As of yesterday afternoon, we no longer have SureWest, and are now happy (for the most part) AT&T U-verse customers. Why do I say “for the most part?” I’ll get to that in a second. The important thing is that we are back to 2009 and are no longer stuck with a defunct and painfully worthless DVR. And I was able to switch without incurring the $200 early termination fee!

The installation went much better than our SureWest experience. The installer brought all of the needed equipment, didn’t have to run a ton of new wires or drill any extraneous holes and was in and out in about four hours. The service works great and the DVR is a world of difference! Unfortunately, to get the DVR functions, it’s an extra $7 per TV, so we decided to only add the TV in our bedroom for now. In less than a half hour, I had all of our previously scheduled programs loaded on the new DVR via AT&T’s web interface. Yes, that’s right, I can now record shows from anywhere with an Internet connection. Did I mention that we can record up to four shows at once? That’s leaps and bounds beyond the archaic SureWest DVR that would only record half of what we wanted because of conflicts and errors. We also now have unlimited minutes for our phone vs. the 1000 with SureWest.

The only problem we’ve encountered so far with AT&T U-verse is with the DVR functions on TVs other than the main one in the living room. You can watch, pause, rewind & fast forward recorded programs. What you can’t do is record, pause, rewind or fast forward live TV.  I should also point out that there are some complaints that you can only watch one HD channel in the house, but we don’t have an HD TV, so I can’t comment on that.

So, how did I get out of our SureWest contract without incurring the ever-dreadful $200 early termination fee? Well, it’s not a done deal yet, as I still have to return the equipment, which needs to wait until our phone is ported over. But it was about a week long process where I called to try to get out, got bumped up from a customer service representative to a supervisor, who offered to give us a second DVR, credit for lost service and send a technician out to try and fix our existing DVR. I even got her to agree to manually load our scheduled programs onto the second DVR, which we ended up not doing. Fortunately, for us, the technician never called or came to our house. I called a few days later and got bumped up to the lead of an “elite team” (his words) who offered me all sorts of stuff to get us to stay, like a free Digital Choice package and response within one to two hours. I finally convinced him that, because of the poor service, problems we had with the installation and DVR, they should let us out of the contract and waive the $200 fee. Now, we just have to hope that it’s documented in their system and they give me some sort of receipt for returning the equipment, otherwise they’ll probably try and send us a bill, which has been known to happen.

Here’s what I still need to do:

1. Call AT&T and get $200 rebate process started (after 30 days)
2. Take cable equipment to SureWest so we aren’t billed further
3. Wait for the phone to be ported over
4. Take phone/Internet equipment to SureWest
5. Wait for bill from SureWest that I’ll have to fight
6. Hope my wife doesn’t watch to switch again

Click here to check out AT&T U-verse!

It looks like now through March 2, 2009 you can get up to $250 cash back if you order AT&T U-verse online!

We called Comcast first and were not impressed. This experience started with my wife trying to sign up via their web site. For some reason, that doesn’t make much sense to either of us, they require a social security number. Not wanting to provide that information over the Internet, even though they claim it’s secure, I was drafted to give them a call and see if I could get it straightened out. The representative had the attitude that they could live without our business and that I should just trust them that they’re the best around. The rates quoted me were higher than Dish, for less and we’d have to pay more for a second DVR. I loved the part that, if there was a problem, they’d come out and fix it for free! I had to explain several times that the other companies would, and have, as well.

For weeks we had been getting fliers in our mailbox from Surewest promoting their bundles. We looked into it and found that we could save quite a bit of money and retain most, if not all, of what we currently had. So we scheduled an installation and I took time off work, expecting it to be an hour or two. Oh Nooooo. I was surely mistaken! Apparently they have to attach a box to the outside of the house, run new cables, replace phone and cable jacks, and then setup and install the equipment. When it was all said and done, but not quite done, it had taken about six hours! And the best part… they didn’t have our phone ported over from AT&T and they didn’t bring a router, so we had no phone and no Internet. After being on the phone for about two hours, I finally got them to send out someone with a wireless router and got credited for time without phone and the minutes I used on my cell phone on hold. We didn’t have phone service for around a week.

I wish we still had dish. When I called and canceled dish, I found that we could basically have the same bundle for $10 less per month! And we’d have a quality DVR that we loved. And we could have a DVR in two rooms. And we wouldn’t be frustrated by the whole experience. I’ve had a bad experience with Surewest in the past and vowed never to use them again, but I lost that fight. So, now, we’re stuck with one DVR in the living room that randomly and frequently freezes, is a pain in the ass to use, does not record properly, and is just a piece of junk.

Mark my words. We will be back with dish once our contract expires with Surewest. If my wife needs to take anymore classes, we can find someone else to record it for us. It’s that bad.