Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

["Wolfe, Joanna" <joanna.wolfe AT oup.com>]

I hate AT&T
I particularly hate the fact that they made me waste 50 minutes of my
time to address a problem of theirs that they will take no ownership
for.

I tired to call a friend of mine who is out of the country to give her
an update on her sick dog.
She paid for an upgrade to her AT&T wireless plan so she could receive
calls in Mexico.
She was able to call me from Mexico (on my cell phone - different
wireless carrier)
But when I attempted to call her from my land line, which has AT&T for
long distance all 
I would get was that my international call did not go through.

So began the quest to talk to the right person at AT&T.
It took 10 minutes to go through the touch tone menus - which never
offered me a human being, and conveniently had the "0" escape hatch
disabled.
Finally I had to choose the option that I wanted to discountinue my
AT&T long distance service - okay, by this time I was seriously
considering it - to get to speak to an actual individual.

Of course the answer was that AT&T wireless and AT&T long distance
weren't the same company - of course they aren't they just have AT&T
as there name for marketing purposes! (actually, I had pretty much
figured that to be the case, but the general shmoe on the street would
say "hmm, they both say AT&T, and they keep telling me that I can get
one plan that covers all my needs")

So long distance got the same problem that I had and transferred me
off to AT&T wireless.
AT&T wireless gave me a lame story about international coverage and
different carriers.
So I said fine, transfer me to the number's voice mail. Their answer -
I can't do it - then 
back to the song and dance about other carriers and the phone being in
another country.
This didn't hold any water.  The phone does not hold the voice mail
locally.  No matter where
in the world the phone is, I know for a fact that that voice mail is
hanging out on a server 
somewhere in the US (okay, maybe India).  The bottom line is that
voice mail should not
be tied into the global position of the phone, phases of the moon, or
any other such nonsense.
And the ludicrousness that you can't leave a voicemail for someone
because they are out
of a service area or in an area serviced by another carrier is equally
stupid.  For heavens 
sake, I can retrieve my voicemail from anywhere, why can't I leave my
voicemail from 
somewhere the phone is not?

</end rant>

The only sad thing is that I really don't believe any other carrier is
any better...
Joanna Wolfe