New DivaBlog

In Chicago at my first Drupal Association Board Retreat. So far, I'm mostly listening.

Howdy and...I'm *so* done with AT&T

First of all, let me say that I really appreciate that even though I've not blogged here in nearly 2 years, I still have a steady stream of followers.  That's loyalty.  Thanks.

Most of the time I've been away I was blogging at and for the Wikimedia Foundation (mostly on their Tech Blog, since I was the CTO). I'll be posting eventually some more about that job...what I loved about it, what I hated and why I ultimately left (but in the meantime, please do go DONATE ... It's an amazing project, you know you use it, and I still have a lot of friends working there).  I'll also post about my new project(s) (yes, more than one) and how much fun I'm having now, but...

The subject of today's blog is...AT&T.  I have been a customer of theirs essentially my whole life.  First of course I had no choice...they "owned" US Telephony.  Then they were the only provider of iPhone service in the US.  And most recently (albeit 10 years ago), they were the only provider with whom we could sign up for Home Internet when we moved to the fabulous Castro District of San Francisco (because we are plagued by elderly wiring).  

Lately I've been an increasingly unwilling AT&T customer.  Their service overall continues to degrade in San Francisco, both cell (in town and at home) and home internet.  When I worked for Wikimedia we literally couldn't get cell reception inside our building, which was ironic because we were across the street from world AT&T headquarters.  They occasionally tell us that they've installed a new cell tower that "should fix our problem" with cell reception at home (although I suspect the real reason our cell is so bad at home is the fact that we live in a 1912-era Faraday Cage...still it's hard to believe that when a friend with Verizon can get a call in our house but we can't...)

And today our Internet Modem died.  The poor thing was a decade old, and its been flakey as hell for the past few months.  Now its belly up.  Of course I was in the middle of a work-related Skype call when it happened...and of course I'm recovering from a chest cold and didn't want to go out in the cold today...

So I got on the house phone and called 611 and was eventually routed to the "DSL Hotline".  The nice woman, who was quite obviously speaking to me from somewhere in Manilla, said that if I would just drive down to an AT&T store they would give me a new modem.  She even looked up the store address and gave me a 6-digit "pickup code" as proof that this would be the fastest and best fix for me.  I bundled up and got in the car.  However, upon arrival at the store, it turned out the manager there didn't know anything about a "pickup code" and wasn't going to surrender a new modem for less than $100.  Yes, folks, that right, I was going to have to pay $100 to replace AT&T's ancient equipment so I could enjoy more of their crappy service.  There was no "lowest common denominator" option.  Take it or leave it...and determining this fact took 45 minutes of my time during which I felt truly awful (coughing, sneezing, etc.).  To be fair, they did give me a chair after about 30 minutes...but I was already *so* done with them.  You know that kind of "if you keeled over right now in front of me I wouldn't shed a tear" kind of done?  I was finally there.

I asked the manager if there was a return policy on the modem?  The answer was "Yes, a 30-day unconditional money back return policy".  So I cheerfully paid them $100, took the modem home, configured it (so I could have internet again) and then I called Astound, because they left one of those endless door hang tags on our front door just yesterday...

So day after tomorrow, I'll have fiber to my house (no more excuses about the wires in the house being too old, Astound has pulled fiber to the Castro :-) ).  I'll have 50mbps to the house, and a landline...and its going to cost me $40 less per month than I was paying to AT&T.

Now, about jailbreaking this iPhone...:-)