I fucking hate AT&T
3/5/09 12:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wobblerlorriThe fuckers have re-assimilated Bellsouth -- back in days of yore it was all one big telephone conglomerate, fondly referred to as Ma Bell. Service was good, there was one phone company, one long distance service, they installed the phone lines in your house, and all the equipment belonged to them, even the phone. If it broke, you called for service (which was fast and free), and it was fixed. Then in the early 80's it was hacked up into the Baby Bells, local Bell companies covering regions of the country.
Because a monopoly is BAD, you know.
The local phone service was also separated from long distance service. The original service was rebranded AT&T, and became one of several available to the Cheerful Consumer.
Now, 20 some odd years later, AT&T is quietly partnering with Yahoo to buy up the internet services of the various Bells. They've already gotten their claws into Bellsouth, which is my ISP.
In order to make this transition as painful as possible, I've had to change the settings in my email client, which is Thunderbird. I dutifully made the changes, including the peculiar change of the ports from 110 for POP and 25 for SMTP to what AT&T wants, which is 995 for POP and 465 for SMTP.
Now I can't get email. And my password doesn't work, which I never changed. I went back to my old settings, and still can't get email. Totally hosed. I went to the AT&T support site, tried live chat, never got a tech. Tried the phone, never got a tech. Tried resetting my password via their site, it times out halfway through. Apparently LOTS of folks have hosed up their email clients.
Now I'm sitting waiting for a live chat tech, because my fucking account is LOCKED. Nice.
Fuck. I live by my email. I've been without it for 8 hours now, and I know it's piling up like shit from an elephant with runs.
Shit.
ETA: Finally got a tech on line at about 12 midnight, and after trying many different things we got my email working at 1:45 am. YAY!! He didn't say so, but apparently a LOT of people were having issues with this changeover, and more than likely most were less than polite, since he thanked me for being patient. Hell, I've been on the other side of the phone too many times, it's not the tech's fault my email was hosed up. Of course, I'm using servers that are not what AT&T told me to use in their friendly little email, but fuck if I care. I'm getting my email!
Because a monopoly is BAD, you know.
The local phone service was also separated from long distance service. The original service was rebranded AT&T, and became one of several available to the Cheerful Consumer.
Now, 20 some odd years later, AT&T is quietly partnering with Yahoo to buy up the internet services of the various Bells. They've already gotten their claws into Bellsouth, which is my ISP.
In order to make this transition as painful as possible, I've had to change the settings in my email client, which is Thunderbird. I dutifully made the changes, including the peculiar change of the ports from 110 for POP and 25 for SMTP to what AT&T wants, which is 995 for POP and 465 for SMTP.
Now I can't get email. And my password doesn't work, which I never changed. I went back to my old settings, and still can't get email. Totally hosed. I went to the AT&T support site, tried live chat, never got a tech. Tried the phone, never got a tech. Tried resetting my password via their site, it times out halfway through. Apparently LOTS of folks have hosed up their email clients.
Now I'm sitting waiting for a live chat tech, because my fucking account is LOCKED. Nice.
Fuck. I live by my email. I've been without it for 8 hours now, and I know it's piling up like shit from an elephant with runs.
Shit.
ETA: Finally got a tech on line at about 12 midnight, and after trying many different things we got my email working at 1:45 am. YAY!! He didn't say so, but apparently a LOT of people were having issues with this changeover, and more than likely most were less than polite, since he thanked me for being patient. Hell, I've been on the other side of the phone too many times, it's not the tech's fault my email was hosed up. Of course, I'm using servers that are not what AT&T told me to use in their friendly little email, but fuck if I care. I'm getting my email!
