Phone Co
A buddy of mine had quite an adventure with the new AT&T that is really SBC that bought AT&T and took the name. So, the company that people love to hate (SBC) bought a phone company that had a better reputation. Well there are some hiccups in the transition.
My buddy, who pays his bills online, paid his phone bill on time. Got his phone turned off. he checked online and there is a credit of like $200 or so. The phone company owes him money. He calls customer service. This is a story in itself. He has to wait until work today to make the call because he has no mobile phone. Here is a bullet list of what happened in order, at least as I remember it.
# Gets to work and after being bugged by me makes the first call to the Phone company. He gets through the "press 7 for English" hell that is phone support these days only to be on hold for an indeterminate amount of time and realizes he needs to go to the bathroom. Our hero ditches the call for the call of nature.
# He gets back to his office and goes through the whole phone support automated pain in the ass all over again. He decides to use the speaker phone feature while on hold so he can get some work done and ... wait for it .. manages to hang up the phone in the process. I have to say I didn't hear the screams of anguish from my office.
# He calls back, gets half way through the same phone dial-a-damnation list and work intervenes. He has to abort again.
Well, I think I missed one. You get the idea. It turns out SBC/AT&T screwed up when telling the banks out there how to transfer their customer's money. My buddy's bank was not on the list of infected banks, but it could happen to anybody. So, can they turn on his phone, No. he has to pay with a credit card in order to call the phone company back from his house where all his paperwork is in order to permanently straiten out the trouble (that is their fault remember).
My buddy had a really good point. In this day and age, when there is a problem with billing and you get your phone turned off, you should be able to pick up the receiver and talk to the frigging phone company long enough to get the problem resolved. That has to be doable.
This is the kind of thing that really upsets me. The customer does everything right, pays on time, and still gets their phone turned off. This is ridiculous. Well What does SBC/AT&T care, there is one less alternative in the U. S. for customers to run to if they are dissatisfied.