Jul 28
A Hole in the Bucket
Remember that little song? I thought of it this morning.
Because I forgot to pay my phone bill.
Actually, I didn’t forget to pay it…I just got the due date for that bill confused with the due date for my electric bill. The new AT&T, which doesn’t seem to be much of an improvement over the old one, and which delights in emailing me any time there’s something they want me to spend more money on, didn’t email me to warn me that my phone service was about to go bye-bye.
But this morning, the phone was suddenly out of service. Still thinking I had a few days before the bill was due, I started my day and checked my email blissfully unaware that my phone had been “temporarily disconnected” until I got a call on my cell from mom, who told me that she couldn’t get through.
So I signed on to my account and checked: sure enough, it was past due. (Oddly enough, the same bill also covers online service, but this worked without a problem.) So I authorized a payment of slightly more than was past due, just to show them that it was an honest mistake and that I meant to rectify it quickly and completely.
Then came the error: “Your account requires special handling. Please call AT&T at….”
Call? With what?
Naturally, I didn’t call them until I got to work; I don’t do account information over a cell phone. And as for “special handling,” they took the same information I gave their website. They had no answer about exactly what kind of “special handling” they were performing.
Or why their site didn’t just cooperate to begin with rather than directing me to use a phone that it knew didn’t work.
