So we have ATT residential local line service at home but not sure how much longer as 95 percent are junk calls anyhow.

Every month on the ATT bill there are charges for local toll calls, not much usually less than $5. Anyways I was curious what these calls were to especially since no one really uses the land line any more other than to receive calls.

So I call ATT and get a hold of a live person and he tells me they do not provide a call history for such local toll calls but tells me I can lookup what area codes and prefixes are on the local plan. I said that's fine but how do I know I am getting billed for calls we actually make or not? He puts me on hold for a while and comes back and tells me I will need to make a request to legal department to get such. Really? That is fucked up that I can charged for something without knowing what it is. All the more reason to finally get rid of the landline sooner than later once we make sure that everyone that needs our cell phone numbers has them.


Also another question about residential landline service. I just discontinued MCI long distance service since our ATT wireless plan now includes unlimited calling/texting and we rarely call long distance anyhow anymore with the advent of email, texting, and other methods of staying in touch. In the even that someone does try to call long distance from the landline does anyone know what will happen? Will we get a message saying no service or such? Could we get a bill from some long distance provider somehow? We do have to dial 1 first for ANY call from our area code even if it is the next door neighbor.

Thanks for any help on that.

My parents have ATT landline and they receive a detailed bill every month. Just like my sprint cell phone bill, every call is listed. I think customer service was feeding you crap.

Use a wifi phone service. I'm hooked up on Spectrum, 10 bucks a month as an add-on nd no long distance fees or tolls. OTOH, I rarely use it and I do get a lot of spam calls, so maybe I should kill that, too.

quote:

Originally posted by JSB3:
My parents have ATT landline and they receive a detailed bill every month. Just like my sprint cell phone bill, every call is listed. I think customer service was feeding you crap.

Yeah they probably are but at this point I will probably just get rid of it in the near future.

quote:

Originally posted by Fredward:
Use a wifi phone service. I'm hooked up on Spectrum, 10 bucks a month as an add-on nd no long distance fees or tolls. OTOH, I rarely use it and I do get a lot of spam calls, so maybe I should kill that, too.

Thanks for that info!

quote:

Originally posted by grumpy1:

quote:

Originally posted by Fredward:
Use a wifi phone service. I'm hooked up on Spectrum, 10 bucks a month as an add-on nd no long distance fees or tolls. OTOH, I rarely use it and I do get a lot of spam calls, so maybe I should kill that, too.

Thanks for that info!

Take a look at OOMA. I have no personal experience with it, as I have no use for a landline, but I have heard nothing but great things about it.

Buy the unit -- Amazon, or wait until the next deal rolls around on WOOT! -- and monthly service is almost free, I think something under five bucks a month.

I got sick and tired of the never ending taxes and fees associated with my Verizon landline that I cancelled it back in 2012. I had the cheapest plan available and the taxes and fees totaled up to almost as much money as I was paying for the plan itself. I certainly have never missed the landline and regret not getting rid of it sooner.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
Take a look at OOMA. I have no personal experience with it, as I have no use for a landline, but I have heard nothing but great things about it.

Buy the unit -- Amazon, or wait until the next deal rolls around on WOOT! -- and monthly service is almost free, I think something under five bucks a month.

Just ordered one from Costco, delivered yesterday, I"ve yet to setup the service.

You can transfer your existing number for $30 or so...

With the Costco deal you get the wired/wireless base with answering machine, a BT handset for a good price.

Monthly service with basic only is free but you have to pay federal and state taxes on phone lines.. $5 or so a month

Premier service is $9.99 a month, comes with some extras including a better call blocking service that takes care of most spammers.

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:

Monthly service with basic only is free but you have to pay federal and state taxes on phone lines.. $5 or so a month

Premier service is $9.99 a month, comes with some extras including a better call blocking service that takes care of most spammers.

If my math is correct, you pay double in order to not get some calls.

