Big Phone Company, Little ProblemBig Phone Company, Little Problem

For the Desktop Pipeline email newsletter this week I wrote a rant about the greedy telephone companies who charge you for access to the Internet and have decided they also want to charge Internet sites for access to you. I got several attaboys from readers, including a note from Syd Warburton, who recounted his own struggles with SBC. (SBC is the company that, under bully-boy CEO Edward Whitacre Jr. has led the charge on this perversion of the Internet.) Warburton's problem was of a more garden-variety customer-service sort.Warburton had signed up for DSL service from SBC in October of 2004. In three months of trying, he says, SBC tech support couldn't get him up and running. But just because he didn't get any service, he says, didn't mean SBC didn't want any money. The company refused to write off its charges and last November turned his account over to a collection agency.

If you've ever done tech support you know the stupid-user problem, but this doesn't sound to me like one of those -- Warburton, who says he has a background in aerospace engineering, is telecomm manager for an engineering design firm. What it sounds like to me is another large, dysfunctional corporation that can't get out of its own way.

As for Warburton, he found the solution to his DSL problem by switching to AT&T. "They had me up and running in about 20 minutes using tech support in India," he says.

The irony, of course, is that Warburton isn't an AT&T customer any more. Gresham's Law has proven its truth again: the bad has driven out the good. SBC, about the same time it was threatening to ruin Warburton's credit rating over its own ineptitude, acquired AT&T. Warburton could wake up tomorrow morning and find out his AT&T service has been suspended until he ponies up for the SBC service he never got. Such, apparently, are the ways of "customer service" at SBC in the new century.

If you work for SBC and can do something about Warburton's problem I'd love to hear from you. (I realize I can't expect you to do anything about Whitacre except apologize.)