Getting Service From Monopolies and Near-Monopolies

It turns out the AT&T website was down yesterday.  I talked with a very nice lady today (people are always nice when they are signing you up for something).  It worked out okay - I'm paying about $104 after taxes for phone, unlimited long distance, and DSL up to 3 megs, but I can't help but think I'm overpaying.  Charter never called me back, so I don't know what they would have charged.

And the sad part is I have to keep paying for Vonage, because I can't transfer that number to my new office.  Incompatible switches in Creve Coeur and Ladue.  So now I have to forward the Vonage phone  from the  home office to the office office.  Luckily, I can do that online.  Let me tell you something.  If the world made sense, AT&T would buy Vonage, scrap their website, and let you navigate your account like Vonage does.  I can change service plans, turn features like call forwarding and call waiting on and off, look at and pay my bill, download voicemails to play on the desktop, and forward referrals to a friend to make $25.  It's easy, simple, and if it weren't for the fact that the reliability is somewhat sketchy (rumor unchecked says it's because Charter slows down the Vonage packets), I'd never leave Vonage.

But it does, and I can't afford to miss phone calls or have my voice fade in and out when Franki's online.  So there it is.

I then went to the Ameren and Laclede websites (local electric and gas companies).  Ameren had a form online to fill out for service, but the form was broken.  I informed the nice lady on the phone that it was, but forget to tell her the phone numbers for Ameren aren't posted anywhere convenient to call in.

Laclede put me on hold for 8 minutes, so I hung up.

It's amazing how difficult it is to get companies to accept your money.  At least today, everyone was polite about it.