Or, you could pay nothing and not get any calls at all.

I have to say, since ditching AT&T landline, I have not missed it one single time, and oh yeah, I get to keep that $50 a month.

Yup! When wfirst

quote:

Originally posted by BigWhup:
I have to say, since ditching AT&T landline, I have not missed it one single time, and oh yeah, I get to keep that $50 a month.

Yup! When I first proposed firing AT&T re the landline several years ago, my wife said "but what if I have to send a FAX?"

At the time she had sent a grand total of about three FAXes in 20 years.

My reply: I'll show you how to send them via the internet, free.

quote:

Originally posted by calugo:
I got sick and tired of the never ending taxes and fees associated with my Verizon landline that I cancelled it back in 2012. I had the cheapest plan available and the taxes and fees totaled up to almost as much money as I was paying for the plan itself. I certainly have never missed the landline and regret not getting rid of it sooner.

Isn't that the truth about the stupid fees!

Talking to the wife we may need to keep it for a while as she is correct that the ATT wireless signal is poor here which sometimes results in disconnects when using our cell phones from home but I need to find which cell provider has good coverage in this area before considering switching cell provider. We live in a well populated area so it is surprising to me that the cell signal is poor though everyone around here goes up in area goes up in arms whenever someone wants to put up new antennas.

quote:

Originally posted by grumpy1:

Talking to the wife we may need to keep it for a while as she is correct that the ATT wireless signal is poor here which sometimes results in disconnects when using our cell phones from home but I need to find which cell provider has good coverage in this area before considering switching cell provider.

My hangar is in an AT&T dead spot on the airport and I had really spotty service there. Verizon users had great coverage.

I contacted AT&T’s customer retention department, told them that I had good service everywhere except in my hangar office, and since I needed service I was going to have to leave AT&T and go to Verizon.

They gave me a free micro-cell (AT&T’s term, the industry generic term is femtocell). This is a device that connects to the AT&T network via internet, and acts as a miniature cell tower, providing strong signal coverage within a limited area.

It did the job just fine, I got excellent AT&T coverage.

You might contact them and see if you can get one of these at no charge. If you have to buy one, I believe that they are around two hundred dollars, but they waived the fee in order to keep me as a customer.

Thanks V-Tail, I may have to look into that and glad it worked out so well for you.

quote:

Originally posted by grumpy1:
Thanks V-Tail, I may have to look into that and glad it worked out so well for you.

I should have mentioned, you do need a high speed internet connection for this to work.

Let us know if this works out for you.

There was a mention of OOMA earlier in this thread.

Amazon has it on sale: https://smile.amazon.com/b?nod...=pe_837390_360704810

I dumped AT&T many years ago over their customer service bullshit and billing issues! I will never, ever have anything to do with AT&T under any circumstance even if it is offered free!!!!!

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:

Monthly service with basic only is free but you have to pay federal and state taxes on phone lines.. $5 or so a month

Premier service is $9.99 a month, comes with some extras including a better call blocking service that takes care of most spammers.

If my math is correct, you pay double in order to not get some calls.

Or, you could pay nothing and not get any calls at all.

True, but double at OOMA is 1/3 of what we pay Spectrum for just the line, we've had it for almost 25 years, me, I'd let it go, wife wants to keep it.

I think I'll talk to her about dumping it, only people that call are telemarketers and politicians.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:


They gave me a free micro-cell (AT&T’s term, the industry generic term is femtocell). This is a device that connects to the AT&T network via internet, and acts as a miniature cell tower, providing strong signal coverage within a limited area.

It did the job just fine, I got excellent AT&T coverage.

You might contact them and see if you can get one of these at no charge. If you have to buy one, I believe that they are around two hundred dollars, but they waived the fee in order to keep me as a customer.

I got a used one on eBay for around $75 for my Dad's basement man-cave; he complained about not being able to make or receive calls on his AT&T cell phone but after I put that in, problem solved.