U-Verse DVR series scheduled recordings are not functioning

@kathymalloy10 

Yes both your comments posted. What area of the country are you in?

@kathymalloy10 yep sounds like you've got the same bug as the rest of us.  The best thing you can do at this point is reach out to @atthelp on Twitter and then dm them when they respond.  Tell them "scheduled recordings are not automatically scheduling. And only manual recordings work"  ask to add your account # to the official service interruption outage report.  That way the issue continues to love up the chain and hopefully get the attention to actually.fix the server problem that is causing it.

Knowing what region you are in can help as well are you also located in miami,FL? Or nearby?  Are you on fiber or uverse internet?

Bunch of hyper specific jargon stuff most of you don't need to concern yourselves with I'm just putting here to keep track of it:

Also I realized today when it happened again having the weird sypmtom where the wrong show records but with the correct info of what is actually recorded   It's definitely the same main bug causing it.  When the system fails to check the guide as the listings update it keeps the manually(or workaround) scheduled recording slot. But the system that shows the scheduling and the actual recordings that end up taking place show the correct info for what ended up recording because the guide is updating and functioning correctly.(obviously its incorrect from what you thought the recording should be and for some reason shows the wrong thumbnail image) 

So this also tells me that system is simpler than I even realized. It doesn't set "show test123" to record it literally is just searching the guide for "show test123" and if it finds a match  8-9pm on Channel #1010 it just sets a recording for 8pm for 60 minutes on channel #1010 and doesn't care what is there.  When it works normally when the guide data updates and it's now show "randomshow999" at 8pm it would cancel because it doesn't match anymore.  But since our systems are broken and it never bothers to check it never realizes that it changed.

@denirose sad to say that's just their standard cut and paste "we have no information yet please stop asking" response.  It's as useful as a magic 8 ball saying "ask again later" lol

Just got this on Twitter.  Link is to this thread.

Hi Rob! So, the best option right now is to follow the issue and stay updated on this specific error through our Community forums page here: http://sm.att.com/b140b247 Currently, the Third party provider of Grid is having issues outside of what AT&T can do. There will be more support in the forums by Aces and the community as well as having more people involved on this forum will help get things resolved. As soon as they are, you will be notified through this community form page. I hope this information is helpful for you. Thank you for reaching out to AT&T and have a great night! ^KaitlynH

I got the exact response. Verbatim. Except the

name. I wrote back an angry reply. She then said they escalated it. I asked for a ticket number or outage report. She sent this: #12859827. For what it’s worth. 

I am in Miami, Fl. on UVerse internet and schedule recordings on the tv using my remote

@denirose 

@marchem 

@Flirtykumquat143 

@ethanedwards 

@kathymalloy10 

Just to give a quick update for today.  I spoke with Wesley today.

We're still waiting on a confirmation from our escalation team that someone is investigating this. However, our back end team has taken a look and done some tests in an effort to try and resolve the problem. They re-provisioned the DVR services on your account, and inadvertently cleared scheduled recordings in an attempt to see if that resolves the problem as a possible workaround. At this time, I would like to know if you can set up some of your scheduled recordings again and update me if you run into the same problem while we wait to hear back with further details. Thank you again for bearing with us. ^WesleyN

So  it erased all 156 series I had set, and all scheduled recordings.  It did leave my existing recordings intact at least.  I then set some of my series up again.  I'll have to wait until at least tomorrow or the day after for new guide listings to become available and download to see if it fixed anything (or broke anything more).  I did have a few very minor quirks happen when I was setting series recordings, so hopefully something else isn't broken,  but none were big enough to bother with or stop me from doing anything.  I'll update when I see what happens.  Unless anyone can think of a way to test it immediately?  but I don't think it's possible.

(Edited per community guidelines) 

The back end team needs to back out. 

I don’t know in what world erasing all your scheduled recordings is a systematic fix for you much less for users regionwide. I can tell you that as of 5 pm, when I checked recordings that I have been resetting (a few every day), that the problem persists. 

Does the escalation ticket they gave me (12859827) have any useful purpose or should I just file it away under “waste of time”?

At least they didn’t erase your recordings. 🙄

btw I live in Fort Lauderdale as do the few users I communicated with on Nextdoor that have the same issue. I think the rest on this discussion are in Miami. Not that anyone at @ATTHelp is listening. 

