Sunday, July 29, 2007


now the at&t hell begins

ok, so everyone knew the downside of the iphone would be at&t – all american mobile providers, but esp. at&t, are famous for the elaborate ways they torture and rip off customers. my colleagues overseas cannot restrain their amazement when they learn of our primitive phone services here and how many ways we are screwed, ways that are often illegal in the e.u.

so. my time to meet the metal teeth of at&t had come, i guess.

i pick up my iphone to try to contact a colleage (oh yeah, working on saturday and sunday, welcome to my new job) only to discover that at&t tells me "phone calls are disallowed." local & international both: wtf?

after a mere 20 minutes on hold, i get through at&t's various voice menus only to be told i have to call after-hours support. great.

at least after-hours support puts you through only about 7 minutes of voice-tree hell before you connect to a human being. yay!

the rep needs to send 2 updates of some kind to my phone to make it work again. um, excuse me, but i'm supposed to be contacting a european person who is waiting on my response.

but the rep can't give me international dialing. i have to wait until monday for that.

why? just press the freaking button on my account and let me work, please!

oh no, at&t corporate policy wouldn't actually let its employees be helpful. in the meantime, the phone begins to work again.

but of course i've missed my european appointment time. great.

i set the phone down and wander off to make pizza dough (late because of this nonsense!) only to come back and find my euro contact, wondering where the heck i was, had been frantically texting me – not that at&t could bother to deliver a timely text.

these were time-stamped 3 hours earlier! faaaan-tas-tic.

note to steve jobs: just raise the cash and buy out at&t, will you please? toss those mo-fo fat-cat executives outta their high towers preferably without benefit of stairs, ok?

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posted by fortune | 12:41 PM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 1 comments