In today's letters to the editor, Virginia Amicarelli of Clovis expresses her frustration with the customer service phone line designed by AT&T. Who hasn't been entangled in some hideous phone tree trying desperately to climb out? You can read her letter by clicking here.

Well, maybe AT&T should take a lesson in communications from PG&E. Last week, I called the customer-service line, hoping to speak to a real person about setting up a service call. The recorded voice said that all the representatives were helping other customers. Typical. Then, she told me it would be about four minutes of waiting. I appreciated that bit of information, and as holding goes, it wasn't so bad. I settled in, planning to clean out the e-mail on my Outlook basket. Within seconds, the recording said that, rather than waiting on hold, PG&E would call me back. Then I was prompted to punch in my phone number.

Amazing! Small victories! I really appreciated that little tweak in the system, so good on the PG&E programmer who came up with this. By the way, I was called back as promised, but I was on the phone with another caller when PG&E tried to get through. Not a problem. A little while later, the automatic dialer called again, and a nice live person helped me tend to business.