Movie News

Did you hear about the new Disney Pirates of the Carribean movie? Apparently it's not as tame as we all expected... the MPAA's ratings board said it should be rated arrrrrrrr.

Bell's Worst Invention

I asked my wife tonight "How come all phone companies suck?"

"Because they can," said Lori.

Ok, so when I decided that I had suffered enough with Earthlink, I decided it was time to get a new DSL provider. AT&T had a great offer, but I had to get local service with them. Fine, I thought. I was unhappy with Pacific Bell (SBC) anyhow and I already had AT&T Long Distance. It turned out to be a pretty sweet deal... Local, Local Toll, Long Distance, DSL, all on one bill. And not a paper bill in sight, just an email once a month with a link. Log in and see how much they'd be deducting from my credit card.

Well, that all started unraveling a few weeks ago. I got a call from some woman at AT&T confirming that I had received my letter about the cancellation of my local service. I didn't get any letter. Turns out today that I *had* gotten a letter, delivered by Airborne Express. Well, someone opened it and when they figured out it was nothing of value, they slid it under the manager's door. Thanks a lot, lousy rotten neighbors.

Basically, if I wanted to keep my DSL with AT&T, I had to switch back to SBC for my local phone service. For my trouble, AT&T was giving me a check for $200. That check arrived today. So I caved, called AT&T and said I wanted to do what they wanted me to do. So they tell me that they can't put it on my AT&T bill anymore, so they need a credit card. Fine, whatever. Gave them the same credit card they already had, the same credit card they used to charge me for my whole AT&T deal.

Then they transferred me to SBC. Now that part was pretty slick, almost to make me think collusion, in that I was on hold for less than 60 seconds from the time the AT&T guy tossed me to the time that the SBC woman picked up. So went through the whole process and now I'm back at SBC for local, local toll and long distance. For coming back, I got a $50 Visa Gift Card and for taking a survey, a check for $35. I guess you could say I made out pretty good in the whole deal.

But, couldn't they just keep all their money and not be so dumb. If the stock hadn't tanked so much and been so confusing as to the splits and spin-offs, I'd sell my AT&T stock, too. And cancel my AT&T Universal Card.