@denirose  Yes it's annoying to have scheduled recordings erased (and I wish I'd taken photos of all my series before they did it so I wouldn't have to remember everything for the future when those shows return in the fall).  but if it actually fixes the problem I'm fine with it.   At least my existing recordings remain.

I wouldn't expect it to have an effect on any of you unless they decide to test things on your systems.  I believe re provisioning has to happen to each customers dvr /stb individually.  I believe mine was just a test they were doing. 

I've never gotten any sort of case or ticket # so I can't say.  I'd assume at the very least it might help them pull up your file and maybe avoid some of the repeating of the situation you have to do every time you speak to someone new.

Yea I would assume Ft. Lauderdale and Miami would be the same region given the original problem in midwest affecting people in a couple different cities across state lines.  No idea how large of region could be affected.  at times all of Florida internet south of Tallahassee has gone out due to a single outage.  So I imagine depending where the problem is it can be medium to vast area.  

I'm honestly just happy someone finally after more than 3 weeks tried something to fix this problem that isn't on the initial tier 1 checklist.  At least that means someone is finally even examining the problem. 

Well re-provisioning my DVR and deleting scheduled recordings and series did NOT solve the bug.  When the guide date loaded today for 5/19 it did not update series schedules past 5/18.  We will see what they say today about it.  Hopefully Wesley can get through to ip-arc again. 

@denirose 

@marchem 

@Flirtykumquat143 

@ethanedwards 

@kathymalloy10 

Sunday 5/8 update

Well the news so far isn't great.  WesleyN on twitter was stuck waiting for responses from engineering or executive team.  It didn't seem like he had any sort of definitive timeline for when or if he'd ever get a response. 

I got annoyed and started pressing for more options for possible escalation.  Didn't get anywhere.  

I then decided to write a letter using this form for contacting executive customer care (vp of customer care).  I wrote a 2 page letter attempting to summarize the issue and the steps we've taken to try to get at&t to resolve it. https://investors.att.com/resources/contacts#customer-service

So today I received a phone call from "Kevin Smith" at corporate in Texas (I'm guessing some sort of complaint department).  The 1st thing he said is "U-Verse tv is an old outdated product, we aren't dedicating any money or resources to it anymore and you should just get rid of it."  "I doubt we will be able to solve this issue to your satisfaction".

I then spoke with him for some time in the hopes to convince him not to just screw us over and give up.  He ended up taking Wesley's contact info to see what is/can be done.  He did give me his direct phone line number.  I asked him not to just tell Wesley and IP-Arc to stop helping us, he claimed he wouldn't do that.  We will see if that's the truth or if he just reprimands Wesley for even giving me/us hope that there might be a solution and kills off any chance of us getting a solution.  As far as Kevin Smith could see in the system, it seems the help ticket was still stuck at IP-ARC and had not been escalated to anyone else like engineering.  Even though IP-ARC had marked it as being unsuccessful at solving it, yet hadn't said what next steps would be.

My guess is at this point I've been flagged as a problem customer, and they could care less if they lose my account, and they mostly are just hoping to keep from continuing to write negative (yet 100% true) things on the internet.

I want to hold at hope this will get solved eventually, perhaps accidentally.  But the odds are starting to go down.

I still haven't given in and replaced my dvr. If anyone HAS replaced their dvr since this problem started please let me know, whether or not it solved the issue.  I'm still 99% sure swapping dvr wont' solve it, but having proof of a customer doing it would help tremendously in possibly getting to the next level of escalation.

So are they suggesting that we move to DirectTV Stream? 

Eventually this is going to be a dealbreaker for me. Every single thing I watch on U-verse is on the DVR. I literally never watch anything in real time because I can’t bear the commercials. So I watch a one hour show in 43 minutes or less. If the DVR system is never again going to function I have to switch carriers.  I wish I didn’t have to because there is programming I can’t get elsewhere. You’re doing everything possible. Thanks for all your efforts. If there’s something else others can/should do please let us know. Btw, I haven’t had my dvr replaced in 9 years. 

Also I want a monthly price adjustment for the reduction in services. I’m not getting what was promised. Kevin said Uverse doesn’t want to spend any more money on customers but they’re willing to continue taking our money. Maybe we tweet that quote from Kevin?

"U-Verse tv is an old outdated product, we aren't dedicating any money or resources to it anymore and you should just get rid of it."  "I doubt we will be able to solve this issue to your satisfaction".