Verizon Versus AT&T

About 6 months ago, a very polite technician from AT&T came to my door with a customer satisfaction survey. This took about 10 minutes, at the end he asked me to sign, which I thought was a bit weird but whatever. Turns out that at the time I had AT&T for one service & Verizon for the other (can't remember who was Long Distance or who was Local).

I suddenly found myself entirely in thrall to AT&T. Why those dirty, underhanded bastards! But then I shrugged it off - after all, I've had AT&T for years and never had a problem.

Then they started doing goofy things to my bill - I'd pay it, but they wouldn't credit the payment & next month my bill would be twice as big. If I only paid the new charges then the old charges still showed up as unpaid...until I just paid the whole thing, then suddenly I had this credit.

Granted, I have a cell phone through work that allows me to make reasonable toll calls for free. So we're talking $30 or so a month, plus any long distance calls. Not much, but having a monthly battle with the phone company that thinks I owe $60+ and won't properly credit my account until I overpay is annoying.

Worst of all, this happened twice. Come on AT&T - you really expect me to believe in this age of computer spread sheets, you can't prepare my invoice on a monthly basis?

So I called Verizon and set up my new phone service. Now I get the same phone service, plus have Call Waiting and Caller ID with no additional charge (could have even taken a 3rd service). Then the nice lady pitched me DSL, which is only $9 a month more than I'm paying right now for dial-up. Need I say it - SOLD!