The New Phone Company

Though I don't know if I've been dealing with AT&T, SBC or Bellsouth employees, I am not happy with the current company.

I have Bellsouth everything. Last Friday I went into a Cingular store to get info about getting an internet card for my new laptop. Cingular has such a card and after rebate it is only $55.00 with $59.00 a month for service (not bad considering the versatility). I know that sounds ok. The bad part is that the card doesn't fit the laptop. Cingular won't have a card that fits the laptop for two or three months. Dell has the card on its website. Dell wants $299.00 for said card. (An aside. I just used spellcheck. Did you know that Google doesn't know how to spell internet?)

Back to my ire. (It can spell ire.) While there, I was introduced to a Bellsouth rep who advised me how to save some money on my bundled bill. Stupid me. I agreed.

Fast forward to Monday morning. I got an Email from an engineer that had tried to call me six times that morning, getting a busy signal and no voicemail (my home phone is forwarded to my office). I used my cell to call my home phone and confirmed the busy and no voicemail.

I called the 800 number for technical/repair issues. After punching in my phone number four or five times and sitting on hold being told repeatedly that I could pay my bill online for about fifteen minutes, I got a person, who,after asking me how she could provide excellent service and after four or five minutes told me that I didn't have call forwarding service. The proverbial light bulb illuminated and I said that I had changed my plan last Friday to save some money at the behest of the Bellsouth rep. The nice repair lady said, yes that is when your forwarding was cancelled.

No longer having a technical/repair problem, I was transferred to customer service to have forwarding restored. The nice lady asked me how she could provide excellent service and said she was quite sorry after I had explained the problem. She told me forwarding would be restored by 3:00 p.m. She also tried to sell me faster DSL which I declined politely. We wished each other a nice day.

Between 3 and 7:00 p.m. I tried to forward calls a bunch of times. Each time I called the nice female voice told me to punch in my phone number, which I did. The nice voice then read me back my phone number and told me that if she had repeated it correctly, I should punch in my PIN, which I did. The nice voice came back on and told me to punch in my phone number. I went through this loop three times and concluded that I wasn't getting anywhere.

I called a nice man with customer service who after the obligatory phone hell hold, yeah, asked me how he could provide excellent service. After I explained my problem he told me that restoration was scheduled for February 8, day after tomorrow. He politely interrupted my admittedly strident response and told me to hold on while he tried to get the schedule overridden. After about twenty minutes he advised that forwarding would be restored by midnight. I made him promise twice. We wished each other a good evening.

This morning I called the mobile forwarding phone number and got the now familiar loop.

I called another nice customer service lady (how can I...) who told me service was scheduled to be restored on the eighth. I didn't let her interupt my strident speech reciting what you have just read above. She expressed her dismay that those other nice reps would tell me things that were't true. When I asked for someone who could do something, she said she would transfer me but that the answer would be the same. After some more back and forth for some reason she decided she could indeed override the scheduling order. She told me she had. I called the remote number and got the loop. I did it again with the cell on speaker so she could hear the loop. She went back to someone else and confirmed to me that service had been restored. She told me that this was now a technical/repair issue (see paragraph 5, above) and got Sue on the line from that department. I made her promise that Sue would take good care of me, the three of us chuckled and Sue and I went through the loop scenario twice with me doing the number punching and once with Sue at the controls. Sue told me that she would refer this to "Central" and I had a flashback to women sitting at a long switchboard with spagetti wires everywhere. She told me that Central would call me back with the results in a few minutes on my cell phone. It's about two hours later. I do not have call forwarding and Central is MIA.

I am depressed. I hope you have a nice day.