Charter Customer Support Redemption and now Alabama Power Fail

I never like to have someone's good redemptive stories go unnoticed or unannounced so I need to take a moment and praise Charter customer service for stepping up. They apparently have a group of social media hounds in their customer support group and one of the snooped out my Twitter posting leading to my blog post and screen shot of my instance the other day. He subsequently left a comment on my blog with contact information and through a few email exchanges has been tracking down my issue for me. So in this instance I'd have to say nicely done Charter.

Now onto Alabama Power and their paperless billing system. I currently pay all my bills online and getting a paper version in the mail isn't all that necessary for me. At one of Alabama Power's promptings I signed up for paperless billing, which apparently has an infinite loop in the system and I now can't pay my bill.

I receive my first paperless bill email notification last month, click on the link to access my account online and dutifully make my payment. Alas I am met with the screen prompts above which are asking me to set up my account, including providing an access code that is only found on, you guessed it, the paper bill! I contacted support to have them activate my account so I could actually pay them, but I once again was met with the above screen today upon receiving my bill notification via email.

You'd think once you set up to receive your bill notification electronically it would pass you through to the account to let you actually pay it. Uggh, best intentions.