Missives from the 6th Floor

There's a communal Blackberry @ work - the on-call developer for the week carries it around. It's serviced by T-Mobile, and we have zero coverage at the house (it's been saying "Searching for network..." since I got home last night). So I did a little research and found the Palm Blackberry Connect software.

When I logged into Cingulars website this morning to change my plan, the first thing I noticed is that they listed my account as past due. I checked with our bank, and the payment they claim they haven't received was posted 10 days before the due date. Ok, time to get on the phone...

I've now been on the phone for over a half-hour - apparently when Cingular sent us a letter saying our billing address had changed and to get the new one from Customer Service or their website, what they meant was "unless your account was ever associated with a business sponsor, your billing address has changed." Their front-line customer service folks didn't know that either - so we happily sent our payment to the "wrong address."

It had my account number on it - but apparently if you send payment to the wrong-address, Cingular, in their infinite wisdom, just returns the payment to your bank.

After hearing no fewer than five times that this is all 'cause I'm an "old AT&T customer" and that I should have sent payment to the address on my statement (the one that the letter said not to send payment to), I lost it with the customer service rep.

I finally spoke to someone in receivables management, and she apologized - I was far from the first person this had happened to recently. So now they're researching the payment.

Of course, that doesn't solve the problem that until this gets sorted out I can't make any changes to my account - and even once I can, the "Blackberry Connect" data plan I need isn't available to "old AT&T customers" so I'll have to change my voice plan, get a new SIM, and sign up for a new contract with a company who's only virtue is that they have coverage at my house.

I know that physical violence doesn't solve anything - but kicking the shit out of some Cingular executive has a certain appeal right now.