Ruminations About the Disintegration of ATT/Yahoo at SBC

Dearest Growing (boy baby coming in January in Phoenix, courtesy of Sarah)Audience:

Your grandma Letty participated in the deregulation of AT&T in the late 1970s when it surrendered its monopoly status. (That means that up till then it was the only phone company in the country. It was sued and the Federal Trade Commission said it had to break up into four "Baby Bells" and compete with Sprint and a few others which wanted to begin as national phone companies.) A man named deVries was it's CEO, and an assemblage of engineers, most of them on the verge of retirement, gathered in Orlado to offer rebuttals to the government's case.

We often, we 5 editors, worked into the night for this goal of stopping deregulation. Our weapons were words turned out by long-term, spoiled, AT&T project engineers who had seniority simply because, like committee heads in the US House of Representatives, they had been around a long time doing very little. In corporate America in the 50s and 60s,an AT&T job was prized for that very reason. High pay, few demands, a veritable comforable couch of a job: that was AT&T.

My first husband, a very winning personality, was recruited by AT&T for his first job in Kansas City, so I know in decades what I say. He also had Navy service, and AT&T promised to make up the difference between his Ensign paycheck and his original ATT paycheck. We got hundreds of dollars for months because they didn't know he had only worked for them for 6 weeks so was entitled to 6 weeks worth of difference, if that's clear. The place was so big and unwieldy they didn't know what they were doing much of the time. Being an honorable man, he wrote his old superior and asked what to do. The superior said "keep it." Bob sent it back.

Flash forward to divistiture, which is what it was called when the FTC said "split up". It was a true boondoggle, but it kept these fellows paid until they all retired. It all came to nothing. Hence: Sprint, Nextel, and now, back again, AT&T.

Flash forward to my ATT/Yahoo Account, masquerading as SBCGlobal.net. Because the whole deal of our changing from 2 phone lines, John's and mine, to one (John's) we caused an international flap, from India to Kansas City. It took 8 tech support calls to AT&T which all started with an anoying series of canned questions to a guy in India. Now I respectfully submit they are superior to us technically in Bangalore. I also submit that as troubleshooters they are idiots. I recently had trouble with a Dell power cord and all the guy could do was keep sending the same thing. A tech guy here solved it in two seconds. But I digress. After talking to Tier 1 technical support, as they are called, I had done everything they told me to do before calling so they surrendered me to Tier 2. Enter Kansas City. We'd fix it immediately, after a little tweaking, and then SBC would stop my account. Even after I had been rerigistered twice, they said I wasn't registered. Nothing would convince them otherwise. We went hopefully to an ATT phone store. They didn't haveTHE PHONE NUMBER OF TECH SUPPORT AND COULDN'T FIND IT ON THE WEB. The manager of the store said he would call customer service for us. We waited the usual 15 minutes and left in discust. I finally found a supervisor (after a letter of apology from AT&T for messing us up) and wrote her that I didn't want apologies, I wanted solutions. I heard, typically, nothing back.
Now I know I'm no computer guru. I also know after doing my own troubleshooting, including taking the battery out of my laptop, then putting it back in (that worked after Tier 2 gave up) but the Bangalore gang is really useless for anyone who has some experience. Not for nothing have I been trying to work computers from the old Compaq days throgh a Community Leader with AOL to now where, for heaven's sake, I have a blog. Can't AT&T had a tier 2 helpline immediately for us old guys?

Work hard on your computer skills, evereyone. The guys in Bengalore are lost if it isn't rote.

A guaranteed Audience of 27

Dears:
Pity the poor first-time blogger who sends wisdom into the ether and it is like a Billboard in the woods: No one ever sees it. All 27 of you grandchildren, and perhaps your mommys and daddys and step mommys and step daddys could, possibly, take and interest.
The first thing I have to tell you is that I'm vastly encouraged by the election results in Iowa. Your grandmother was a sort-of hippy who worked for Kennedy 1 and sees a Black Camelot on the Horizon. (Ask your parents what that means. You should find out.)
Jackie and John Kennedy were not afraid of excellence. Take Pat Nixon, who called in a decorator from California to furnish the Oval Office (the Place where the business of our country is done in the White House.) Then they were so proud of it they replicated it in the Nixon Library in Fullerton California. It is simply awful/terrible. I shuddered at the sight. Compare that was Jackie Kennedy who took a run-down White House and called in Museum Heads and International Furniture Experts to fix it. Not a decorator, I suspect, in the mix. Or if one existed, they deferred to taste-makers of great reputation.
Or take the Kennedy Cabinet. Not a yes-man in the herd. It was a time of challenge and ferment, and it was exciting after Eisenhower. When I met Mamie Eisenhower she was mainly interested in lipstick shades. Not a good sign.
Well, darlings, I'm sure I'm taxing your interest. What do you care about Camelot and who in ned was Mamie Eisenhower? Find out, and you'll grow big and strong. And informed.

Loving all of you
Grandma Letty