Ripples in the Pond (A Better Title Than the Phone Co Sucks)

Muddy Waters read my last post which reminded her of a story and her story reminded me of a story so who knows what this may bring

I believe the worst thing ever invented is the telephone. Of course they’re handy- if you are the one calling. It’s rarely handy for the person answering. Someone once told me that answering a phone was volunteering for something. I think she’s right. Whenever the phone rings and you answer you are agreeing to sit and listen which is hard to do. And how many of these calls are important? My man calls me and doesn’t say anything because we have nothing to talk about. We spend so much time together that he already knows everything that happens in my life as soon as it happens. It’s sweet that he thinks about me so much but the no talking phone calls are kinda pointless. Thoughtful, but pointless. Maybe 90% of the bad news I have received in my life came to me via phone. Of course, I don’t like to talk anyway. I rarely speak. I don’t even say hello to people I meet, I usually nod and wave. I am one of the quiet ones and you know what they say about us.

Maybe my quiet nature is the bias of my phone revulsion. Or maybe it comes from having to deal with the one phone company that has gone through four name changes in 20 years. Maybe they are shady and always have been. My mother used to work for them and she actually went on strike. Maybe they kept changing their name but failed to improve service. Come to think of it, the phone company has annoyed me several times. But in order to keep this post readable I shall to stick with just the story of why I don’t have a house phone.

I probably shouldn’t tell you the company’s name. That might offend them and it would give a clue to where I live. But on the other hand, I feel I should warn folks. So I’ll do this, the first name I remember this phone company having was South Central Bell. SCB got a little big so the government made them divide up and create another, smaller company (more on that in a minute) So SCB became Southern Bell. Then they became BellSouth. Then BellSouth was purchased by that smaller company created 20 years ago which defeats the purpose of dividing to begin with. And that is the company that pissed me off and I won’t tell you their name but their initials are AT&T.

I pay most of my bills online because my crazy neighbor used to steal my mail and thus my truck payment wouldn’t make it to Nissan. She didn’t try to cash the check or anything, she just…took it. I don’t know why. Sometimes she would collect my packages and keep them for a week or so before putting them back on the porch. I think it’s her way of controlling me.

Anyway, I pay bills online and I had more trouble with the AT&T website than all the others combined. One night I tried five times to pay my phone bill and the site froze on me every time so I gave up and called it in. The next day I checked my email and I had two payment confirmations. Confused, I checked my phone bill balance which was negative $98.67

Ok, simple mistake. I called the phone company. I went through four different people in three different departments before I got someone to help me. I calmly explained what happened and asked that he take one of those payments off.

“Nope. We can’t do that. But we will allow the $98.67 credit to be applied to your next bill.” To which I replied, “I bet the bank can do something.”

Indeed the bank could stop payments. But the catch was I had to stop BOTH payments. They claimed they wouldn’t know which payment would be valid and that if I wished to pay a similar amount to the phone company in the future I would need to call the bank and inform them, otherwise the bank would stop that payment too. The bank did promise not to charge me if I became overdrawn, but that wouldn’t stop me from being broke. So I did this:

I stopped both payments. I waited until my balance returned to a positive number. Then I paid 70% of the bill which is AT&T’s requirements for a partial payment. The next week I paid the rest of it. I thought that settled it.

Nope.

My next phone bill was more than double the normal amount. AT&T charged me TWO cancelled check charges and TWO late fees and then they changed my due date shorting the cycle from 30 days to 20.

So I paid all that and canceled my service. The whole time I was canceling the AT&T rep was trying to sell me DSL. I ended up calling again the next week because they only turned off my phone- they didn’t turn off my Internet service. Of course I had to go through another department because the phone part of AT&T doesn’t deal with the Internet part so I was left wondering how a phone rep could make a sales pitch about DSL.

The next month I received a bill for (brace yourself, it’s huge!) $1.89

In case you are wondering I have a cell phone and Internet service though the cable company- way faster than DSL.