Back in 1996, I worked for Pipeline, one of the largest ISPs at the time, and our billing system accidentally double-billed 20,000 accounts. The VP of Customer Support called me. "Can you think of a spin for this?" she asked.

With that in mind, I was entertained by my experience with--who else--AT&T Wireless yesterday. I received a warranty exchange Motorola T721 phone (which turned out not to solve my static problems, but that's beside the point). Upon receiving the phone, as instructed (as it turned out, wrongly), I called to update my IMEI number.

"I need to update my IMEI number on a warranty exchange phone," I said. It was Friday at 3pm.

"We can't do that right now," I was told. "We can't access any customer informaton. Our systems are updating."

Updating? "You mean, broken?" I asked.

Five hours later, I was able to call back and--although the system was now fixed--learn that this IMEI number change was unnecessary. How many bars do you have?