from my inbox

Cingular Wireless has sent me a letter telling me that I "have only 1 line of service on a Shared Plan."

I know that this is incorrect because it took me four painful hours to convert my phone service for the Treo and the rest of the family phones, so I called the company with some trepidation.

Well, thank God that I did. I discovered that a fourth line, in the name of some fellow I have never heard of before with an area code associated with cellular phones and pagers in New York City, has been added to my phone service.

I am on hold now. Of course I have been shrilly insisting that they remove this man from my phone service, and the poor service rep keeps popping back on the line saying things like, "this was added as a TDMA line!" to which my response was, "Not by me! I will not pay for this man's cellular phone service! Get him off my bill!"

Argh.

update: My phone company, not known for employing rocket scientists, thought that my cell phone account was the official corporate account of my spouse the Nordic God's employer, a 43,000-employee company.

They told me not to worry if I get a bill for $10,000 next month for cell phone service, I won't have to pay it.

I am so relieved.