Ya’ll, I just can’t believe it!! Lordy have mercy, I tell ya I just can’t believe it!!  My boy Enis and me, well we went down to them river boat casinos. You never saw so much goins on as we saw there! People crammed in those rooms in front of those machines like sardines in a can. Enis wanted to go ’cause they was giving away a bunch of stuff. Now Enis, he likes football. Never did understand it myself. All them boys running around and knocking each other to the ground over some little brown flying saucer shaped ball. But them football boys are meat eaters for sure! They sure are healthy looking and can run so fast!!

Anyway, some of the prizes were tickets to some big football game later this month. Enis called it a super bowl or some such. He says the two best teams play against each other and it’s a really big deal. Anyway, Enis put his name in the drawing for those tickets ’cause they cost something like $1,500 a piece just to go watch them boys knock each other to the ground.  On the way in we saw a lady standing beside a rack of the purtiest fur coats you ever saw. I never seen a real fur coat ’cause peta don’t like people to have ‘em and well, I just never seen one. Them coats was the softest thing I ever did see. Some had two different colors of fur on them, some had real leather on the collars and cuffs and there was a snow white one and I just fell in love with that one!! That nice little lady said they was giving some of them away too. All I had to do was put my name on a piece of paper and drop it in a box and I might just win that purty white coat!

Well, me and Enis went walkin’ around and played some of them game machines. They sure were lots of fun. I played one called Jackpot Party, or somethin’ like that. I pushed a little button a few times, bells rang, lights flashed and it made the darndest commotion I ever saw! Then some fella came out and danced around and around. I don’t call what he was doin dancin’ but that’s what Enis said he was doin. Low and behold, that machine went to makin all sorts of noise, more lights flashed and bells rang, people went to hollerin and jumpin up and down like they all went crazy. Some official lookin fella came over and asked me for my name and all. Enis was just speechless, I tell ya. I didn’t know what in the world was going on but finally someone said I hit the jackpot!

The jackpot!! Lordy have mercy! They gave me $5,000!! All I did was put a few dollars in that machine, push a button a few times and they gave me money and two free meals to boot. I like this place. Enis said we should go get something to eat while we wait for the drawins. He said they had some really good eatin places here, and since they was free, we went to the buffet. There was people crammed in there like hogs at a trough!! I could sure see why ’cause man o man, that food smelled good enough to die for. There was everything you can imagine there. Ribs, brisket, pork chops, fish, shrimps, frog legs, tater salad, steak. I wanted to move in and just live there. Me and Enis ate a little bit of everything. I never tasted food so good in all my life.

Just when we got done eatin, they called the names of the winners for the football tickets. Enis fell over out of his chair when he heard his name called. He jumped up screamin, “we’re going to Florida” and hopped and bounced around like he had frogs in his pants. While we was collecting the tickets, they called the names for the ladies who had won them purty fur coats. It was my turn to jump up and down ’cause I won that white one I was so fond of.

What a nice place that casino is. They gave us food, football tickets, a fur coat and enough money to go see that football game! Florida, here we come!!

©SharonSoileau2010

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Once upon a time I was an AT&T customer, but not by choice. Several years ago, I went with Bell South’s “bundle” offer for phone service, cell and landline, and satellite tv. Not long after, Bell South sold out to AT&T. To me,  that spelled trouble.

 Everything was fine for a while. With the rollover minute feature, I always had a surplus of minutes. In January of 2007, I nearly had a heart attack when I viewed my bill. After years of having a cell phone, I had NEVER gone over my allotted minutes. But now, AT&T was telling me that I had gone WAAYYY over my allotment, to the tune of $500+ dollars.

I immediately requested a detailed copy of the bill. At first they sent the bill for the wrong month. I maintained there was a big mistake but AT&T would not hear of it. After finally receiving the correct bill, I spotted error after error. The first one was on Christmas Day. The bill reflected five calls between my daughter and myself between 4:15 and 4:30pm. At that particular time, we were both in my truck travelling west on Interstate 20, on our way home from my mother’s home in Dallas, Texas. Why in the world would we be calling each other on the phone when we were sitting in the truck together? Other mistakes I found were text messages to and from numbers I did not know at 2:00 and 3:00 am. The bill showed that the texts were sent from xxx-xxxx to zzz-zzzz. If these messages were from my phone, my number should have been listed in the spot where xxx-xxxx was listed.

