Robo text from 1(240)239-2914

Quoting my previous post to save background info for this post.

We've gotten 73, yes, 73 crap, scam, you name it calls in 3 days on our home number. I researched each one. We are apparently under attack. Sheez. Normally we'll get 3-4 a week. I've had it with this crap.

Last week, I ordered a OOMA Telo VOIP system. I'll port our home number over and use their NOMOROBO features. Can't wait, plus this will dump a $75/month home phone bill for something better at under $20 a month.

Just got 3 more calls while typing this so make that 76 in 3 days. Bass turds!

 

Is $75/month anything like a typical price? Seems high to me.

 

Seems high to me too......and I'm in the biz.
POTS is normally about $30 a month counting the taxes...which some people happily pay to support '40s era analog communications......by which, of course, I mean the 1840s if you count facsimile....
Otherwise.......paying to speak over wires seems to make as much sense as paying for......well.....junk mail delivery.

I wish it were not so, since my job is (in part) to manufacture troubleshoot and repair dial tone.

 

Yeah, ~$30/mo unlimited calls are pretty much norm for most phone services nowadays. We use to pay over $300/mo on telephone bills that included 3 mobiles and 2 landlines and hours of international calls. We now pay less than $50/mo for 3 mobiles and 2 landlines with unlimited international calls.

 

Many people use a lot of cellular data. The so-called "unlimited" plans limit your speed after a certain usage cap.
People therefore pay for higher data usage.

 

Yeah, our kids living in a big city are paying something like $50-60/mo for mobile plan and they no longer have landlines. We on the other hand don't use mobile that much. 99% of time where we are, we have free WiFi, so we don't need much mobile data. In fact where we live, LTE signal are so spotty, even if we have an expensive data plan, we would be connecting 3G if we are lucky, or no cellular signal for most part out of the town limit. We barely get 3G signal at our home. Our mobile costs are for prepaid MVNO sims that cost us $10 every 90 days. That's $3.33/mo, thus for 3 mobiles are costing me only $10/mo. Our unlimited call (domestic and international) landlines are from Vonage. It turned out to be truly costsaver for us for very frequent and long international calls. It initially had some call quality issues, but have improved vastly in recent years. Still have some call drops due to internet congestion (not so much of Vonage fault, but it is a cable internet problem), but overall features they provide and cost of service is much better than any other company I have compared to date.

 

Our local telephone company (POTS) sent a bill insert about 18 months ago -- said we could sign-up -- for free -- for a "blocking service" that would help eliminate telemarketing calls.

We were getting at least three a week, sometimes many, many more than that. From the IRS to Microsoft virus help to Rachael from Credit Card Services, to auto warranties and alarm services.

I immediately called and asked for the service. Since then, I have had less than six Telemarketing/scam calls.

It truly was a fantastic change. Apparently they do not automatically apply to phone lines because of some legal mumbo jumbo about blocking calls without customer consent.

All I know is that I have never had it block calls I want. And it does a fantastic job of blocking unwanted calls -- all at no charge.

And I keep traditional telephone service as in where I live, cell coverage is spotty -- at best.

 

T-Mobile has a spam blocker and a scam blocker. Both are free. I also use Jolly Roger Telephone Company, which gives you a line and talks nonsense to telemarketers.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

I'll bet they really have a good time on "Talk like a Pirate" day!

 

Argh, Matey! I'm hoping I get some telemarketing calls that day! I've had 2 so far, one was an imitation call to Costco, the other was to an answering machine with a nonsense message.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Jolly Roger has an amusing website.

May have accidentally invented this activity decades ago. Los Angeles Times really wanted me to subscribe. I put enough enthusiasm out to get 'sales' to describe product at great length. Blocked each cut to "so can we sign you up?" with "wait tell me more". Sure I wasted 20 minutes of our collective time before claiming to be illiterate, so buying a newspaper was not really a good choice for me.

 

One of the only telemarketing calls that I would answer from the 931 area code would be from their local Newspaper, The Tennessean.
I would let them get about ankle deep into their spiel and then tell them to sigh me up immediately but only if they could deliver to my home.

Things would always break down rapidly when I gave them my street address (two states away....)
One sales person actually got irritated with me and asked how come I have a phone with an out of state A/C.....

 

Welcome to AT&T in OK. I have NOTHING special, just dial tone and taxes. I can scan the bill if you want. Yeas, it's very high.

As of 10 minutes ago, my OOMA is up and running. I LOVE it. Home number is being ported to it as we speak.

 

FYI, POTS line port to OOMA request July 12th, and it's ported and completed today, July 16th. That's faster than I expected. Loving it.

 

Just got Frontier FIOS for internet after Spectrum raised my rate $20. FIOS is much cheaper and much faster. Hasta la vista, baby!