AT&T Uverse: buyer's guide

So you're thinking about getting AT&T Uverse. You thought you'd look up what people thought about it and you ended up here. I'll break it down as simply as I can.

Pros

• Internet occasionally mostly works for a few hours albeit at DSL speeds (~5Mbps)

Cons

• More expensive than competitors
• Slower than competitors (although on the plus side, it's slightly faster than DSL that costs less than 20% of what Uverse costs)
• More than 50% of the time something isn't working (DNS issues or just down totally)
• DNS issues are frequent--usually at least 30% DNS lookups time out (Akamai domains frequently failed to resolve so major websites would have no CSS, JavaScript or images)
• Terrible device that gives you no control and doesn't offer the latest tech (802.11n)
• Awful tech support (Uverse technicians are worse than regular AT&T technicians--intelligible as well as totally incompetent, e.g. they seemed to think I change settings on my Mac by clicking "start" and then "control panel")
• They charged me roughly a $1 for a few months after I cancelled the service for who knows what reason
• Charged me $487.14 (I didn't chose to pay this, they charged me without asking--after I cancelled autopay at least a couple months before) for not returning the equipment which apparently I can't get an address to ship it to and they refuse to send me the boxes they promise even after "verifying" my address twice
• Their website is totally unusable (maybe it works in IE 6, but I wasn't able to try it since I was already on IE 7) (I should have read the sign and never used a service with a shitty website but then again what option did I have)
• There apparently aren't any managers on the Uverse program that know how to return phone calls (and all the managers are always busy so you can't talk to them directly)
• Uverse's ticketing system seems to automatically close any ticket I request they open without any action whatsoever being done
• If you ever need help, you'll dial the "Uverse" number that magically connects you to the regular AT&T technicians in Texas (who don't know anything about Uverse and transfer you back to the same line--this process happens over and over until you've wasted about 30 minutes on hold and going through the same menus over and over and somehow it magically breaks out of the loop)

Seriously AT&T, $487.14? What the FUCK?! I've got your expensive hardware sitting by my door in hopes you'll refund me for your criminally awful "service" (I'd normally expect interest as well as a refund for the percentage of time your service wasn't working but you've buried the bar so low it doesn't matter at this point).

Basically if you're considering AT&T Uverse...don't do it. If it's your only option...I'm not kidding even a bit...MOVE somewhere else. Am I bitter? Yes. I admit it. But I'm trying to save others the agony.

I'm now with Comcast. I pay 30% less now and I get ~30Mbps downstream and 3-4Mbps up. It's been down twice in the last six months both times for about 30 minutes, which isn't too unreasonable. And any future place I consider living in I'm definitely checking to make sure something other than Uverse is available.

Sorry for the negative post, I just wanted to put this out there so others don't make the same mistake as me.