Joe's Random Ramblings

So, my AT&T U-Verse Internet access went down a week ago, on Thursday, 8/22.
I called up AT&T support, and they said they can schedule a technician to come out and fix it for Tuesday, 8/27. Ok, I bite the bullet.
So, they scheduled a technician for Tuesday, but nobody showed up. I called them again, and got it rescheduled for Wednesday; again, nobody showed up...
I escalated it, to second-tier support (which has a different phone # and an access code, so that the riff-raff doesn't call them...) and got it rescheduled for Thursday with a high priority. This time, a technician showed up at 8am, and fixed something outside for 4 hours. But it's still not working, but "that's the wiring to the outlet," and that technician is not handling that (he only does "outside" work...)
They wanted to schedule the "inside" work for Saturday... I went ballistic. Got a supervisor who does the usual BS dance of "dispatch says they can't schedule it before Saturday, and we have no power over them"...) I called the BS, of course. After an hour on the phone, the lady finally came up with the idea to "maybe get somebody from another area over here today"...
So, instead of Saturday, this gets rescheduled for "4-8pm" today.
I get back home shortly after 4pm. There is an AT&T van parked out in the parking lot. I go over to the van, and talk with the technician. He has 3 assignments scheduled in the same apartment complex, one of them mine. So much for "getting somebody from another area." That "another area" stuff was just a lie from the person I talked to earlier, to save face.
I'm the second person on his list, so he knocks at my door after about 1/2 hour, when he has finished the first assignment.
It turns out that the technician who did some stuff in the morning didn't connect the outside wiring to the wires going to the outlet inside my apartment. Complete and utter fail!
Once this last guy connected the wires, everything worked.
Sigh. Why can't these guys a) schedule things properly, and b) get decent technicians?
They need to fire most of their personnel. It seems that all of their support people are incompetent.

Unfortunately, there is no other Internet provider for the complex. I would love to get FiOS in here.
But, I can still hit back at AT&T. I'll be switching my cell phone service from AT&T to T-Mobile.
It is bad enough that I have to endure the incompetence of the AT&T U-Verse support people. I don't want to endure any more id*ots from that company.