The ongoing drama with the New AT&T continues.

First, let me recap:

• In mid-July, I signed up for “Auto Draft” service, which allows the New AT&T to automatically debit the payment due from my checking account on the due date.  One less thing for me to worry about, assuming they don’t screw things up. I received an email from them thanking me for enrolling.  So they clearly knew I had done so.  Just sayin’…
• In August, I got an email saying my payment was past due.  I went to the website and saw that the payment was due.  So I attempted to pay it online and a box popped up warning me that since I was already enrolled in Auto Draft, I should not proceed with a payment because doing so could result in my checking account being debited twice.  So I followed their website’s instructions, and waited for them to just debit the money as I had previously instructed.
• They didn’t.  My telephone service was suspended.  I called — on my cell phone — and explained why I hadn’t paid, and reminded them that they had my account info:  just debit the payment and be done with it!  They informed me that it takes at least a full month for Auto Draft to kick in, no matter what the website says.  So I paid.  Phone was back on that day.
• September’s payment was due on Wednesday, Sept. 10.  They authorized a debit from my account on Thursday, Sept. 4th for the amount due plus a $30 reconnect fee for my prior month’s “late” payment.  On Saturday, Sept. 6th, they suspended my internet service for “non-payment,” despite the fact that they had already authorized the auto draft two days before that for a payment that still wasn’t due for another four days.  When I called and pointed all of this out, they told me there was nothing I could do until the billing department returned the following Monday.  I asked for a supervisor, and my internet was restored that Sunday.
• Fed up with two months’ worth of foolishness, I cancelled my home telephone service on Tuesday, Sept. 9th.

This brings me to last night, when I received an email from the New AT&T stating that I owed $82.  Eighty-two bucks for just internet service?  Yeah, something’s wrong.  Again.

So this morning I call them up and try to get answers.  It turns out that while they credited me money for the local phone service, they just went ahead and billed me through October 2nd on long distance service.  Did you catch that?  I’ve still got unlimited long distance through October 2nd on a dead phone I cancelled on September 9th.

I asked why the same computer system that could see I’d cancelled my local service and could issue a credit for that was somehow able to miss that detail on the long distance service.  She didn’t have an answer for that, which didn’t surprise me at all.  There’s no explaining a series of screw-ups this large.

And to make matters worse, they can’t correct the problem until the next billing cycle — after they just go ahead and debit the extra money they already know I don’t owe them from my checking account in October.  They’ll give me a credit in November, but they still will have shorted me in October.  Guess times must be tough at the phone company, too.

But the one good bit of news is that after the customer service rep sat through this story and read all of the notes previous reps had left as they sorted through this comedy of errors, she did credit me the $30 reconnect fee I should never have had to pay to begin with.  There’s just no way to know whether that will drop the amount they debit from $82 to $52, or whether I’ll see that $30 in November along with the extra long distance.

I don’t know what’s going on with the “New AT&T,” but I sure wish we could get the old one back.

I’m just waiting for them to send me one of those silly little surveys about their customer service.  I can’t wait to tackle the question about whether or not I’d recommend the New AT&T to my friends!

Okay, I’ll admit it: when the iPhone first came out, I was among those who asked, “What’s the point?” I wondered why anyone would need all that stuff on a cell phone. Email? iPod? GPS? Come on! Just give me a phone that allows me to call people and I’m happy.

Then, at some point last year, I broke down and got one. It started when Verizon, the cell phone company I had been with for years, sent me a circular in the mail offering me the opportunity to buy their Voyager, which seemed to be a ripoff of the iPhone. Trouble was, when I went to the Verizon store to take them up on their offer, they told me that I wasn’t eligible for the offer since my contract wasn’t up. (The circular said nothing about that.) They told me that I’d have to buy the phone for almost twice what the circular said it would cost.

I called that the old “bait and switch.” And I told them what they could do with their little offers. And their phone service.

So, out of spite, I bought an iPhone. I quickly realized that we all actually do need all this stuff in a cell phone. No, really. We do.

If you don’t have one, you’re missing out. Trust me on that.

On the other hand, there is “too much of a good thing.” A recent report from WCBS-TV in New York calls Blackberry (and I imagine some iPhone users, too) have become a little too attached to their gadgets.

Eighty-seven percent of users say they bring their devices into the bedroom. (Insert your own joke here.) Another 84 percent say they check their emails one last time before bed, and 80 percent check them in the morning as soon as they get up.

In my case, it’s guilty, guilty and guilty.

I have a good excuse for bringing my phone into the bedroom now. Since shutting off my land line phone service — because of the New AT&T’s remarkably-inept billing department that debited money out of my account six days before the due date then suspended my service two days before the due date because they thought I hadn’t paid my bill — the cell is my only phone. In an emergency, I want it close by. And if I get a call early in the morning, I want it in the bedroom so I’m sure to hear it.

I also use it as a backup alarm clock. (Yes, it has an alarm function, too.)

As for the email thing, well, not that I get a lot of email, but when I do, I hate to miss out. Especially if it’s from one of you nice readers who have decided to comment on a post I’ve made. (Not that I’m hinting or anything.)

