Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot?

I'm thinking I need to make "atrocious customer service" another label on the blog, but I'm also hoping it hasn't come to that.

I understand that sometimes one has to get woken up in the middle of the night, or that sometimes it happens and it's no one's fault or there's nothing anyone can do. It's not ideal, but it's city life (or on-a-plane-with-babies life). I'm pretty good at falling back asleep when it's a one-noise thing: a dog barks a few times and stops; a car alarm goes off, but it turned off; a baby cries and is comforted rather than ignored by its parents; etc. Even this morning, around 2am, Gracie Cat broke into my room because she wanted to cuddle, and I was able to remove her and move on with my life. I'm less forgiving when the waking-up just should not have happened in the first place. My mom woke me up at 3am a few years ago when we were spending a long weekend together in Florida, because she wanted me to see the stars. I was not amused.

What amuses me even less? Getting texted by my cell phone provider at 3:30am. This has actually happened a few times, and once I called and asked them to stop, but apparently they didn't. I usually turn my phone off at night (I wouldn't put it passed my mom to call me at 3:30am to tell me the stars are bright where she is at the time), but last night I forgot. So I was awoken at 3:30 in the morning my a text alert.

It actually wasn't a big deal, I was tired enough that I was able to ignore it and go back to sleep. I was fairly annoyed when I checked it this morning to see that it was from AT&T, so I called them.

The first thing I got was a pseudo-apology. We're sorry you're having a problem with this. They're apologizing for my irritation with a middle-of-the-night phone call.

Then, the woman on the phone checks it out, and says that the text was about my auto-pay card expiring. Do I have auto-pay?

Now, I am not my mother. I'm generally polite to customer service people, because whatever the problem is is rarely their fault, and besides, even if it were, that's no reason to be rude. But I was tired and she was wasting my time.

A.: Yes, I do have auto-pay. That's not the point. The point is, I DO NOT APPRECIATE BEING NOTIFIED ABOUT THESE THINGS BY TEXT AT 3:30AM. And no, my card is not expiring/has not expired. It was to expire in July and I updated it, and have been billed since.

Does she deal with the matter at hand, i.e. the medium of notification? Nooooooo. She says, "well, it may have expired since you last updated it."

WTF???

Anyway, eventually we were able to communicate, and she supposedly updated my preferences, removing AT&T from the pool of things/people/alarms that can interfere with my attempts to get a good night's sleep.