Hello, I am the only white face at AT&T you'll ever see
I moved to a new house, OK. And I had to get a new phone number because AT&T, who bought out BellSouth, who was my original phone service provider, said they couldn't let me keep my old phone number. So I arranged to have them transfer my DSL service over to the new phone number.
What does it mean to transfer an account? I can tell you what it means to me and what they SAID it meant to them. It means they don't delete my old account and set me up a totally new and different account. It means nothing changes except the phone number associated with the account.
So guess what they did? I'll bet you know already, especially if you've ever dealt with either BellSouth or AT&T.
Yeah, they canned my email account and set up a totally different one, with a new email address that was something like memphis452343623@att.net or some shit like that which no one knows and I am sure as hell not going to use.
This is not what we agreed upon.
Sooooooo, I call them on the phone yesterday after work. It was 5:30 when I got on the phone. I got a woman's voice, of course, for their automated voice system.
Now, even when they were BellSouth the voice system was always a woman, which I blogged about how odd it is that everyone has only a woman's voice on their automated systems since we're all going to be cursing and screaming at it and getting used to the idea of screaming obscenities at women because of this. But I digress.
Bitch asks me whether I want English or Spanish. She asks this in English, by the way, and I am calling from the United States to the United States, so it should be fucking obvious that I want English unless I ask for something else. Then Bitch asks me for my name, my telephone number, and my fucking social security number.
Exsqueeze me?!
Bitch then asks me to describe my problem, as if she's going to be able to decipher it even as she's telling me "I did not understand that. Did you say "frabble wackie?" Please repeat." Yeah, good luck with that. So anyway, then she asks me to decide for myself what department she should transfer me to (i.e. place me on hold with for an hour.)
So, transferring me turns out to be the same thing as me just calling all over again. I get the Bitch again, asking me for my name, phone number, social security number, and the whole bit. Then Bitch says she's going to connect me to the department. I sit on hold forever until "Ann" in Bangalore picks up.
"Hallo, my name ees Ann. How may eye hellup you today?"
I describe my problem in detail.
"Eye am sowwy, I cannot help you with that. You need a totally different department. I will transfer you."
"Ann" then sends me back to START where Bitch asks for my name, phone number, social and all that shit. Then I get another "Ann" in Bangalore who cannot help me. This goes on and on in circles until the last "Ann" tries to transfer me to the Billing Department. This is when I get Bitch telling me that I have called AFTER HOURS AND WILL HAVE TO CALL BACK TOMORROW! And then Bitch hangs up on me!!!!!!
Oh, I was SCREAMING MAD.
FUCK YOU AT&T!!!!!!
My cat was now hiding in the living room while I screamed every obscenity known to man back in the back bedroom where the computer is.
I cannot believe you fucking hung up on me, you fucking biiiiiiiiiiiiitch!
This morning I called Bitch from work. Bitch could not help me, once again, but she could transfer me a lot, so she was doing that. This time, while I had Bitch on the phone not helping me, I also opened up a chat window on the BellSouth/AT&T website and started trying to get "Ann" in India to help me that way, too. "Chat Ann" could not help me and could not transfer me. Instead, "Chat Ann" tried to transfer me by putting up a hyperlink and saying "I cannot help you, but if you go to this link, they can probably help you."
"Probably" help me? That makes me feel SOOOOOOO good.
I asked "Chat Ann" for a supervisor, since no one at AT & T Bangalore seems to have the authority to do anything at all and I clearly need to start screaming at someone with a larger paycheck and more power to make some changes at the infamous AT&T, henceforth to be known as the Big Automated Mindfuck Bitch (BAMB).
Meanwhile, I clicked the link Online Annie gave me and opened up another chat window with AT&T BAMB.
So now I have AT&T BAMB on the phone, AT&T BAMB in a chat window supposedly going to retrieve her manager, who also is named "Ann", and AT&T BAMB in another chat window still waiting for a technician.
While all of this is going on, a miracle occurs.
Wait, before I tell you about the miracle I should tell you that while all of this was going on my telephone came loose from the wall mount over my desk and fell in the floor with a huge CRASH! I have no idea how this happened as I was totally calm and controlled during this entire ordeal, as you might well imagine. But getting back to the story ...
As I was saying, a miracle suddenly occurs. God must have seen me here surrounded by all of this Indian estrogen and taken pity on me. This is something he hasn't done in a VERY LONG time, so I was quite surprised. Anyway, the Red Sea parted, God came down from Mount Ararat or whatever, and I was suddenly connected with an honest-to-goodness American woman on the telephone.
"Yo, wuzzup?"
"Oh, thank God you're here! Please help me," I said. Well, OK, I didn't say it exactly in those words, but that's what I was thinking. Anyway, Keshia from America and on my telephone said she was able to help me. So I sat on hold without being transferred or hung up on while she worked on my account. It took all of about a minute, as I knew it would. I mean, hell, I'm in IT and I know how simple of a fix this is that I'm asking for. They should just let me do it my own damn self instead of putting me through all this shit, but since they won't I have to jump through fire.
So, a minute goes by while I listen to AT&T propaganda recordings and then Keshea comes on the line again.
"OK, it's done."
Thank you. Thank you for speaking English and thank you for being American and thank you for doing what I have been on the phone since yesterday trying to get someone to do and thank you for not giving me shit while you do it. Thank you very much.
And that is life with the new, larger, AT&T.
Yay. I'm so excited.
