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I can beat that with a random story about a landline, with no helpful advice and barely any point:
We've been trying to get rid of our landline for years, but our kids won't let us... ever since a drunk called us up late at night...
Wife: Hello?
Drunk: Who'zis?
Wife: Who's this?! Do you know what time it is?
Drunk: I'm drunnnnk...
Wife: Well, goodbye, drunk, go to bed.
Drunk: Wait! Did you know your phone is BEERKEG?
Wife: Wha...?
Drunk: B-E-E R-K-E-G
Wife: Beer keg?
Drunk: Yeah, your phone number spells BEER KEG. I wanted my phone number to spell BEER KEG but the phone people said it was already taken...
Wife: Well, I'm sorry about that, but I don't think there's any way we can give it to you.
Drunk: Oh...kay... [hangs up dejectedly]
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Glad I could amuse you in the middle of your phone conundrums.
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digby wrote:
Drunk: Yeah, your phone number spells BEER KEG.
But what area code? Its going to take me a thousand tries to get you...just kidding, there are only 269
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I have AT&T for our local service; October bill with fees and taxes was $34.24.
Long distance service is from Powernet Global purchased through my REMC; October bill with fees and taxes was $4.62; had we made any long distance calls they would have charged us something like $0.10 per minute. I tend to use my cell phone for long distance calls.
The bundle with cable TV and internet costs more (the last time I checked) than this arrangement. The physical layout of their system does not work. The main handset would have to be in the cabinet where the cable connects to the router, a very inconvenient place for the phone!
One reason for keeping the landline is so that friends can just call the house if they don't care who they reach. I suppose that $40 is a lot to pay for my friends' convenience but I am OK with it.
Maybe someday I'll step out of my comfort zone and look into internet service, but I bet the three rotary phones won't work with it!
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I still have a Verizon "POTS" landline. Costs me about $28 / month AND, I have to pay extra for any calls I make (so I only make Toll Free outgoing calls. I've bee thinking about ditching it for some time now. I probably will drop it once I get back home next month.
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I bundle with Suddenlink internet and 2 unlisted land line phones for less than phones from AT&T.
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I had a landline until last December or thereabouts. The phone went dead a few days before Sandy hit at the end of October, and once that happened, there was no chance of getting service restored for months to come. I don't miss the expense, but I sort of wish that I had it available for dialup Internet access for the rare times when there is a cable outage.
When it became clear that landline service would not be restored for months, I switched to Vonage, and have been happy with the call quality as well as the extras that I did not get with the Verizon landline.
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I've got ATT landline because my spouse refuses to give up "our phone", even though everyone has a mobile. As a compromise, I tried to drop long distance from the landline since all LD is via our cellphones. At that time, ATT conveniently had a "no long distance fee" which happened to be the same or $1.00 more than the LD access fee. I haven't rechecked recently, I just pay the ransom.
