If I had more spare cash, I'd try wretched Comcast rather than stay with AT&T Yahoo (though their Internet service, if much like their cable service, is probably not exactly brilliant.) Or, if didn't need to keep this phone line open all the time, I'd just go back to Chico Net's dial-up service and put up with the low speeds just to have decent e-mail service. Why is it that a tiny local company with only a few hundred subscribers can run a simple, flexible, efficient, reasonably reliable e-mail service, while the largest telephone company in the world and a huge, supposedly knowledgeable Internet outfit, teamed up, can only create something opaque, cranky, and bizarre?
Well, now I'll have to go talk on the telephone (grrr) for an hour or so to some guy in India* who has to call himself Frank or Scott or something of that sort because his employer thinks American callers will all be too stupid to wrap their tiny minds around names like Sanjay or Harish, and see if the pig's breakfast AT&T Yahoo has made of my e-mail account can be straightened out to the point where it's maybe half as good as, say, Hotmail. Until then, I'm probably unavailable.
Nationalize AT&T! Even the USPS could run a better system!
*And since they're already doing most of the work, why don't the people in India just cut out the middlemen and start companies providing Internet services and such directly to American customers? Have they become thick-witted as a result of their association with thick-witted companies like AT&T Yahoo? Hello! Opportunity! You'll be competing with the world's most dolt-ridden corporations! Sure win!