I didn’t get any housework done because I’ve spent the remainder of the morning on the phone trying to clear up AT&T’s confusions. Here’s the gist of 4 phone conversations, one of which was interrupted because the call was dropped because of the bad wires.

They called to ask if the technician that came earlier this week (Monday) resolved our problems.

No, the problems continue. What work did he perform?

He tested the outside wires, found that there are some problems with the wires. Nothing else.

Didn’t replace them?

No.

He was supposed to as per the previous technicians who tested the wires, identified specific bad spots, and put in an order for new cable. So now three technicians have troubleshot my problems to bad outside wires.

We’ve no information about that, just that the inside technician reduced the speed of your service when he was there earlier.

What! I’m paying for the higher speed and did not authorize him to do that, nor did he tell me he was doing that. Why did he do that?

To reduce the number of interruptions to your service.

(Aha, he’s masking the problem.) Well I want my speed restored and I think I should get a refund.

We can do that once the problems are corrected and we know how much to refund.

When are the problems going to be corrected? When are you going to replace the wires outside?

We’ll dispatch a technician to check it out.

(Erg!)