Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I said earlier, "What's next?" The answer was in the mail. My phone bill, for $286.95. This was wrong wrong wrong. A closer look revealed the reason: my unlimited evenings/weekends airtime was gone. Bad bad.

I called AT&T to complain that my bill was in error. I was told the evenings-and-weekends promotion had "expired". When I got my first cell phone, no expiration date was mentioned. It was $5/month to add unlimited evening and weekend airtime, and the length of time for which that offer was extended was limited, but the plan had no time limit on it. Not "for the first year" or any other such nonsense: as long as I pay the extra $5. Well now it's "expired". And when the customer service operator went to look things up, she said, "Oh, this actually should have expired back in 1999." Bull****. That's when the signup period for it ended. I've had it -- and made pretty impressive use of it -- as long as I've had my cell phone. In fact, it was one of the things that made a cell phone make sense in the first place!

Background: when I moved to Baltimore, I realized that in-state long distance was going to eat me alive. Getting a cell phone and no voice landline was the most cost-effective solution to the problem, but it hinged on having lots of evening minutes.

Of course, this little change happened with absolutely no notice to me, so the first I found out about having lost my unlimited evening airtime back in late May was on the bill that arrived today. After I'd racked up a thousand minutes of evening calls.

So I was faced with a decision: do I argue and argue and argue and argue in the face of a customer service operator telling me she couldn't put that option back on my account because that option No Longer Exists, or do I take the carrot held out to me: a plan with 500 minutes of daytime, 3000 minutes of evenings and weekends, and for the first year an extra 200 "anytime" minutes, as the path of least resistance? I made her wait for me to dig up as many old phone bills as I could find quickly, to see whether I usually exceed 3000 minutes of evenings and weekends or not. I know I have done so on at least a couple of occasions in the past, but most of the bills I could find were around 2500 evening minutes. Real Soon Now, I've got to find every old phone bill I've got, to check in more detail. Anyhow, she said she could apply the change retroactively and have my bill recalculated.

So since the erroneous bill separated airtime into "Included in Plan", "First Incoming Minute" (which I'm losing), "Peak", "Off Peak", and "Weekend", she subtracted the airtime charges for "Off Peak" and "Weekend". That was still wrong, because I shouldn't have had any Peak airtime charges -- all of my peak time should have been "included in plan". The problem was that in the first ten days of the billing period, my evening and weekend calls were using up plan minutes, not showing up as "off peak", etc. So after the first ten days, there were no "plan" minutes left. I tried to explain this to her, and she insisted that no, evening minutes get charged against evening time, not against daytime time. I pointed out that was true for the plan she'd just signed me up for, but not for the plan under which the erroneous bill was calculated. Eventually she gave up and went to ask a supervisor. She came back and said, "Sir, someone in another department is recalculating your bill by hand. This could take a while. How late can I call you back tonight?" (I never did get that call back, unless that was the call that arrived during band practice with no caller-ID.)

The thing that someone at AT&T has to be made to understand is this: if they dick around with my plan in such a way that it's no longer cheaper than a landline, I'll have to ditch the cell phone and get another land line. [Expletive] the one-year contract renewal thing; if they changed the terms under which I signed that, it's no longer what I comitted to. How much of their lawyers' time is it worth to argue about it in court if I insist on cancelling? I like having a cell phone (I'm sure some of my friends can't imagine me without it, even though I've only had it three years), but getting it was an economic decision, and I'm a starving artist: I can't afford to keep it if it stops being cost effective.

Anyhow, I can no longer access my voice mail. Is that a side effect of the changes made today? *grumble* Every time I turn around, I've got another thing to be annoyed about. Until a couple weeks ago, I was telling people how great AT&T has been, and suggesting them as a cellular carrier. If this trend continues, word-of-mouth starts going the other direction. I do not like things becoming unreliable. I do not like having terms of service suddenly -- and without notice! -- changed. I do not like having to call customer support more than once or twice a year. I do not like having somebody break something else every time they fix something for me. This service is too expensive to accept that kind of crap. Period.

Okay, I think I've finished ranting now. But I don't think I'm going to get around to the topic that's the reason for the mood indicator on this post. Maybe later.

Listening to the first album from my brother's band, from 1994. Unfortunately, I seem to have misplaced my copy of their second album. Gotta be around here somewhere.

Got to listen to Sheepie (NOT the LiveJournal user with that login name) complain about not being able to breathe properly today. She's a singer; she notices things like that and it distresses her greatly. She seemed to be starting to freak out about it, wondering whether she's becoming athsmatic or whether the air in the area is just so bad that even a healthy person experienced athsma symptoms. It sucks not being able to breathe properly, really it does, and yes, it is very disturbing. Scary. But the whole time she was complaining, I kept thinking, "These are symptoms of a really mild athsma attack, the kind I don't usually really notice unless someone points out that I'm not breathing right, or if I try to play a woodwind and realize I can't do it properly. It sucks, but scary is being a child, in bed at night, struggling like mad for each breath, afraid that if I get too tired I just won't be able to draw the next one, and lacking enough wind to call out to my parents for help." I couldn't say it, because then I'd be playing the "my pain is worse than your pain" game, and she did legitimately have something to be disturbed about, but in the freaking-out scale, there's a little gap between "uncomfortable, annoying, and a bit disturbing" and "OhmyGodIamgoingtodietonight".

But, "I'm having trouble breathing," does get you an appointment with an HMO doctor three weeks sooner than you'd get one otherwise...

Talking to someone earlier: "Gee, your mind is racing. Slow down, calm down."

"You'd be amazed at what it takes to shut up the internal dialogue inside my head."

Grumpy for lots of reasons, several having to do with AT&T, but I did think of something to not complain about:

I have a little jar of Chinese-style mustard, extra-hot.

A little gift, a surprise gift, Tuesday night. When I empty the jar, maybe I should put it on top of my monitor to remind me to think of the little things and random kindnesses when I get grumpy. In the meantime I should figure out what I've got in the kitchen that I can make for dinner that I can put extra-hot Chinese mustard on, and see if the Power Of The Mustard makes me feel better.

Here's hoping that the line of thunderstorms heading this way a) actually hit Baltimore instead of passing to the North, b) actually cool things off, and c) don't cause a power outage and take my computers down... I enjoy thunderstorms if they're not screwing something up for me at the time. And goodness knows we need rain.