When I reached work today, I had two calls waiting from… Saturday. I don’t know why AT&T called my work phone before calling my cell phone, which I had listed as my primary phone. It makes me shudder, to be honest. This appears to be related to the way they fudged up my AT&T High Speed Internet order a couple of months ago to not list my apartment number. We all know how that story went…

So, I had a voicemail waiting for me which asked me to “please call us back at ###-###-#### to verify some information.” Of course, what information was to be verified was not outlined, and of course when I called back the number above, they didn’t have a clue either. Finally, we guessed that it had to do with the fact that I had an existing AT&T High Speed Internet (HSI) connect, that wasn’t compatible with U-Verse. Fine… I could deal with that. Except, now, I was told that U-Verse couldn’t cancel my account that I would have to do it myself or the U-Verse installation crew wouldn’t be able to do their job on Thursday.

First of all, what the hell? Let me get the two companies involved here: AT&T and… AT&T. They’re both the same freaking company. As a consumer, I don’t give a rat’s hairy ass that U-Verse is a cooler sounding name with more marketable features. I have internet, I want TV. Through the same bloody company. I shouldn’t have to cancel and start a new account to achieve this simple task. It feels like infighting between the heirs-to-be of a rich businessman’s empire. Nobody knows squat about business so they resort to squabbling with each other. The worst part is if I hadn’t called back to “verify some information”, my installer would come in on Thursday and tell me that, “Oh, well I can’t do it now.”

The story doesn’t end here. I, in an online chat with AT&T U-Verse, determined exactly what I needed to do. After determining that I had to go to AT&T HSI to cancel my DSL account and then sign up for an internet account through AT&T U-Verse HSI (the confusion NEVER ends with these guys) I asked the support person what the offers were for U-Verse internet. She (or he… I can’t tell for obvious reasons but I feel like the name was Joan) said that I would need to get in touch with AT&T HSI for any offers since I had internet through them. WHAT? I was told to call up AT&T HSI and ask them for offers on AT&T U-Verse HSI?! Is that allowed? I thought they were separate entities!

To confirm that I actually had the information I needed, I got in a chat with an AT&T HSI rep. to review all the details. He said that I would have to contact AT&T U-Verse to figure out the details. I told (or rather, typed) him quite curtly that, “U-Verse asked me to get in touch with you and I would prefer not to enter an infinite loop, at this point.” He then told me to contact their tech department by phone call. Oh, but their offices are only open when I’m in office. Brilliant.

My decision: I’m going to send them a curt, angry email tonight. Last time I sent them a curt, angry email I got a phone call back within 15 minutes that fixed everything. Looks like its time to do that again. And if I don’t get a response, I will just have to call them and sound exasperated.

I didn’t know TV was this freaking hard to get!

Phew.