Most disturbing, I think, is the number of people who would choose their PDA over their spouse if they had to pick one or the other. The number’s not as high as those who take the Blackberry into the bedroom, but then it ought not be higher than zero.

So what about you? Do you take your cell phone into the bedroom? Check your email before you go to bed or when you get up? Do you consider yourself a gadget addict?

Well, this morning I did it:  I called the New AT&T and made my displeasure about their erroneous suspension of my internet service for non-payment of a bill I didn’t even know, their cavalier attitude about it, and their failure to follow through with a promised courtesy call, known.

And I found out one more interesting fact:  this payment that was supposed to be due tomorrow, September 10th, was ordered from my account on September 4th, two days before they suspended my service.  The money didn’t actually leave my account until Monday, but they authorized the payment through their auto-pay service on the 4th, then suspended my service two days later because they thought I didn’t pay.

That’s organization, isn’t it?

I disconnected my land line telephone service, thereby joining many people in the 21st century who haven’t had one in years.  I’ll happily rely on my iPhone for all telephone service.  (Yes, I do realize that the iPhone is also an AT&T property, but it’s out of AT&T Wireless, a division that seems completely separate and far better at customer service than the New AT&T seems to be.)

I did retain my internet service at home, and even though there’s a $5 fee for having internet service without an accompanying phone line, I don’t have to pay all of the taxes and FCC costs that go with the phone service, so I’m still ahead.  I figure, counting telephone service, the calling plan with the features I needed to block annoyance calls, and my unlimited long distance plan, I’ll be saving somewhere around $80 a month, plus about another $15 or so from cable.

That’s money I can use to pay off a credit card sooner.  I can live with that.

South Carolina, my native state, leads the nation in something.

For those of you who haven’t figured it out by now, whenever South Carolina leads the nation in anything, it is almost always bad. When they trail behind all the other states, it’s usually for something good.

Here’s a perfect example. This time, South Carolina is #1 for drivers who send cell phone text messages while driving.

The study, according to the Post and Courier, was commissioned by a company that offers a solution to the problem. That particular solution, it turns out, is an application that allows people to record a voice message that will then be translated into a text message.

I trust that most people will immediately recognize the idiocy of such a plan.

Why not just plug in the headphones or your Bluetooth ear bob and just call the person?!? If you’re going to leave a voicemail that will have to be translated into a text message, why not just leave the voicemail and call it a day?

That’s if you absolutely positively can’t wait to make the call until you get where you’re going.

Personally, I have never understood the whole text message thing. I’ve sent maybe a dozen since I got my first cell phone years ago. They’re annoying. They take more time than just calling the person. And for most people, they require that ridiculous internet shorthand that almost takes a college course to decipher.

I’m not one of those who favor laws requiring people to stay off the cell phone while they’re driving, because there are legitimate times when you need to make a call. But text messaging ought to be against the law. If it isn’t already.

When it comes to driving, what we should be reaching out to touch is the steering wheel.

So you need to know a telephone number, but you’re too lazy to pick up the phone book…if you even remember where you put it.

In the past, you dialed 411 for a little “411,” and the phone company’s computerized billing system nearly blew a chip billing you for the call.

Now, enter AT&T’s new 1-800-YELLOW-PAGES, which is a free service…for a small price.

All you have to do is call…you guessed it…1-800-YELLOW-PAGES. (Have I ever told you how much I hate trying to dial words on a telephone dial?!?) Make that 1-800-935-5697.

You deal with the same computer prompts that have become so common with the traditional 411, because Heaven forbid you actually get a human being to help you in the 21st century. But your number will come up and you have the option of being connected directly for free. (That’s for the people that aren’t only too lazy to find their phone book, but are also so ill-prepared that they’d actually call a directory assistance line without first picking up a pencil and a piece of paper.)

The only catch? You have to sit through a couple of brief audio commercials, which happen to be for businesses (wherever possible) that match the category of the listing you called for to begin with.

For most people, it’s a small price to pay, and since most people fast-forward through the majority of commercials they’d otherwise be subjected to on television, they’re still coming out ahead. I just wonder how many people will hear the commercials and decide they’d rather deal with that company…then have to redial to get their number!

I recently ran a poll about the 17-year-old student who was suspended after mouthing off to a teacher. The student was talking to his mother on his cell phone at the time, a violation of school rules. What made this situation so unique is the fact that his mother is a soldier serving in Iraq.

I did not — as one reader tried to claim — “begrudge a teenager his right to talk with his mother (currently in a war zone) without having to explain himself to a busybody.”

I don’t personally know the teacher involved, so I have no idea whether or not he or she is a “busybody.” (I suspect that the person who made that statement doesn’t know, either.)

I most certainly did begrudge him the right to speak to a teacher with profanity when he was the one breaking a rule to begin with. I suggested that if he had explained the situation to her rationally, it would have been completely unreasonable for her to still press the rule. But reason apparently never entered into the picture.

In any case, the poll results suggest that 70% of you feel that the student was completely at fault because he didn’t handle the situation well. Twenty percent blame the school entirely for the student’s suspension, despite the student’s use of profanity. One voter placed blame on the student and the school equally, and another placed blame on the mother, who should have timed her call outside of her son’s school day.