Relationship Woes

There are a few words that come to mind when I think of AT&T: awful, unaccomodating, disorganized, annoying...need I go on?

Last week was a crazy busy work week.  To paint a picture, I left the office between 10pm-1am every night and worked through both lunch and dinner.  (This is when I shoot up a little thank you for working with awesome people!).  However, on Wednesday of last week, I decided I needed a little change of scenary so I left the office at ~7pm with the plan of grabbing some grub and finishing my work at home with the comfort of my sweatpants and couch.

I get home and bam, no internet connection.  Strange.  I rifle through my stack of mail and find a letter from AT&T.  I rip it open and glaring back at me is the phrase "Did you forget to pay your bill?"....let me rewind.  This has been a constant issue with AT&T.  Every single month I have had my cable and internet disconnected for one reason or another - none of them being my fault.  One month they over-charged me by $200.00, another month they didn't see my payment had gone through two weeks prior, etc, etc...on top of that, I'm on automatic bill pay.  I can't NOT pay my bill!  So as I'm staring at the annoying little phrase, I'm thinking..."No...did YOU forget to pay my bill?!"  Pissed off and stressed out, I call AT&T with the intention of getting this resolved ASAP as I have a lot of impending work to do.  After spending entirely too long on the phone and after listening to entirely too many automated options, I finally hear "I'm sorry, this office is closed, please call back between the business hours of 8am-5pm."  Are. you. kidding. me?  I obviously don't have the free time this week to lolly-gag on the phone with you folks.  Especially during the hours of 8am-5pm.  Nor is this a conversation I'd like to have in my office amongst all to hear (I think the 4th month in a row is my breaking point...the conversation will not be pretty).

So alas, five days later I am still sans internet and cable.  I'm leaving for Boston/NYC tomorrow so I think I'll take a few days to think long and hard about how to approach AT&T and whether it's really worth it to keep them as my provider.  This relationship is obviously not going to work out if things keep going down this path.  I've played nice up until now (because honestly, I feel sorry for the poor guys that have nothing to do with the problem and everything to do with hearing the complaints) but I think I'm about to whip out the "B" card...

Interesting Fact: I ran into a friend later that night who told me she had been on the phone with AT&T for over an hour earlier because they had turned off her cable as well!  After a less than pleasant conversation, she was reconnected and hooked up with free HBO and movie channels for the rest of the year.

AT&T I can assure you, I will never do business with you, again.  (Although I haven't heard much better about Time Warner...)