Best thing since sliced bread

I called to have my second phone line disconnected this afternoon. I intend to take the savings and apply them to our cable internet service. Personally, I don't like the phone company very much. It goes back many years, but I have a good memory.

You would think that the job of the customer service person is to help you get your service disconnected. This is not their job. Their job is to convince you to keep your service (and perhaps add some new features). But I am steadfast in these situations. Polite, but unyielding.

My favorite offer, which the phone representative recommended was vacation service. Apparently, they can make your phone line not work for the low low price of $3/month. I need to start a business where I offer to bill people small amounts for doing nothing. I'd be happy to do nothing for you for $2.75 per month.

The full phone only costs something like $9 per month anyway, but the extra fees cost something like $10 more. That includes things like federal end user line charge, which isn't a federal charge at all (just a charge that some federal rule says the phone company can charge you and keep for themselves). You can bet my $3 phone line was actually going to cost $13--and it wouldn't even work.

At the end of the conversation, they offered me $10 off my $9 line for 6 months, which they pointed out is like getting the line free for six months. For insight into why that isn't like free, see the previous paragraph.

The very last question was some kind of survey thing. Would you say you receive excellent service from SBC? My answer: let's just say I told the truth.