I’m moving so won’t be posting for a little while. I thought my experience with two of my utilities was quite telling.
AT&T recording: “Your call may be monitored or recorded. Tell your rep if you don’t want this.”
Me: “Hi, I don’t want to be monitored or recorded.”
AT&T: “Sorry, we can’t disable that on a per-call basis. All calls are automatically recorded. I can take your number and have someone give you a call back later today.”
Compare this to…
PG&E recording: “Your call may be monitored or recorded. Press 1 now if you don’t want this.”
It’s probably more a result of bureacracy and poor systems than anything else but it does make you wonder. By the way, AT&T managed to move my phone line perfectly but somehow screwed up the DSL portion of the order, which will now take 5 more days. Ugh.
[Epilogue: the complaint to AT&T customer service must have worked to escalate the DSL move. It was completed later the same night, only one day late.]
rdist 
Oh, come on! You don’t expect a company like AT&T to be able to make flexible phone systems, do you? ;)