[NOTE: If you haven't read the previous message, read it before you read this one.]
Okay, I'm back. A lady eventually comes on the line and informs me that my account is in arrears, I must pay within 48 hours, etc. I tell her I signed up for automatic payment. She says there is no such thing at SBC. "You have to go to the website every month and pay online," she tells me. I respond by reading her the following paragraph off the website…
Pay your telephone bill automatically by having the total amount of your bill charged to your credit card, or deducted from your checking or savings account at a bank, credit union, or savings and loan. Automatic bill payment eliminates overlooked bills and the deduction is automatic; there's no need to contact us each month. Your regularly scheduled bill will be automatically paid on the due date.
To this, the lady says, "Well, I don't know what it says on the website but payment is not automatic. You have to go to the website each month and enter the information so we can charge your credit card or checking account." We then hold a brief colloquy on the meaning of the word "automatic" and when she sticks to her ground, I demand to be passed to someone higher in rank at SBC.
I'll cut to the chase here: Finally, I reach a gent who figures out the problem. I had signed up for SBC's EBill plan which used to allow automatic payments but was changed two months ago so now it's like the lady said: You have to go to the site and manually enter the info to pay your bill online. He says they sent me a statement about this but if they did, I never saw it. SBC has also instituted two new automatic payment plans which they call SBC Direct Payment (for checking) and SBC EasyCharge (for credit cards). Why they didn't just e-mail me and ask if I wanted to switch over, I don't know. But the paragraph quoted above applies not to the EBill program but to the two new services. In some parts of their site, that is clear but on the page I was on, it is not.
The fellow on the phone was very nice. He said I'm not the only person who has been confused this way and he assured me that my credit rating with SBC would not suffer for the misunderstanding. He apologized in all the right places and said he'd inform the folks upstairs that something has to be fixed here.
The whole thing took well over an hour. Ah…online bill payment is such a time saver.