Some back story. A couple of months ago I called AT&T to see if I could get a discount for Internet again, as the year I had the discount for was just about up. They had been good about it the previous year, so I wasn't expecting a problem. But the agent told me that that particular deal wasn't available anymore, and that their current promotional deal was five dollars more than the old one, and it was only for six months, but that they had a promotional deal on the telephone service and that I could get a reduced rate on that. As it would have meant that my total bill would actually go down by a dollar or so despite the increase in the Internet cost, naturally I jumped on it.
So then I got last months bill, and it had gone up. I was actually paying more for telephone service than I had before. I also found that the promotion included all sorts of bells and whistles I didn't need or want, and which the agent hadn't told me about, so I called them back to get it fixed. I asked the new agent why I wasn't getting the promised discount and after she figured out what the previous agent had sold me she said that that promotion was for cellphone service. As I have a land line I don't know why the first agent thought he should give me that. As AT&T knows I have a land line I don't know why they didn't just cancel the order and let me know that their agent had made a mistake. Instead, they had just switched me to another (more expensive) promotion for land lines without letting me know or getting my permission to do it.
So I told the new agent that all I wanted was the plain telephone service I'd been getting before. With the usual crocodile apologies that AT&T agents use she promised that I would get that service back but that nothing could be done about the current bill. So I figured one incompetent guy screwed up and now it was fixed. My bill would be higher than I'd originally thought when the first agent offered me the deal, but lower than the bill I'd gotten that month. But the bill I got today was more than twenty dollars higher than the last bill. I still had the service with all the unwanted bells and whistles, which I had never ordered, but now I was paying the regular price for it instead of the promotional rate.
Now I have to call them again tomorrow and give them another chance to fix it. I hate the idea of getting Internet from Comcast (the only alternative in this backwater,) but if AT&T screws up again I think I'll have to. I also hate the idea of trying to use a cell phone in this place, the tower being so far away, but I think I'll have to consider that too. I can get a cell phone service that will actually cost me a bit less than AT&T was charging me for the service I had before they screwed up. A nephew informed me that I can actually make cell phone calls using my Internet router instead of depending on the undependable tower, although the router has to have electricity which means I'd be wandering up and down the block trying to get a signal from the tower if I had to use the phone during a power outage (or for that matter when Comcast Internet was down, which I gather is not the rarest of occurrences. I'd also have to remember to keep a charged battery for the phone itself, which these days is a bit iffy, my memory being what it is.
As much as I'd like to have a cell phone (I could actually make long distance calls, which I have eschewed with the land line as they are 18 cents a minute with the plan I've got) I'd really like to keep the security of a land line. I need the damned phone to work, and keeping the line working is the one thing AT&T is still pretty good at. And as much as I'd like a faster Internet connection, Comcast doesn't have the best reputation there, plus it has all sorts of extra charges for both its its cable service and its Internet (they now levy fees for any change of service at all, including downgrading or even disconnecting.) But AT&T has me so pissed off I'd really get great pleasure from kicking them to the curb. I'm reluctant only because I think there's a very good chance I'd end up feeling the same way about Comcast before long. They are both near-monopolistic corporations, after all.
But AT&T gets one more chance tomorrow. I really want them to make the fix retroactive this time, because I really don't want to pay that bloated bill for things I never wanted and haven't even used. If they don't fix it, they go on my permanent shit list.
There is also all sorts of crappy stuff going on with my computer, which I suspect has to do with a program that popped up yesterday and which I don't recall having installed, though I have some other programs from the same company so maybe they have something in their user agreement for that stuff allowing them to install something new without special permission. Either that or Portia gave them permission by walking on the keyboard when I wasn't around. But that's another story, and I must limit myself to one rant per post. Suffice to say that tonight neither Opera nor Firefox is working with LJ, so I'm on Chrome. Maybe Google is behind the whole mess. At this point I wouldn't put it past them.
Oh, I didn't get to the store today after all, so I'm out of bread. It's too bad it fell through, as it was dry all morning and now the storm is upon us. I might not be able to get out tomorrow, either, so I'll probably be using bread substitutes until Friday at the earliest. This turned out to be a pretty crappy day. I wouldn't be surprised if the roof started leaking again and the power went out.
This browser has no spell check, and I don't see one on the LJ update page anymore. If anything up there is wrong, it's just wrong.