2013-10-02

Video Billed the Internet Part

Having taken an assignment and set up house in a San Francisco Bay Area apartment, another U-verse account was a must.  After hearing horror stories, no way ComCast and their shared coax is getting any business.

Having two services addresses on a single BAN is impossible.  A completely distinct U-verse account was necessary.  Consider it a double blessing.

Setting up automatic bill pay worked much better this time. After punching in the CC number into the "auto-pay" feature of AT&T's U-verse customer site, nothing happened. Well, something happened. Two weeks later (mid-September), AT&T sent a paper notice stating that it would start billing by credit card next month.

Pacific Gas & Electric set up and confirmed automatic pay-by-credit-card in one day.

Meantime, ever on the cutting edge of customer service, AT&T has sent a video bill:


That's right.  Now, a perky-voiced young robot-woman reads the bill -- with the customer's first name! -- over a full-motion, action-packed display of monthly charges just in case customers cannot scan five lines of text:



Here's the killer: NorCal service is $45.95/month for 18 Mb/s down, 2 Mb/s up.  In SoCal, it's $53.91 for 12 Mb/s down, 2 Mb/s up. What? Time to call the Account Center to see about an adjustment.

For those who don't grasp the title, a little history: