The Aerie
So I get this letter the other day.
(By the way, I'm taking a day off from the ongoing grieving process
surrounding the decline and fall of my father. Nothing new, or good,
there. Let's just say that Saturday was our family Christmas
celebration and it was... hard.)
The letter, dated November 27th (but not received until December 15th)
reads,
In an ongoing effort to maximize the efficiencies of our systems and
provide the services that our customers value most, we are removing
unused services from customer accounts. While going over our records
recently, we noticed you are not using your AT&T Wireless
PocketNet(TM) Basic Service. As a result, we will be removing this
feature from your account effective December 31, 2002.
Should you wish to retain this data service, simply complete, sign and
return the reply card attached below in the postage-paid envelope by
December 31, 2002.
Now, from my latest AT&T bill, PocketNet section:
166.188.230.240 3896.7K
Thats nearly four megabytes of data. Over a 19,800 baud link. Through
a Mitsubishi T-250 cell phone. With a screen about the size of a
matchbook cover.
That's like drinking an entire bathtub of gin through a swizzlestick,
and then having some idiot tell you you're not an alcoholic.
I'm not using my account?
So I phone up AT&T. Go through the usual rigamarole of "Press five if
you cannot understand this instruction," etc. Get hung up on once. Go
round again. Finally a human.
The human informs me that, in an effort to catch up with its
innovative competitors, AT&T has decided to jettison a good portion of
its existing consumer base in order to create "mMode", their asinine,
meaningless marketing label for their services to third-generation
(3G) mobile phones. By alienating their existing users, so the logic
seems to go, a whole slew of pierced, twentysomething
skateboard-riding consumers will rush in to fill the vacuum.
So AT&T is eliminating services to the phone I bought in the summer of
2000 specifically to use those services.
Now, you know, I can understand that, in a sort of "let's take the hit
now and reap the benefits later" kind of way. Wrongheaded, sure, but
almost understandable.
What I don't like is being lied to and played for a fool. I mean, I
don't even want to know how much time it must take to suck 3.8 Meg of
Internet gin through a 19.9K swizzlestick connection, I just know it
means I'm a serious netaholic. And some wiener named Sam Hall, V.P. of
mMode, is going to take that away from me as a favor? You may as well
try to pull the gin bottle out from under the wino you see in the
gutter!
Some kind of terse, pithy letter from me to Mr. Hall will undoubtedly
follow, as will the utter lack of any response to that letter. Mr.
Hall, if he exists at all, will never see the letter. Yet it still
must be written.
Meanwhile I have exactly one week for my business reply envelope to
reach AT&T and be properly processed before my net-fix is terminated
in the name of "progress."
As Lily Tomlin's "Ernestine the Operator" used to say, "We don't care;
we're the Phone Company, we don't have to."
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Posted by Albatross at December 23, 2002 12:00 AM