Thank You For Choosing AT&T - My VOIP Adventure: Part II
Earlier this week I decided to dump one of my AT&T land lines and transfer my main phone number over to Vonage. While I’m excited by the idea of taking a leap forward into the world of VoIP, and happy to be taking some of my business away from AT&T, the move is not without risks.
My main concerns:
- Vonage’s quality of service may not what I’m used to. That would be the quality of the calls, not the quality of the customer service.
- I have this lingering fear that AT&T will do something to screw up my order in such a way that my DSL (complete with the static IP address I’ve had for almost a decade) will be disconnected.
Needless to say, when an envelope from AT&T arrived yesterday afternoon I opened it with dread. In my mind the name AT&T is synonymous with “bureaucratic snafu”.
The letter read:
“Thank you for choosing AT&T California for your telecommunications services. This letter confirms your order.”
My order? You mean my order to disconnect my service?
Page two of the letter contains a very detailed account of all of the services that are being disconnected. I scanned the long list of calling services to verify that everything was being removed. By the time I got to “Remove - Caller ID - $6.17″ I knew I’d made the right decision. I was paying $6.17 a month for Caller ID?!
Page three contains some regulatory language, as well as a pitch for for me to sign up for a service that will combine all of my billing onto a single statement. Clearly, that’s not going to happen any time soon.
Page four was left intentionally blank.
So, as I understand this, AT&T sent me a letter thanking me for disconnecting my service. I wonder what they’ll do when I switch to a cable modem?
Meanwhile, my Vonage adapter has arrived and my VOIP service is up and running with a temporary number while I wait for the transfer to take place. So far the quality seems fine - although all I’ve actually done is order Indian food.
Technorati Tags: AT&T, Vonage, T, VG, VoIP, Telcom
RSS
3 Comment(s) so far
1. Jim wrote on June 25th, 2006 at 4:07 am
But didn’t the Indian food taste better than ever knowing that the order came using Vonage and not AT&T??
2. Kirk wrote on June 25th, 2006 at 9:15 am
The Indian food hasn’t arrived yet. I ordered from India. The rates were so cheap I couldn’t resist.
3. Jim wrote on June 26th, 2006 at 1:35 pm
Ironically, even if you were getting delivery from down the street, it’s entirely possible that you were ordering it from India.