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How do I use my phone?

NickD on Fri April 28, 2006 6:55 AM User is offline

Quite a history since I was a kid, (last week), first phone had nothing on it, pick up the receiver and a human on the other end said, number please. That gave way to the rotary party line, ha, get off the *&^% line, you been tying up the phone for the last three hours. Then the rotary private line, can recall wearing out my finger trying to get a good deal from 47th Photo in the 70's. Delayed in getting touch tone due to the seven buck extra a month charge, but it was around the late 80's they made touch tone free. Was nice with the redial feature, then cordless appeared, ha, back to the party line again as I could hear all of my neighbors, but to use my own phone, had to be within three feet of the base unit, so much for the early cordless. But could store frequently used numbers that killed my memory for even knowing my own phone number.

For years we had a local phone company here with real people working there, any problems with your service or billing, could go in and hack it out, but they were eaten up by a giant corporation, shut down the office in town and dial a toll free number for service that didn't work if your phone was down. Then with a simple question they would bounce you around listening to music while you were put on the waiting list. Would only take about 2-3 hours to get a simple question answered. Basic phone service was only 15 bucks a month, but had to add certain features if you wanted to use your phone to make or receive a call that shot up the rates to 30 bucks a month. If you wanted caller ID, call waiting, voice mail, that would tack on another 20 bucks a month, directory assistance tacked on around two bucks whether they found your number or not. They did come out with a deal for long distance calling for an extra 70 bucks a month with restrictions. To beat them at their own game, switched to phone cards, but that is always a pain in having to dial a bunch of numbers to make a call. Keyed the numbers in my phone to save manually entering them, but still a pain when calling the next town. Phone cards charged around 3 cents a minute, but the phone company was charging 25 cents a minute, was cheaper to call San Francisco than a town only ten miles away.

So my cable company contacts me with a three month special, free long distant calling, no restrictions plus other services for $29.95 per month, was apprehensive about quality, power failure, so a bit of a hard sell. They offered free installation and a full year of $29.95 per month, so I gave in. Ha, pays to be a hard sell. Since everything is central in my home, took them only about 20 minutes to install their box and test it, kept my old number, and they are dealing with my old phone company.

Now to learn how to use this thing, same old phone, but the caller ID works the first time, if my wife calls or some other favorite person, can somehow key in a two digit number so I get a special ring. If someone nasty calls, can key in another two digit number and permanently block their calls, all kinds of stuff, except about ten different two digit numbers to memorized.

Ha, the phone was quiet all night, than rang, two people called at once, daughter answered it, got confused and hung up on both, we had to grab the manual to learn how to deal with that.

Just wonder what's going to happen to my old phone company now that they finally have some competition, the quality of the cable phone so far as been pretty good, but not use to making a long distant call, (greater than ten miles) without using the phone card. Thinking of making a large chart with all these two digit key numbers and hanging that on the wall, so I know how to use the darn thing. For reliability, keep on forgetting we have three cellular phones here, one of them is bound to work plus the cable phone.

Bigchris on Fri April 28, 2006 9:49 AM User is offline

You did skip over the two cans and a piece of string which had the advantage that the person on the other end was always someone you wanted to talk to!

Funny you should bring this up. I got a letter from my phone company yesterday and the outside of the envelope said "We've been looking at your phone bill and we think we can save you some money". I thought "Pretty cheeky of them to be studying my phone bill!" "This should be interesting". So I opened the envelope instead of immediately chucking it in the garbage as I usually would and this was their offer. For an additional $30 per month we'll give you three or four additional features on your phone (that I don't want). Then if you do that and add another $50 worth of services (that I don't want) we'll knock $5 a month off the first set of features saving you $5 per month off what you'd otherwise pay.

I turned to my wife and said "They have got to think we are incredibly stupid!" For my money, the phone companies deserve to fail. They've resisted every new technological innovation that has come along in the last sixty years and their greed is unmatched. Even now, when they've got more bandwidth available to them then they can sell, they're in congress lobbying against neutrality on the internet so they can charge more for delivering VOIP and video services for their competitors. Then too, they want government subsidies to replace existing high maintenance copper with low maintenance glass fiber which will yield them even higher profits. It's just disgusting!

