One of the characteristics of modern American life is that on the surface things seem so slick, easy, good, and technological.

But the hucksters, the old tricksters, are always with us….

Take the mobile phone for instance. I have my “plan” with the new AT&T (formerly Cingular, vaguely Yahoo) and along with my bundled home phone, I also have DSL. I have been with this company of many names for about four years.

An offer arrived at my house last week in the mail. It promised a new Nokia 6085 camera phone for FREE if I activated another line of service.

I actually do need another mobile phone line for another person in my family, so I called AT&T. They offered:

• To rollover my minutes
• Send me a free phone
• Put me on a $69.99 “family plan”

After spending about 15 minutes with the rep, she gave me several choices of a new number and then verified my order by reciting the new number. It had a 6-2-6 area code and I live in 8-1-8. I asked her if she could change it, and she said that she could not.

She had just created a new line of service for me, picking a new number for me that she claimed she could not change.

So I called back and got another rep. This one said he would be glad to change it. He also told me he would send me a “better” phone, one with text messaging built in. I told him I just wanted an 8-1-8 area code and the original phone.

So he went ahead and created an entirely new service order, along with a new telephone number and a new telephone. But he did not cancel the erroneous 6-2-6 order and forthcoming delivery from the first bad call. He also assigned me an 8-1-8 number without asking me which seven digit number following the area code I might prefer.

He claimed that he could not give me choices, when the previous operator had given me several choices. He was lying.

He claimed he had “changed” the 6-2-6 to 8-1-8 when all he had done was add another number to my order. He was lying.

I was now due to receive TWO TELEPHONES with TWO DIFFERENT NUMBERS.

And he told me he could not cancel the order. I was locked into this.

These two reps were eager to implement my order, so that they could collect THEIR REWARDS, but ignored my own needs. They also lied to me, by claiming that they could not change something they could.

Today I reached “Christian” in San Antonio, TX at the secondary sales group and he rescinded the entire order. He apologized for the mistakes. He was courteous and helpful.

But the people last night belong in the category of scam artists. AT&T treated me like I was calling up an Internet porn company in Nigeria. It was a scam, meant to boost sales, and reward con artists.