ass internet, and there’s no fucking way to fix it.

So here I am, in 2018, dealing with internet that’s about as slow, or maybe even slower than dial-up. YouTube is probably the only video service that actually works competently, and even then, I have to watch in 240p to get it to stream with zero buffering. Netflix works sometimes, the entire reason I’m writing this post is because I was fed up after I couldn’t stream some anime ANYWHERE without interruption. I can’t play games online without constant dropping, that’s why I never play Forza multiplayer. Oh, and I forgot, if it rains, kiss your chances of having any fucking internet goodbye.

So, basically, yeah, I fucking hate AT&T. I fucking hate the service they’ve given us. I fucking hate that I can’t do SHIT about it. It makes me consider leaving the internet all together, but I know I can’t.

That’s the rub. If you read this, thanks. If not, whatever.

DISCUSSION (9)

bob and john > DaftRyosuke - So Long and Thanks for All the Fish!
04/10/2018 at 16:05

this sounds like someone needs to find the transmittors and sabotage them to force a install of a new one

BeaterGT > DaftRyosuke - So Long and Thanks for All the Fish!
04/10/2018 at 16:09

I don’t live in the boondocks but fully echo your sentiments. I could barely manage with them as a mobile provider, let alone internet. If they won’t install a transmitter, drop em.

Kar Wai Wong > DaftRyosuke - So Long and Thanks for All the Fish!
04/10/2018 at 16:10

Damn, that sucks. Meanwhile there’s me complaining when my ping rises over 50. Wish I was technically smart enough to offer advice. BTW wouldn’t an AT&T van be a better choice for a pic? I’m not complaining about that EK9 though.

MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner > DaftRyosuke - So Long and Thanks for All the Fish!
04/10/2018 at 16:17

I suppose you could give these guys a try:

Hughes Net

They do satellite internet. Probably the same problem in the rain though. The majority of ATT internet is still phone line DSL set up. It’s not good. City or out in the woods. It was never designed to run streaming HD video. Do you guys have cable out there?

MoCamino > DaftRyosuke - So Long and Thanks for All the Fish!
04/10/2018 at 16:41

We had similar issues with AT&T. We actually live within the city limits, but it’s a small town (~14,000 people) and we are at the edge of city limits where there aren’t a lot of houses. We had DSL, but it was forever dropping. Can’t tell you how many times we called AT&T and got “no sir, we don’t see a problem with the line at all” only to have our connection miraculously come back while we had them on the phone. It’s like inserting their test system into the connection fixed the problem - almost every time.

Then the bait-and-switch started. All of a sudden Uverse was advertised as available in my area. We received the propaganda in the mail, and called to see if it was actually available. For months we got “oh, I’m sorry, it’s not actually available in your location yet. Check back later.” After almost a year of that crap, one day we finally got “Yes sir, we can do that!” Within minutes I was signed up for an upgrade to a real broadband connection, fiber connection and all, including Internet, phone, and digital TV.

Then AT&T went all AT&T on me. While trying to get an install date on a later check in with them, the representative got quiet for a minute, then put me on hold because they “had to check on something”. Before the end of the call it came out that while I could switch to the Internet portion of the Uverse service, I couldn’t do the digital TV because it wasn’t available in my area. I’d have to do Dish Network if I wanted “the package”. Before it was all over there was more shiftiness involved and I had told them to not only cancel my Uverse order but they could expect a cancellation of my longtime DSL and phone service.

Fortunately we do have one other option - the local cable company, and we’re using them for Internet, phone, and TV today. They’re a small-market company so their service speeds / selection aren’t great, but our connection stays up far more than AT&T ever did. I get frustrated with their less-than-professional service at times, but in the end, I’m happier about them getting my money than AT&T.

TL;DR: Yeah, AT&T stinks. If they are truly your only choice I feel really sorry for you.

Kanaric > DaftRyosuke - So Long and Thanks for All the Fish!
04/10/2018 at 16:59

I’ve had similar issues with Comcast. I was skeptical of cable for a while until I moved out of state and got Cox which has amazing service.

For me we had Time Warner and not long after Comcast took over in our area I started getting consistant and constant packet loss that dropped me from games. At the time I was ina CS 1.6 clan and we were in CAL-M which is basically the step below being a “pro gamer” at the time but CAM-IM (intermediate league) didn’t exist at the time and that was more our skill level. But I thought I was about to make money playing games.

So I call them and this asshole said “if there is so much an ANT on the line we could detect it”. I’m telling him I am getting constant packet loss, if I ping anything every so often it will just time out, I have shit service, downloads drop. Nope. He didn’t see it so it wasn’t happening.

MONTHS later after calling these people about 100 times (no joke) I finally get a guy that asks me what my modem model was. He said it was supported anymore. Get a new modem and it works perfectly. By then though I was already kicked from that CS clan and was absolutely furious.

We had no decent ISP in town and the only dial up options were stuff like AOL. I would have switched to earthlink from this but I couldn’t because I had no money and my parents paid for the internet and for their browsing it worked fine enough.

I absolutely despise Comcast to this day 15 years later.

HondoyotaE38: A Japanese and German Collab...wait a minute > DaftRyosuke - So Long and Thanks for All the Fish!
04/10/2018 at 17:03

“So now, all I can say is that AT&T can choke on the largest cock and die.”

I still dying lolmlmmfao

punkgoose17 > DaftRyosuke - So Long and Thanks for All the Fish!
04/10/2018 at 18:33

We have had a horrible time with Comcast and their customer service lying to our face. I hate them. Unfortunately we still have them as they are the only cable and high speed internet in our area. I would look into the Satilite internet Montegoman suggested, or if you are in a 4 LTE cell area you will get faster speed with a mobile hot spot.

pip bip - choose Corrour > DaftRyosuke - So Long and Thanks for All the Fish!
04/11/2018 at 09:16

i’m glad we don’t have them here, but on the downside we have Telstra.