Yesterday, my husband and I met with an AT&T representative from the Real Yellow Pages to finalize the ad for our janitorial business. This is a yearly ritual and one that aggravates me beyond words.

Each year, clients are assigned a new representative.There is no continuity or familiarity between clients and salespeople. This is a practice that I believe AT&T does intentionally to discourage any deals being offered. This ridiculous practice is a pain in the rear end. The client has to start from scratch and explain everything all over again to a lackluster sales rep who just wants to complete the process and move on to the next client. The sales rep doesn’t give a hoot about you or your business.

But that’s not the big reason I’m so irritated. Every year, AT&T raise their advertising rates and offers you less and less for your dollar. Do they care? Absolutely not…They know that in our area they have the monopoly on the business. Business owners like us rely on AT&T, The Real Yellow Pages as the primary way of advertising our services. Yes, there are copycat books, but they don’t hold a torch to AT&T as far as numbers are concerned. Thus the word…MONOPOLY.

Yesterday, in the meeting, I went ballistic on the sales rep. My husband saw it coming and grinned because he knew that even though we were going to have to pay outrageous prices for our advertising….Debi Drecksler , defender of the”little guy” would have her day in court.

I can’t wait for the day when AT&T , The Real Yellow Pages, becomes passe and clients must go online to find janitorial services. The sales rep tried to impress me with the AT&T online services, the “wave of the future” but I just rolled my eyes at him. I have an online page, JDR, which is starting to get lots of hits thanks to my webdesigner/favorite youngest child, Paul Eric Drecksler. The sales rep tried to put down my “little web page”claiming it couldn’t possibly compare to AT&T.

AT&T…Don’t be so sure about that!