Last night, sitting in the dark, the phone rang. Fortunately, in addition to the cordless phone I have a “regular” phone too, so I answered it. It was Southwestern Bell collections. Somehow, in a flash of brilliance, I never paid my phone bill. I had no light, no way to make a payment, and so I told them I would call today. He told me to be sure to call in today, because the disconnect order was for today.
I called in today to ask if they could extend the bill due date to the 15th. You can’t tell me that in the magic world of today’s computers you can’t extend a date like that. The first woman I talked to was snitty as could be, and said no way. But that I could make a payment today & they would not cut off my phone. I forgot to ask if I could make a partial payment… So after I hung up I counted out all the cashola I have on hand ($40 less than what they want) and called back to see if that would be enough, if I paid that if they would then extend me to the 15th. (Since the 15th falls on Monday & direct deposits are normally early, I may even have the funds on the 13th.) That service rep told me it has already been cut off! Grrr… and that they have to have the full amount to turn it back on. Well, FINE. I don’t need a phone anyways. I have a cable modem at home, a cell phone, and people can just call me there! It ticks me off that they are going to charge me an extra $20 for cutting it off, when it appears the first woman “flipped the switch” when I told her I didn’t think I would be paying it today. Here I probably could have come up with that extra $40 pretty easily, and it would have been no big deal. Instead they will charge me more moola… Damn.
Maybe I should have listened to MCI the last time they called to switch my service. Except they don’t have Call Notes, and I don’t have an answering machine. I really like Call Notes, it is the ONE thing that has kept me with SWBell. Hmmm, I might just use that money to go buy an answering machine and switch anyways!