That's an unusual plan, that's for sure. Looks like Tmobile has unlimited voice/text, 2GB data for $45. It's $40 for
500mb. When I had 1GB of data for a month for free promotion, I only used
120MB. I think for most people, the data usage winds up being where you have wifi, so it's not counted against your plan. Seems to me, one of those Tmobile plans would be better for you.
If Sprint coverage is good in your area, there are a bunch of MVNOs that ride on Sprint and have low cost plans. Virgin Mobile Custom for example, if your usage is low, you can dial in just what you want for V/T/D, change it at any time, etc. If you're only using few hundred mins V, couple hundred MB data, you could do that at VMC for
I think I heard somewhere (maybe even here on another thread) that you can get the tone the telco uses to say "number isn't in service anymore, dude") and put it on your answering machine. I am wondering if the same might be available in .wav files or similar. I could then answer the phone, hold it to my computer speakers and let it rip.
my great aunts verizon copper landline quit working. the drop was rock hard, still had the old carbon pile lightning arrestor, no NID.
she called verizon and they wanted to upgrade her to FIOS, when all she wanted was a working phone line.
so I went over and we talkked to the repair tech who was sent out. he was very nice everyone else worthless.
We told the tech either replace the drop, or cut it down she wouldnt ever be using verizon anything. a argument occured with techs boss.
in the end we won new copper drop installed:)
I told the supervisor just cut it down or replace all the bad wiring, or give me your name I am writing to the president of verizon how you just cost landline another customer.
the worst customer service I EVER GOT was FIOS. Finally had them remove every verizon landline hardware from my home.
Not having reliable FIOS phone service for 3 months lit a fire about verizon
My land line phone is slightly less than $ 20, but by the time the tax, 911, long distance connect and a bunch of other things are added that I seem not to have any control over, it is almost $ 40.
I wondered about that myself. I think you just want the three tones and you put your own message in. It *might* trick the robo dialers into removing your number from their database. but I doubt it would last long. They probably try it again after a month or so, assuming someone will have it by then.
Some of the robo dialers simply call the whole10,000 number LATA. That is why you hear the pause after you answer and sometimes it just disconnects. They don't put a live person on until the dialer thinks he has a live answerer. If nobody is available in the boiler room, it hangs up.
We can get a signal at random places around our property, but those locations seem to vary from day to day. Maybe atmospheric conditions changing, I don't know. Indoors, there is one spot at the end of our dining table, near the front door that seems better than others, but that's not reliable either. :)
We only get two or three a year. If I had a repeat offender I could add them to my blocked number list, but it doesn't happen often enough to worry about. As soon as I realize it's a sales call, I hang up.
I did that. Didn't make one bit of difference to the one number that kept calling me every day. Best I could do was give him a "special" ringtone and not answer it.
A couple years ago we rented a house in western NC (Nantahala area) and the best part of it was no cell service and no WiFi We were truly "on vacation". We could hike up to the top of the mountain and get 4G or drive down to the hot dog stand and get WiFi This is the hot spot
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There was also a little store nearby with WiFi. You had to be a chip shot from this building
I have a friend who enjoys screwing with these people. He tries to keep them on the line as long as he can without buying anything, under the assumption that this hurts them more than any other strategy. There is merit to that idea but I just do not have the patience. I do wonder if that could get you off the list if you were really hurting them.
I mentioned that I have a FIOS line to my house. Average cost is about $35/month. I use MCI long distance service and have an international charge to allow low cost calls to Canada and Europe. I use it as a business line and bill it out to my main client. Have had no problems with it. Use Comcast triple play for rest of the house. Comcast can be a PITA but dealing with Verizon is far worse.
Our services are all underground and copper might have been 40 years old and was badly deteriorating. Verizon had to get permission to bring it to my house as they have to put the battery backup and other box attachments to the house as well as string the optical line. Talk about a mess as the crew that brought it to the house, brought it to the wrong side of the house and when installation crew came in they had to be called back. Cable is only buried about 6 inches and wonders all over my front lawn.
About the same time that year, Comcast put in a new cable and accidentally cut Verizon's line. Verizon was sloppy too and a neighbor had the optical cable laying across his driveway and it must have been driven over a hundred times.
We have both Comcast and FIOS access and I've got a next door neighbor and one across the street that switch back and forth. Wife does not want me doing that but I have told FIOS that if I can have their initial low cost 2 year offer for life, I will take it. Fat chance.
You can also try multiple calls to Comcast to try to get the bill lowered. We plead as seniors on fixed income. Guy tells me he has his grandson call for him and if not satisfied, keeps calling talking to different people to get the bill lowered.
