AT&T sells me DSL they don’t have; charges me $100 for pointing this out

I know Early Termination Fee stories are all too common these days, but I thought I might share mine.

My wife and I moved to a new house last December. During the utilities setup routine, I researched our Internet options and was attracted to AT&T’s “Basic” DSL package (“up to 768 Kbps” for $20 a month).

Once my equipment arrived and my activation date reached — which by the way, I had to wait another week after receiving the equipment for it to be activated. What the hell? — I found the service to be borderline useless. My DSL downtime was approaching almost 12 hours each day, and when it did happen to work, my download speeds were crawling below 100 Kbps.

Hoo boy. Time to complain.