Our work phones got cut off a couple of days ago.  Along with our internet.  It was either from non-payment or not.  Can't really figure out which.  Seems that AT&T may be a little confused on this issue.  At different times yesterday, I was told that a)I wasn't an AT&T customer, b)I wasn't authorized to discuss billing matters, c) I was part of a migration to a new system, and d) that I was obviously upset.  Ya think?  I can't do business because you Bozo's can't figure this out & you seem surprised that I'm upset?

We were hounded by a salesperson for close to a year before I would even talk to him.  Typical politician BS about how we were going to save money, get better service, bring Abraham Lincoln back to life, and possibly help set up a sanctuary for Unicorns.  I bought it.  Hook, line & sinker.  What a sucker I am!  It's been problem after problem ever since.  It finally all culminated in us losing service on Tuesday.  And for what did we lose service?  We didn't pay a bill, on an account we didn't have, on a phone number that we cancelled 6 months ago!

We've been trying to get this all resolved for well over 5 months.  Called the customer service number countless times.  Every sweet little customer service rep told us the same thing too.  "I'll get to the bottom of this" in a big, booming, authoritative voice.  Then they wouldn't call us back.  Finally, last week, when yet another person called us to discus our account with us, they were told, in not a totally kind fashion, that we just didn't give a crap anymore.  If they wanted to disconnect our phones, so be it.  But until we got somebody to call us back that could actually carry on a conversation intelligently, they could kiss my white ass.  On hindsight, probably not the best reaction.

We asked repeatedly, not just yesterday, but for the last few months, to be sent a detailed statement of our account.  Did you know that AT&T, apparently, has no way of printing out a detailed statement for you?  The closest we got was the guy that was going to print out the last bill (not detailed) and fax it to us.  FAX IT TO US!  I was really waiting for him to try, but somebody told him in the meantime that our phone lines weren't currently working.  Pisser.

What I really found fascinating was when the AT&T representative told me she wasn't authorized to discuss our account with us.  Isn't that her job?  We offered, on more than one occasion, to pay the bill just to get the phones back up.  Unfortunately, none of the first 15 people or so we talked to were able to give us an amount to pay.  We knew we had started making progress though, when we were transferred to a lady that only dealt with customers in California and Nevada.(I've been to both places, does that count?)  She was nice enough to transfer us to a lady, who after we told her our story and looked up our account, told me that we weren't AT&T customers, but we were AT&T Legacy customers.  She couldn't help us, but bless her heart, she transferred us to another lady who told us she only handled small business accounts and couldn't help us.(have I mentioned there are currently 7 of us employed here? That's not small?)  This kind lady in turn transferred us to large business accounts, who gave us a phone number to call.  Turned out, it was the number on the AT&T bill that we had already called about a hundred times!

We finally, and I say finally, were able to be connected to someone, who, though she wasn't sure exactly how much we owed, accepted a payment from us & got the phones working again!  I was able to relay my story to some type of manager for AT&T, through my lovely spousal unit.  This young lady was nice enough to call me, not once, but twice to get some facts.  She sent it up to the big-leagues.  I got a message this morning from someone in the Executive team, telling me she had assigned it to a team that would get it all resolved for me, and I would hear from them soon.  All I've heard so far is crickets.  Guess we'll wait and see what "soon" means.

The really funny part of this is that the 17 year old is practically begging me to change cell-phone service from Sprint to AT&T.  Hahahahahahahahaha!