I almost made a movie with Andy Dick

Okay so the reason why I was thinking this as I was breastfeeding my kid while the other one watched Sesame Street in the other room was I am about as far from making a movie with anyone anymore never mind Andy Dick. And in his defense, with all the flack about him, the meeting for that movie was very professional and collaborative and it was a damn shame his musician friend with the financing backed out.

So today I want to write about the antithesis of Andy Dick. Corporate conglomerates. And my focus of the day is the f#@%-up conglomerate AT&T/SBC Global. Believe me, there are perks to be had from their rampant incompetency, like the first time they raked me over the coals when I moved from Los Angeles to San Jose, I had high speed dirt cheap for a year. This time, I have like 3 free months or something like that for fiber optic U-Verse but honestly, it was not worth the weeks of high-speedless pain and frustration.

It started on a sunny San Jose morning where I made a seemingly seamless call to a AT&T/SBC Global customer service rep to transfer my very basic service of a phone line costing $5 a month (to service the DSL) and DSL to my new Berkeley home. We chatted about San Jose, kids, what have you, and then she made the transfer to happen on move day. I even made it a day before so my husband who works for an internet entertainment company could have internet at home without a break in service. Aren't I considerate? I was given a transfer reference number, which I warn you, means nothing despite how official it sounds with its letters and numbers combination as they don't reference between departments and there are many many insidious departments in a conglomerate. "Just walk that little modem from one house to the other, plug it in, and Walla!" the sunny rep said. What is the opposite of "Walla"? Is it giving someone the "rasberry" or farting in a pillow case and throwing it over someone's head? Because the day we moved, we plugged in the modem and Walla, nada. Nothing. No parade of fun red and green rectangle lights. No surfing the net right away for information on our new trash day, placing postings for babysitters or Yelp for take out referrals after unpacking for 22 hours. No internet. Cut off. So now, without preschool, nanny and my life in boxes, I have to call AT&T and start again.

I should be featured at a Customer Service Dos and Don'ts symposium at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas for the next 22 days of hell. I spent time on my cell phone with a long line of customer service reps on the service side, and on the customer service side, in the three departments of phone line, internet and U-Verse. None of them talked to each other, none of the notes from one showed up on the screen of the other, and I had a notepad with Tami's and Brent's and Latesha's names crossed out faster than you can eat a grape. When I tried to get back to the rep that promised they were sorting this out and would get back to me, I would be told that there is no way to directly call them even if I know their name, ID number and location in Arizona. Finally, someone called me from an LA office with an actual direct dial number, and I think she realized after my 22nd hysterical message back to her, she had made a grave error in sympathizing with the customer. I was then informed there is no DSL in my area, there are no U-Verse modems in my area, my phone line is dead, my account was closed, there are two closed accounts in my name,it's Friday and the department I need is closed till Monday, and one rep even told me at the end of my long winded story told for the fourteenth time that I was better off with Comcast. Finally, Christine in LA saved the day, and steady sailing, got to the top of the management heap and had someone figure out what the hell had happened with my account. I got expedited U-Verse 22 days after my original request to transfer service. Word to the wise, I only went through this to not lose my email address since I have no time to change it over right now. Get a Gmail account and start using it. You may not be a famous writer yet with publishers emailing you lucrative deals only to get a failure message to your closed email account, but one day you may be!