AT&T AT&T U-verse botched installation wasted my day Los Angeles, California Nationwide

I do not understand the concept of scheduling an appointment and having backlogs. Why set an appointment when you know your technicians are backed up? I've read a number of posts here about people having the same experience as I did: taking the day off for nothing... and then they bombard you with alibis ranging from the distance of my home from the VRAD all the way to the technician's manager not knowing what to do at a certain point. Really? A manager not knowing what to do? How did he/she become a manager? Then again this may be due to the economy. Everything seem to be about the economy these days. Maybe they can't hire quality people so they hire the first person who sends them a resume.

My appointment was set for today, 10/21 between 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM. The technician called me at 10:00 AM to tell me that he was running late (obviously!) and that he will be at my location between 10:30 and 11:00 AM. Well, 11:00 AM came and went and no technician, no call. He finally showed up around noon and did a walkaround the place to see where my current connections are. After all that, he told me that he will go to the VRAD and make the connections there... might take anywhere between 30 and 45 minutes. After a while (around 1:00 PM), I was informed that the signals were not acceptable and that another technician will check the connections and do necessary improvements. I was also informed that instead of 2 HD signals, I would only be able to get 1. I was fine with that as I do all my TV viewing from the one HDTV I have anyway. 4 hours (yes, 4 hours!) went by and the first technician called and said they're still having problems with the quality of the signal because I am about 2,600 feet from the VRAD and at that point, signals start to deteriorate.

It was almost 5:00 PM and I had lost all hope that anything would be done at all today. He proceeded to tell me that I have the option to reschedule the install. I told him that I can not do this as my weekends are full and taking another work day off was not an option. But truthfully, I was thinking... if the signal quality is an issue, then why bother trying to install it at all? Wouldn't this open a can of worms about the quality of service I will be getting? Wouldn't this lead to my calling tech support all the time to try and resolve problems stemming from said weak signal? Wouldn't this mean that I will still be paying full price for half a service? And get this: when I essentially asked (hinted is more like it) if there is any possibility at all to finish the install today, the technician said he actually gets off at 4:30 PM. So basically, he made it sound like he was doing me a favor by waiting for other technicians and managers to finish their jobs (being 5:00 PM and all, he was clearly off the clock!).  

I understand the whole they-won't-find-out-until-they-come-to-your-location alibi -- I understand that it is some rehearsed line that people from sales and tech support use if anything like this happens. They obviously have a system in place to check if your home is serviceable by their product... why not go an extra mile and make sure that this is true before making theatrics out of telling you of service availability when you check on-line (Congratulations! U-verse is available blah-blah!!!)? They know that at 2,600 feet, signal gets questionable so why even say my home is serviceable and get my hopes up? From the looks of things, I am not the only one who have had this experience so its not like I was the first case.