If you buy more time before the 365 days, I think it is, but it's not
366 even in a leap year, have passed since you bought the last 100 dollars worth. 25 dollars worth expire in 90 days, not 91 or 92, which
3 months would be. 50 dollars expire in 180 days iirc, NOT 6 months.
Well, you can turn on the phone and change your settings or look for a phone number, but you can't make a connection to any other location including the AT&T offices or you are charged $2. And be careful, because if you got a phone call and there's a message on your voice mail (and maybe if you got a text?) the phone will on its own call immediiately so you can hear your voicemail and it's hard to hang up in time to avoide the daily $2, especially if you didn't see it coming. They charge the $2 even to call an 800 number or even
911, I'm pretty sure. Of course if it's really an emergency, it should be worth $2.
After that until midnight it's free, except to call foreign countries except Canada, I think. Maybe it's not foreign enough.
Webpages said that it was no longer very effective, because the spammers' new software now continues to listen to see if there's a message. Of course the phone company plays a message too, "We're sorry. The number you have clalled is no longer in service. Please check the number you have called and call again or call the operator." My normal message is no longer than that, but if voice recognition can tell what I'm saying versus what the phone company says, they could figure out that it's not really disconnected. And that must be what those webpages are saying the software does.
That wouldn't work in a timely manner. The tones have to come right after the phone stops ringing, I think. But what you can do is change the recording on your phone machine, and maybe even voice mail, though I only have a 1970's style phone machine**. It took me 10 or 20 tries to get the timing etc. right, but only about 10 or 15 minute total.
I unplugged my phone machine and brought it where my computer is. I had to play the 3 tones several times to get them loud enough and get the timing right (how long after I clicked Play did it really play) and once I did that, I had to learn the routine for recording my outgoing message (3 steps) and I had to hold the phone machine with its microphone up to the computer speaker(s) while keeping a finger on the button, which when released, ended the recording of my outgoing message.
Then I had to wait what I thought was the right time, about the same time as the phone company message waited, to start my message, which I had to say correctly. not so easy in the first place and harder when following all this other stuff.
But I like how it turned out. Strangely, no one who has left a message has asked me about the 3 tones. Maybe I told most of them months ago.
I still get 4 kinds of calls**, those that hang up right after the 3 tones, those that hang up in the middle of or right after the whole message, and those that leave a message.
The number of messages from spammers really does seem to be going down, but I can hardly believe it's because of the three tones. Still, I knew I'd feel this way if the number went down, and I also knew I wanted to try it, no matter what, to know for myself. I plan to leave the tones on for at least 6 more months. My old machine had replaceable outgoing message tapes, microcassettes. That was better, because I could change messages without erasing old messages.
**And I don't have caller id so I have no easy cheap way to see if anyone I wanted to hear from hung up without leaving a message.
**Voice mail is useful if you need to get your messages from other locations, but I don't, and even if I did, this phone machine will do that.
(Sorry if this is a duplicate, email claims not to have sent it earlier, although it did send one a few minutes earlier).
Not related to my original questions, but since this came up...
I had that AT&T cell plan for several years. At the end when I decided to get a smart phone on a friend's plan. There was money left on the account and I decided rather than let it fall back into AT&T's account, I'd try to do something constructive with it. I found several charities where I could donate money that was debited from my prepaid account. Eg, I could text a code to the Red Cross and each time it debited $10 from the account. I'm not posting the #s here because if someone else did, I wouldn't believe them anyhow, but then I'm cynical. If you look on the Red Cross main page, there is a link to donating by text. (Yes, I'm sure the charities don't get all of the $10, but they still get more than they would if the $ in the account reverted to the carrier).
Anyhow, just mentioning it in case anyone else finds themselves in the position of leaving money in a prepaid account.
AFAICT, Verizon has eliminated the block number option. I wanted to start using it but couldn't.
Although it never allowed more than 10? blocked numbers and I think they call from many numbers.
But why did they eliminate it?
2 or 3 a year is good.
In the last 3 weeks or so, I've gotten 3 of a different kind. Silence for 10 seconds, and then a cute girl's voice, almost a child's voice says, "Bye". and that's all.
I have a Verizon cell phone. Some one put me on a mailing list, I repeatedly asked and insisted to be taken off the list. He apologizes, promises, and keeps sending. I put him on blocked. Now, every couple days instead of having to open and delete the multi media message, I have a notice "unable to deliver multi media message" and I have to open and delete the notice. It's actually same or more keystrokes and actions to deal with the blocked message, rather than getting the spam message and deleting it. Not how I'd like it to be done.
I just looked at my caller ID and I had 21 calls in the last month that came in as "out of area" or "not provided". They were pretty much all spam. Only a couple of those were from duplicate numbers. 3 had "out of area" in the number field too.
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