NickD on Fri April 28, 2006 10:46 AM User is offline

I'm starting to get a lot of these prerecorded telemarketing calls lately plus the usual Wisconsin Police Association asking for donations over the phone. Just tell those guys to mail me the information and if they think I am going to give my CC number over the phone, they are crazy. Ha, to date, not a thing in the mail and they usually hang up on me with my CC remark.

Had to call US Cellular this morning, after four months, still never got a normal bill, anywhere from 10 to 60 bucks extra, killed there so called EZ Edge about two months ago charging 3 bucks to download a new ring, daughter got carried away. This morning killed text messages that were costing 17 cents, not too bad, but when there is over 200 messages on the bill, that adds up. Try to be tactful, did pull her out of her home country, but that and the land line was getting way out of hand. Did experience a 50% increase in electrical rates that is totally unjustified, but getting use out of electricity and would hate to wash my clothes by hand. But spend a couple of extra hours on the phone each month, that can easily add a couple hundred bucks to the bill. She knows things I don't even know about like dialing *67 to find out who called last. Hell if the phone quits ringing before I get to answer that, consider that a blessing. Most of the time, it's the wrong number and the person calling just woke up, but each time she dialed *67 and additional $1.50 was added to the bill like that was a life or death call. And try that times 30. Now this service is free with the cable company plus a host of other unneeded services. Cellular charges ten bucks extra a month for full national coverage that isn't bad, without it since we are right on the edge, can end up paying 70 cents a minute if in the roaming area, my son really got nailled on that one and it doesn't make any difference whether you made the call or someone calling you.

Bigchris on Fri April 28, 2006 11:24 AM User is offline

Man, I don't envy you trying to keep teenagers reigned in. It was tough enough in the days before cell phones and chat rooms, it must be murder now. I got caught few months ago with a humungeous satellite TV bill that I didn't expect. My wife had been ill enough that I had to hire live-in nurses aides to help me take care of her. Turned out that a couple of the aides liked to amuse themselves by watching pay per view porno movies in the middle of the night while my wife and I were sleeping. Apparently, they decided it was a fringe benefit of working for me and just never bothered to mention it. Needless to say, the satellite receiver got password locked immediately, but I had "received the service" so the obligation was mine.

I got in the habit of handling unsolicited phone beggars by simply saying "Sorry, we do not accept telephone solicitations." That seems to work pretty well by itself, but adding "Please remove this number from your list." always seems to put it to bed. The computerized calls are a whole different matter that seem to beg for putting aside traditional manners and either hanging up without a word, or countering by letting another computer (answering machine) deal with all incoming calls. Maybe we should be grateful that postage rates have gotten so high.

Russell on Wed May 03, 2006 8:15 PM User is offlineView users profile

Yikes Nick!.........................
I fell for the cable phone deal several months ago. It lasted 3 days. I was immediately inundated by sales calls too.The very first lightning strike within 100 yards of my house took out the phone. (We get lot's and lot's of lightning in Houston) I then spent 3hrs on hold with customer service, (burning cell minutes) only to find the first available service date was 3 weeks away! (That's funny, it only took 2 days to turn the thing on?)

I wound up canceling their service and going back to SWB (local phone co) and taking pretty much bare bones service. I have caller ID, and the call blocker feature that is never used, but none of the other services, my phone has a recorder for messages, it costs $17.00 per month. I use one of the 3 cells to make long distance calls now. My customer service problems are handled by someone in Houston. I wish you with the best of luck with the cable phone.........but keep a cell charged up and ready.

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The difference between liberators and conquerors is the liberators go home.

NickD on Wed May 03, 2006 11:36 PM User is offline

It's been over a week for me and very satisfied, calls are crystal clear and made a ton of long distant calls already, learned how to block annoyance calls and how to use call waiting. Like the caller ID feature as the phone rings a lot but hangs up before the answering machine clicks in. Can look up the number stored in my phone, call the party back and ask why they can't leave a message. If the call isn't that important enough to leave a message, then don't call. Have to run and drop whatever I am doing to answer the dang thing only to have a dead line. Kind of nice getting even.

We do have the cable company office in town so don't have to wait three hours on the phone like I did with Verizon and I tend to scare the hell out of people when I get angry, so no problem there, LOL. What remains to be seen is my first phone bill, better be the $29.95 quoted price plus the usual FCC, federal excise tax, and sales tax, not exactly sure why the FCC is in there nor the federal excise tax, and the sales tax for that matter.

Can't say the same thing about US Cellular, have yet to receive a normal phone bill, daughter finds more ways to run up that bill well beyond normal, and each month I am calling them and dropping these extra services I don't want, should have asked last time, is there any more services I am not aware of. And why do I have to pay a couple of bucks more for 911 service with the cell phone? Cops are too busy handing out traffic tickets and run away scared if you have an emergency, so this is useless to me. But some kind of state law I am told.

GM Tech on Thu May 04, 2006 8:57 AM User is offline

Nick - go buy a phone with the "voice caller ID" feature- you don't even have to get up- the phone tells you who is calling- so you can ignore it when it is not for you-- also I have the caller ID on my satellite Directv sysstem- pretty neat- there is a message that appears at the lower portion of your screen that shows name and number of current caller and the last 50 callers and when and how many times they have called is also available from your TV remote!!-- wife can't live without those two features now.....

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The number one A/C diagnostic tool there is- is to know how much refrigerant is in the system- this can only be done by recovering and weighing the refrigerant!!
Just a thought.... 65% of A/C failures in my 3200 car diagnostic database (GM vehicles) are due to loss of refrigerant due to a leak......

NickD on Thu May 04, 2006 11:20 AM User is offline

Hmmm, time to update on technology again, always purchased phones with caller ID, not because I had caller ID, but wanted the LCD screen so I could double check my number before hitting the talk button and paying for a long distant call, now these things talk to you?

Ha, did a 400 mile trip yesterday and tried out my PocketMap GPS in a used Dell Axim X5 I purchased and don't understand as of yet. Thing drove me nuts on a long stretch of freeway. voice would come on at every intersection, beep three times to tell me to drive straight ahead. and it's not the kind of thing I would want to play with while driving going through a series of menus to kill the volume control. So I pulled the plug, but can't wait to try this thing at night so I can see the screen. My older cars telling me that my door is a jar also drove me nuts, pulled the plug on those too. My daughter goes nuts whenever the phone rings, I am kind of the exact opposite, what are they trying to sell me now?

Bigchris on Thu May 04, 2006 11:21 AM User is offline

Quote
Originally posted by: GM Tech
The number one A/C diagnostic tool there is- is to know how much refrigerant is in the system- this can only be done by recovering and weighing the refrigerant!!
You're right...and that is so dumb! You wouldn't accept that with your gas tank or crankcase oil so why is that the only way with refrigerant? Seems like some smart engineer ought to be able to come up with a better way!

GM Tech on Thu May 04, 2006 1:09 PM User is offline

Yeah - the wife's phone is a cordless- with every bell & whistle currently known- it tells you who is calling from the base or the remote- and has the display you like to see as well- it is funny- the computer generated voice sometimes really soounds funny- pronouncing names like they are spelled instead of with any dialect- but you soon get used to it- it is just reading what comes across the wire- nice when the phone rings late at night- no need to get up- you can here the voice from two rooms away- if you have it turned up.........

-------------------------
The number one A/C diagnostic tool there is- is to know how much refrigerant is in the system- this can only be done by recovering and weighing the refrigerant!!
Just a thought.... 65% of A/C failures in my 3200 car diagnostic database (GM vehicles) are due to loss of refrigerant due to a leak......

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