Day 23, Frustrating

[fabrisse]

I spent nearly an hour on the phone with Comcast trying to get my bill down and my service straightened out. In order to do it, I will now have a landline. It could end up cheaper than cell service, in which case, I'll cancel my cell phone. I hate the damned thing.

I also waited for a package that should have been delivered on Wednesday. I was home all day, but no one tried to deliver then.

I may go out for pancakes. *hmmph*

Comments

[stlscape.livejournal.com]

Just FYI, Fabrisse, my cellphone is a pre-paid Tracfone - $100/YEAR (yes, year), with a given number of minutes (400/year, I think) that carry over if unused as long as you keep your "subscription" active. Depending on which phone you buy (not included in the $100/year) you can get double or triple minutes. This gives me the freedom of a cellphone when I want it at a price I'm willing to pay for the amount I use it. I prefer to make my calls from home, so the land line works better for me for most of my phone usage.

[siderea]

I was just going to suggest this. If 400 min/year (* multiplier) is not sufficient, more cost-effective is the monthly $10 50 min/mo (* multiplier) subscription. The minutes carry over.

About the kind-of-phone thing: Tracfone regularly has deals where one of the features of the phone is "double minutes for life" or triple. I bought my double-min for life phone for $20. So I'm paying $10/mo for 100min/mo.

Also, I use it w/ Google Voice, so text mgs to me are also emailed to me. I can then delete those msgs off my Tracfone phone unread and not be charged (a third of a minute, iirc) for them.

ETA: Did you catch PhoneQuest in my journal last winter? I am just full of clever ideas for cheap phone service and information about phone options most people don't know about.

For instance, there is zero reason you should lose your cellphone number, if you want to keep it. Options available include: transferring it to your landline, transferring it to a new cheap pay-as-you-go phone (Tracfone), transferring it to a free internet vmail box that doesn't ring through to any of your phones but emails you when you have a message which you can then hear from a webpage or have transcribed for your absurdist needs, transferring it to a free internet vmail box which hunts through to your phone(s) of choice.

For another related instance, if you want, you can number-shop via Google Voice. Once you find a number you like, you can "port" it out of Google Voice onto the service of your choice. (Note, porting numbers usually costs a nominal feel. IIRC, into GVoice is $20 and out is $3.)

Cool things you can do often involve knowing in advance what you want to do before making any changes. (E.g. if you lose control of a phone number, its gone for good; also, some changes take up to a week to process, such as number porting.)

Feel free to get in touch to discuss what options are available.

[moria923.livejournal.com]

Is your cell phone still operational? If not, could you send me the new number?

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

It is, but I'm having issues with the voicemail.