I Spoke with the System this Morning,

Here's how it went down:

System: Welcome Chris ******. ( edited that for privacy)
System: Connecting to server. Please wait...
System: Connection with server established.
You: Technical Support Topic: High Speed Internet (DSL)
System: lo040t(Yvanka McKenzie) (Not Her Real Name) has joined this session!
System: Connected with lo040t(Yvanka McKenzie) (Not Her Real Name)
lo040t(Yvanka McKenzie)(Not Her Real Name): Thank you for choosing AT&T Internet Services. My name is Yvanka McKenzie.(Not Her Real Name) How can I make you a very satisfied customer today? (Really?)
You: I cannot receive or send email.....is the problem on my end or Bellsouth
You: I can access the internet, no problem
lo040t(Yvanka McKenzie)(Not Her Real Name): I'm very sorry for the inconvenience it caused you. I'll do what I can to help you out.
You: But I cannot access email either through Outlook Express or through Webmail
You: The password is correct as well
lo040t(Yvanka McKenzie)(Not Her Real Name): Are you getting any error messages?
You: yes, the password is denied
lo040t(Yvanka McKenzie)(Not Her Real Name): Have you tried logging in to the AT&T homepage?(Doesn't read the first few sentences)
You: yes, I cannot get mail there either (Repeating myself)
lo040t(Yvanka McKenzie)(Not Her Real Name): Are you getting the same error message?
You: "There was a problem logging onto your mail server. Your Password was rejected. Account: 'teacat2', Server: 'mail.bellsouth.net', Protocol: POP3, Server Response: '-ERR [SYS/TEMP] Server not ready. Please try again after sometime', Port: 110, Secure(SSL): No, Server Error: 0x800CCC90, Error Number: 0x800CCC92"
You: does this help?
lo040t(Yvanka McKenzie)(Not Her Real Name): Yes. (Concise. Efficient.)
lo040t(Yvanka McKenzie)(Not Her Real Name): Also, I need to make sure what is the error message that you're getting if you will be logging into the AT&T homepage.
You: hang on and let me give it a go
You: "Sorry!
The error, LaunchHttpError-500, occurred when trying to connect to AT&T Mail. "
You: look at this message I just found:
lo040t(Yvanka McKenzie)(Not Her Real Name): What is it?
You: well of course, it won't allow me to copy and paste. I'll write it out verbatim
You: (Here's where it gets interesting) "Can't Talk Now, System's down. Sorry for the holdup. Looks like a temporary glitch in our network has part of Yahoo's mail down, so you're briefly without service"
You: "Rest assured the alarms are blaring in the basement and our team is"
lo040t(Yvanka McKenzie)(Not Her Real Name): Please stay with me as I check if there is an outage regarding with the mail.
You: What kind of a professional message it this?!
You: ...working frantically to get you up and running ASAP. Again the snag is on our end-so there's no need for you to do a thing. Yahoo!Mail Team
You: I swear, I am not making this up!
lo040t(Yvanka McKenzie)(Not Her Real Name): I get your concern.
lo040t(Yvanka McKenzie)(Not Her Real Name): Right now it seems that the mail part is down and yet we do not have any estimated time of restoration. (if this is system-wide, why did we just go through that information dance back there?)
You: ok! No worries then, As long as I don't need to mess with MY settings, I'll just hang out and enjoy the peace and quiet
lo040t(Yvanka McKenzie)(Not Her Real Name): I'm very sorry for the inconvenience.
You: no trouble at all...... thank you for your halp this morning
You: help
lo040t(Yvanka McKenzie)(Not Her Real Name): Rest assure you that our technicians will do their best to fix the problem as quickly as possible.
You: yes, I know..... they're in the basement now....

(No response for approximately 2 minutes)

lo040t(Yvanka McKenzie)(Not Her Real Name): Thank you for using AT&T Yahoo! Chat Support. You will now be disconnected from this session. The chat window will remain open until you close it. For quick answers, make the new AT&T Yahoo! Help site your first stop. Visit http://helpme.att.net where you'll find pages of product information to assist you. Again, thank you for choosing AT&T Yahoo! Chat Support. (She hit a Shortcut key and that final blurb pops up.)

Concise. Efficient. No sense of humor