OT - Fun with telemarketers

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

In the last several years, I have had only one message left by a junk caller. It was an IRS scam, and the message never said WHO was being sued.

[snip]

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

My first cell phone was with AT&T, and I discovered I'm in an AT&T dead zone. I could go into the back yard, and hold the phone above the oleander plant on the south side, and the phone MIGHT work.

This is not rural, but a residential area. AT&T works well at the Kroger a mile away. Verizon & Sprint do work OK here. My phone is with Verizon and I have an internet hotspot that uses Sprint.

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

I once got a collect call from a friend in a mental hospital. That call was handled through a third party was was really expensive. I wish I had remembered to ask her for the phone number there and called back.

[DerbyDad03]

You still pay separate long distance charges on your landline? Who is your carrier? I used to use Verizon, now I use TWC but even my local TelCo includes domestic long distance as part of the monthly charge. They may even have added some international, but I haven't checked recently.

Are you sure that you are going to be billed for the long distance call?

[Tekkie®]

Mark Lloyd posted for all of us...

Probably only outgoing calls, not incoming.

[Tekkie®]

Mark Lloyd posted for all of us...

That is very informative but tells us nothing.

[DerbyDad03]

It might depend on who "they" is. No that carrier I've had in years has. Now, we should also define what we mean by "landline".

For years, I used the local TelCo, over regular phone wires to my house. To be honest, I don't recall if I paid separate long distance charges or if I had a long distance "plan". It's been too long.

I switched to TWC phone service as a bundle with my cable and internet. At that point I cut the phones wires at the top of the house and removed their box from the exterior wall. I still considered the "home phone" and all extensions to be my "landline". Same number, phone book listed, etc.

Then I switched to Verizon, who supplied what was essentially a "cell phone in a box" that my home phone connected to. I still considered the home phone and all extensions to be my "landline". Same number, phone book listed, etc.

I am now back on a TWC bundle. The price from TWC is better once I used up the promotional price that Verizon had offered me. (Actually, I needed to add another cell phone to my Verizon plan, which basically knocked the home phone onto a separate plan at a higher price then the TWC bundle price)

In any case, neither TWC nor Verizon charges for domestic long distance on the home phone.

I can't answer the question about using Skype as a phone service. The only time I use Skype is for video calls with family and friends, both long distance and local. Voice calls are via cell, the home phone is for the crap calls.

[DerbyDad03]

And your post wasn't even informative.

[Micky]

Calls from other countries to the US do not cost the same as from the US to other countries, and I think it is almost always more.

And rates to commercial businesses are not the rate charged to individuals, here and probably there too. I'm sure they're willing to lie but if they are on the phone 12 hours a day, the phone company can tell they are commercial (or deserving the higher rate, regardless). Plus they call about 5 numbers at once, talking to whoever answers first, but not, it seems, hanging up on those who answer 2nd or 3rd (the reason there is often no one there when you pick up.) So that might raise their cost by a factor of 3 or even 5. OTOH, bulk buyers of long distance almost always get a discount.

[Micky]

Yes, they do.

It's free to call other computers, although the computer has to be on and skype running for this to work.

And you don't have to know where the person is.

It's cheap to call land lines, including foreign ones, because it's bascially VOIP at the caller's end.

For money, you can get an 800 phone number so that people can call and get your computer when it's running and something like voice mail when it's not.

I know how you feel. Not this topic so much but other stuff.

[Stormin Mormon]

Also moderately thread drifted.

[sms]

The last time I had AT&T service, which was very long ago, I did not select any long distance provider. All long distance, was done through OneSuite, and I had to train the family to also use them for intra-LATA calls which we would otherwise be billed for.

Then I switched to an ISP which used AT&T's wires to sell their own DSL and voice service. Unlimited calling, anywhere in the U.S. was included. The problem was that I was so far from the Central Office that the DSL was too slow. When I switched to Comcast broadband I moved the "landline" to free VOIP service on Ring.To with an Obi 202. Ring.To dropped VOIP service on March 31st so I had to move my number somewhere else. There were a lot of choices to use with the Obi, but Google Voice was the best deal since it's free. The other options were MagicJack, Ooma, or Vonage. Magicjack and Ooma aren't too expensive, but Vonage is very expensive.

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip[

Yes, I could have called to that pay phone for a lot less than the collect call. That was more than 10 years ago, and I no longer have that bill, but I think it would have cost around 10%.

[DerbyDad03]

You are not telling me anything that I don't already know. I'm not even sure what your point is.

All I was trying to do was point out to KenK that his (apparent) assumption that these companies are paying huge long distance charges for these calls is probably not valid. Even if they are, hopefully their business model and response rate more than covers the cost.

[DerbyDad03]

Really? Your ISP allows you to connect for free?

Wasn't it you that said that LD was included in the monthly bill, so it wasn't really free? The same holds true for "free" calls from computer to computer. Both parties are paying for the connectivity that makes that possible.

[KenK]

DerbyDad03 wrote in news: [e-mail]:

No. I'm not. But why else have toll-free 800 numbers if there are no long distance charges? I'll find out when I get the next bill.

[KenK]

DerbyDad03 wrote in news: [e-mail]:

CenturyLink

[DerbyDad03]

Remnant of the past? Some users who do still pay for each long distance call? For people that *think* they get charged for every long distance call? So people feel more comfortable knowing that it's a business?

After I came up with those possible reasons off the top of my, I found this blog post. This guy suggests that not only don't we need toll-free numbers anymore, businesses are actually wasting money by continuing to use them.

[DerbyDad03]

According to the "Plan" tab at this site, it's possible that you may indeed pay for long distance unless you subscribe to their "Phone Unlimited" plan.

[DerbyDad03]

Well, you could call them and ask instead of waiting. I assume they have an

800 number. ;-)