Jabberwocky for 2005 February 15

My cell phone broke, so off I trucked to the store to see what I could do about it. They sent me home to call customer service on an 800 number--always such a pleasure, what with punching in a gazillion numbers in a menu, waiting forever, and then when you get transferred, punching in the same numbers AGAIN. I must have spent four hours on the phone yesterday, and the upshot was they wouldn't do anything for me unless I would transfer my AT&T contract to a Cingular one, extend it for one year, and they would give me a "discount" on a new phone. What a ripoff.

The guy (obviously an outsource guy and very hard to understand) then informed me that he couldn't do this for me and I would have to call ANOTHER 800 number and explain to him about the break. I passed on that, and went back to the store today. Mistake. The computers were down, the clerk was slow, and he kept stopping taking care of me to help every random person who wandered in. In addition, the SIM card from my old phone can't go in my new one so I will have to re-do all my phone numbers. Grrrrrr.

What I am waiting for is for them to mess up the billing. I switched from my old contract to the new one in October, and have yet to have a month when they haven't messed up the billing. The fun thing in January was the time they refunded my payment in a check and then disconnected my phone for non-payment. Sigh.

In addition, my old nemesis, Specialty Labs, has billed the most recent viral load test to Medicare, which has (surprisingly) never heard of me.