"Oh, someone didn't tell you that?"

From previous entries, you know we now have AT&T’s U-verse. I’ve been an AT&T customer for years with a land line, DSL, and, more recently, wireless phones. And I’ve had a combined bill for all these services that’s paid automatically through a credit card each and every month.

So, it came as a surprise to me that I was no longer enrolled in automatic bill payment. The reason? “Well, you used to have an account through your land line and now it’s through U-verse.” So? Aren’t they all AT&T? “With U-verse, it’s treated like it’s a new account.” I have to enroll like a new customer? “Yes.” But, it was three different divisions all together before in a combined bill paid automatically and now it’s still one of those divisions (wireless) along with U-verse. What makes this different. “It just is.”

There are a couple of things about all this that are perplexing. First, when I was told that I would retain combined billing for my wireless and U-verse, no one said that I would have to enroll in automatic bill paying again since U-verse is treated like you’re a whole new customer. Second, the att.com website logins are very confusing. Should I log in as a wireless customer? Should I log in as a U-verse customer? Today I tried wireless since that login screen popped up first. The customer service rep was nice but had no clue regarding my question about automatic billing. So, I was given to a U-verse rep whose paraphrases are shown above. How about ONE place to login no matter what division of AT&T provides service … and then we can split off into different areas for help or FAQs or billing or whatever.