Plaidophile

I called the number they provided, and the CSR (who mumbled and slurred his speech) insisted on looking up order status on the number I was calling from (my Seattle cellphone number) and of course didn't find anything. I explained that I just had an order number and could I please use that, and he said, no, I needed to give him the home phone number and my name and so on. So I gave him that, and he said that the name on the account was different than my name, and he wouldn't specify what that name was. So I asked him again if I could give him the order number, and he said no. So I read off the exact error message that I saw on the signup page, and he said, okay, give him the order number. So I gave him the order number, and he said it was the same order number he had in front of him.

I asked why the order was declined, and he said it was because my credit came up as "U" which meant I had to set up a credit-card-based auto-payment. I asked what "U" meant, since I have excellent credit by every metric that one can measure it. He said that it could be because I wasn't a previous AT&T/PacBell customer. (So much for the fact I had to give them my SSN when I made the order to begin with!)

I asked if I could set up that auto-payment, and he said the system "wouldn't let" him, but I could try calling back tomorrow or Tuesday, because "the phone line is too new." He also asked if the phone line was even active; I said I couldn't because I don't have an actual phone (since I haven't needed one in over three years). He said to buy a phone and call back tomorrow or Tuesday.

I said okay, and he said, "Thank you for choosing AT&T" and hung up before I could say something like "it's not like I had a goddamn choice."

So anyway, I just bought a phone (I was planning on getting one anyway, just to have somewhere more appropriate for my mom to call than my cellphone since I'm going to have this infinite-minute dumping ground anyway), tested the line, and ordered DSL from sonic.net, who I've heard decent things about. Hopefully that'll go better.

(And meanwhile, hey, sonic.net comes with free dialup, so I can stop using my cellphone as a modem and get back on AIM/Jabber/et al.)

4:08 PM Yep, online via dialup. It's actually a bit slower (since my cellphone is EDGE), but it's a lot more capable (I can actually ssh and AIM and so on!) and much more reliable (I don't have to worry about walking away from the computer with my phone in my pocket...) And theoretically I'll have 6.0/768 DSL in a few days. I'm not sure I needed to order a new modem (since I already have two other modems from previous DSL providers) but it was free after rebate so I figured I'd go ahead and get it, in case it had a built-in PPPoE dialer or something.