Oh Best Beloved, I have a tale of “Customer Service” gone astray that has left me, three days later, still feeling a trifle distraught that I could be such a bad customer…

“What happened?” you ask.

Ah, it was indeed a trial. How burdensome, how difficult it must be for a mega-telecommunications conglomerate to have such a woefully inadequate customer as I.

I wish I had a recording of my call to AT&T to share with you, so you could hear it yourself, and weep for my inadequacies.

Did you know that it is my fault, according to customer service representative “Vic” - I think that was his name - I gave up after 5 times of asking him to repeat his name and twice asking him to spell it, marveling all the while that three little letters could become so badly garbled and wondering precisely where our “Vic” had learned his version of what I think was English and…

Oh. Sorry. Wandered off the topic there.

Anyways, did you know that it is my fault according to “Vic” and his supervisor, “Spencer,” that I don’t know my 4-digit customer ID for AT&T?

This is the 4-digit customer ID that is supposedly printed right next to my phone number on my bills.

It isn’t.

In fact, it does not appear anywhere on my AT&T on-line bills, and never has.

Truly.

It turns out that I am such a bad customer, so naughty, so troublesome for not having this information that AT&T has not given to me, that I was finally told, after many many minutes were wasted of my life, that I’d have to call back when I had My ID in hand, even after I explained repeatedly that I couldn’t have said ID in hand as their online bill doesn’t have and has never had that information.

Well, Oh Best Beloved, what do you think happened then?

Vic told me I should look at my paper bill and give them the ID number that was clearly printed there, right on every paper bill.

Oh? And where was I supposed to get this paper bill? The point of on-line billing is to eliminate paper bills and I’d told Vic and Spencer repeatedly and repeatedly (and repeatedly) that I didn’t get paper bills as I was an on-line customer!

I never got my request to buy a new service handled through “Vic” and “Spencer” because:

(You’ll never guess why, Oh Best Beloved!)

I didn’t have my 4-digit customer ID.

Is this a great way to do business, or what?

AT&T has complained to our public service commission that their land-lines ‘can’t compete’ with the alternatives that are now available to their customers, and that their customer base is rapidly falling off.

What a surprise.

I can tell them why.

Have I told you, Oh Best Beloved, about my new cellphone?