Oh, and it gets better

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

So today I decided to call AT&T about my $165 bill for my $25 worth of services. They have one of those automated phone services that don't let you press 1 for this and press 2 for this. Instead you speak what you want to do and the computer system interprets what you are saying. This is actually slower since you have to speak slowly and deliberately or else the computer will ask you to repeat yourself.

Anyway, one of the prompts (a few prompts in) is what is the nature of your call. I stated (slowly and deliberately), "Complaint about bad math on bill." This did not get me anywhere (I know, you are as shocked as I was). I eventually got a person but he was only able to answer questions about the phone portion of the bill. Most of the outrageous charges were on the DSL portion of the bill. But before he would pass me on the the DSL hold line, he wanted to explain that AT&T could offer unlimited local and long distance for about twice what I pay with Vonage. I declined and explained why, he was not impressed.

I was then speaking with a lady about the DSL portion. It seems the $18 / month package that I THOUGHT I signed up for could only be redeemed if I signed up online (ironic that you have to have internet to sign up for internet). When I added the phone service (which I did online), the "add DSL" feature was having server errors so I called in and asked to have DSL added to my existing order for phone service. Evidently if you use a phone to call in for internet service, the rate is then $40 / month. I then stated that I would like to cancel my DSL service and that I would be signing right back up again for the lower rate. She then lowered my rate. Then she wanted to offer me unlimited local and long distance phone service for double what I pay now. I declined and explained why.

I then asked if it was possible to get DSL without have to sign up for local phone service (since I did not really need phone service). I was then transferred to another department that specialized in "dry line" DSL (DSL service without local phone line service). The person on the end of this conversation stated that I could get dry line DSL for $55 / month. I asked if it was higher speed than then $18 / month DSL. He said no. I then asked why anyone would sign up for this DSL service when it was not faster and cost 3 times as much. He did not have an answer for that one. Now, obviously I was calling him because I did not want phone service but you can guess how our phone conversation ended.

Yep, he offered me unlimited local and long distance phone service for double what I pay now.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon