Just got rid of my landline.

I love you, Setanta.

roger that.

dropping the landline was actually a spur of the moment thing, because I was a bit pissed off at ATT

In the past, maybe once a year I would say to Wally "I don't know why we bother having a phone (landline) we never use it" He'd say the "in case of emergency", and it wasn't worth pursuing.

So we ended up having the landline, internet and TV with ATT, one bill a month.

A couple of months ago I called ATT to request an unpublished phone number. The chick I was talking to told me that if I swiched over to ATT Uverse (whatever the hell that is) I'd get the same TV stations, same phone, same internet, for about $30 less a month.
I asked a couple questions to make sure it was the same, and understood there would be a small one time charge, so I said "sure"

So....I get 2 bills a couple of days apart from each other....One ATT bill for 50 christing dollars more than what we normally paid each month, and one from ATT Uverse (whatever the hell that is) for just about what our old ATT bill used to be!
I figured the orders for the change crossed wires, and I owed one or the other.

Noooooo......I call ATT and this chick tells me my ATT bill is correct, and she doesn't know why I have an ATT Uverse and didn't I realize that my internet, TV and phone aren't all working off the same dohicky now and I'd have to call ATT Uverse to ask them about the bill.

Me: It seems to that in front of Uverse is the word ATT, and you work for ATT.
She: But that's a different department.

Me: (cutting directly to the chase) No, I'm not gonna do this. You and I both know what's going to happen. You'll connect me to someone else, and you'll never have to deal with me again. But I'll have to talk to God knows how many more people who are going to tell me they don't know anything.
How about if YOU put me on hold, and talk to someone over at the Uverse area, figure out what wrong and how to fix it, then come back to me?

well, by George, I couldn't believe it. That's exactly what she did. I ended up talking to a guy who at least knew why I got 2 bills. I didn't really care quite honestly and told him "All I wanted to to get an unlisted phone number, now look at all this stuff. I never even use the phone, my husband watches TV and says he's not getting the same channels, and isn't too impressed. I've been totally misled"
He took and last ditch effort about how I had 200 channels now. I said "yeah, and most of them are people talking about Jesus or selling jewelry. I blocked all those"

All righty then. He had a perfect understanding of my feelings.

"we don't want to lose your business, I'm going to give you to someone who will fix all of this."

Actually, this last person did, very quickly. The bill that was $50 more than ususally was cut down to a TOTAL of $12.
The other one, was going to be $28. Then she said they would have to send out yet another technician to put the phone on the same system.

At that point I asked her if she could hold for a moment. I called Wally and said, "We don't need the landline, we don't use it"
Wally is a smart man, and can read the winds with remarkable accuracy.

He said "so cancel it"
Me: "bye"
Him "you too"

back to final woman, I told her to cancel the landline, which she took without a twitch. I said "since we're not paying for a phone any longer, I might be interest in pay channels (Wally being so understanding and all)"

Bottom line, I got the 300 channels now (most of which of course will be blocked because they are bullshit) BUT, I got Showtime, Stars, Cinemax, etc, for the movie watch in the house.

All this, no technician visit, taxes and everything included, for $30 less than our net bill was every month before all this started.

Save $30 month,
Get movie channels
Don't have to deal with a phone we never use anyway.

I'm a rat terrier.

The other thing is that I Skype everybody. If you call from your computer to another computer, it's FREE. If you call to a phone, it's 2 cents a minute. Plus, if you have a video camera connected, you can see them. That's how I stay in touch with my granddaughters.

If you're still with U-Verse, then watch that bill like a hawk. We had it for about 8 months before giving it the boot, because the bill always varied wildly.

I love my landline.

Land lines have two distinct advantages for me. The most important is reception quality. I still haven't found a cell phone that can produce the quality of a land line. Volume, clarity, etc are all better for me on a land line. The second is reliability since the phone company has its own batteries and generators and typically bury their lines deep in the ground. I'm in hurricane country and the phone always lasts the longest and if it does go out, it comes back the fastest. This isn't the most important issue because cells are generally good backup. Of course if the power goes down for three plus days for that bad hurricane, it would be hard to keep your electronics charged, but there is always power somewhere in town, so I'm sure I could charge up if I had to. I've read somewhere that cell companies are working with boxes that can mimic land line performance (ie make your home phones ring and use your home wiring.) I think that is going to be the big win for them.

Power inverters are cheap. Buy one and stick it in your trunk; then you can get 110 from your car.

I will, thanks for the tip.

I don't like how they set the whole thing up. I thought it was very underhanded.

Personally, I think all this stuff has gotten way overcomplicated.

I'm not being an old curmudgeon saying we need to go back to the days of a black rotary phone. But come on already, all this **** your supposed to "have to have" these days is ridiculous.

Like Set was saying, I'm not ever going to be one of those people who's tied to some electronic device as if I couldn't function without it.

I asked the last woman I talked to "what is this uverse anyway? what's supposed to be so great about it?"
She started saying how it was all fiber optic and you get a better picture on the TV, clearer reception on the phone, blah blah blah.

I'm thinking to myself while she's saying this "What the hell difference does it make if I'm watching some TV show and it isn't all up to the nano second new technology? Like if the picture isn't like perfect like the newscaster is sitting in the room with you, my watching the weather report experience is going to make me want to commit suicide?
Let's get real people....it's a ******* television.

She was also telling me something about the internet being way better with uverse, but by that time I wasn't even paying attention. I remember her asking me "do you download a lot of music" I said "absolutely not"

****, do people spend all their time download music or something? How many thousands of songs to you need?
I still don't get it that an ipod needs to hold a million songs or something. When would you have the chance to listen to all of them.

All this "stuff"....it just makes you a prisoner.

Blow up your tee-vee
Throw away your papers
Go to the country
Build you a home
Plant a little garden
Eat a lot of peaches
Try and find Jesus
On your own

John Prine, "Spanish Pipedream"