I made phone calls to customer service, sent emails and wrote letters. NO ONE would talk to me. I practically begged someone, anyone, to go over the bill with me. Over the next couple of months, the amount of the bill gradually decreased, until I stopped trying to contact them. Then the bill jumped back up to over $500.00. This trend continued all year. I made dozens of attempts to contact AT&T about my bill. Every month I found instances where I was over charged. I also began recording the length of my calls. It was no surprise that when the bill came, every call was listed as being several minutes longer than what the timer on my phone said it was.

I even went so far as to scour AT&T’s website searching for all the email addresses I could find. I sent messages to executives, heads of departments, etc. Still, no response. Finally,  I spoke to a woman by the name of Ruth. She was extremely rude and told me “AT&T does not make mistakes and no one is going to go over this bill with you“.  That did it!  Screw AT&T!!

I have spoken to numerous people who went through the same experiences that I went through. One even asked if I would like to join in a class action lawsuit against AT&T. Damn right I would! I figure I over paid this company around $2,000-3,000 in 2007. At the end of the year, I went back to Alltel as my cell phone carrier and left a balance due of $958.00. I did not hear a word from AT&T about this bill until this month, more than two years after terminating my service with them.

They have had a collection company harassing me about payment. I have absolutely no intention of giving them another penny. I made extreme efforts to contact them and try to resolve this matter but they are the ones who refused. Now they can take that $958.00 and eat it.

I would like to hear from anyone who has had a similar experience with AT&T. I would love to sue them and get my money back. They are just  a big bully company with no concern for their customers. I believe that they padded people’s bills to pay Bell South for the purchase of the company. Let me hear from you!!

©SharonSoileau2010

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Hello to all the good folks out there! Hope ya’ll all had a wonderful christmas and didn’t over celebrate the New Year. Me and my boy Enis, we had us a wonderful time! Seems that Enis has gone and found himself a new group of friends and he brought them nice young folks over for Christmas dinner. An odd bunch, they are. Cold as the dickens outside and they all drove up riding motorsickles. They was all wearing black leather jackets and gloves. Some of them young men had hair braided up that was longer than most women’s hair. But they was a nice bunch, real polite and fun to have around.

For Christmas dinner, Enis near ’bout bought out the local grocery store. We had us glazed hams, fried turkeys, roasted ducks and all the trimmings you could imagine! Enis even got some of them little bitty weinies in barbeque sauce to snack on while we waited for all the other goodies to finish cooking. Just as we was finishing up our wonderful dinner, them darn petards showed up again. I just don’t understand why they won’t let folks be. There we were, minding our own business, eatin’ our delicious food and having a grand ole’ time when those scrawny little nerds, that’s what Enis calls ‘em, started yelling and screaming that we was murderers and some such nonsense, throwing rolls of toilet paper all over in the yard and breaking my windows with rocks!

Well, Enis’s new friends are big healthy boys ’cause they eat meat, just like my Enis. That’s my boy in that picture. Just look how big and healthy he is! Well, they marched outside to run the petards off. When them boys got outside, the nerds got real scared and started yelling “bikers! bikers!” and tried to run off down the street. Enis and his new friends jumped on them there motorsickles and took off after those bad little people. Why, they looked like they seen a ghost or something, the way they took off runnin’. I don’t really know what a biker is, but them petards sure were scared of them!

It wasn’t long ’till I heard them motorsickles roaring back up to the house. It was the darnest sight I ever seed. There was a petard strapped to the back of each motorsickle. All them skinny little fellows looked white as a sheet. They sure do need to get some red meat in their bellies and plenty of sunshine. Well, once they was all back in the yard, Enis’s new friends made them scoundrels clean up every bit of paper and glass there was. Then they made ‘em rake the leaves up and burn the piles. After that, one big burly fellow had ‘em empty their pockets of all the money they had. That nice young man gave it all to me to pay for my broken windows. Before they let the petards go, they had my windows taped up so the cold air didn’t come inside. Why, they even washed my car! Then the bikers let ‘em go. I never seen people run away so fast.

After all the commotion had settled down, everyone came back inside for dessert. Enis explained that his friends are called bikers ’cause they ride them motorsickles and petards are scared to death of them. Seems that nasty ole Ingrid and her nasty people is always tormenting ladies in fur coats ’cause they don’t fight back. Ain’t ladylike to fight, mind you. Since those sweet ladies won’t fight back, peta just keeps picking on them. But peta don’t mess with bikers ’cause them biker people will whup up on them! They don’t start no fights but they don’t let ugly people push them around neither.

I hope Enis brings his new friends around more often. They sure was alot of fun to have around. Now, thanks to them, I don’t have to rake my yard this winter!

©SharonSoileau2009

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