Marksonland

Team Blekko has a conference call on Friday and, being a start-up, has no conference call capabilities. As the only non-coder on the team of very busy coders, its my job to set up stuff like this. So, being a logical man, my thinking was thus: we use AT&T for our phone service - AT&T is a big telephone services company - con call services is clearly something they do - I'll give them a call. And thus started my adventure.

First stop, call the AT&T operator (by dialing zero)- he or she will just transfer me to the right person. Or so I thought. They're advice: call 411 and ask for the number for AT&T con-call services. Now if this advice came from a third party, it would certainly be sound. Coming from an AT&T operator? Well, it struck me a bit odd.

OK, I call 411 and ask for conference call services - they connect me to....somewhere. Somewhere being a place that has a vast menu of pre-recorded push button options and less than stellar voice recognition software. After a few minutes of yelling "operator" (since con call services was not on the pre-recorded option menu), I'm finally connected to a person who politely tells me that I've actually reached residential services, what I need is business services. Great. Onward and upward.

Next stop, AT&T business services. Same land of pre-recorded push button options (none of which is con call services, of course) and crap voice recognition technology. After a few minutes I give up. There must be an easier way.

Google search: conference call services. Click on the Office Depot link (they do con calls? who knew?). Call the 800 number. Four minutes later account activated and call set up. Literally that easy.

Thanks AT&T!