Vent/ older folks & modern life insanity!

[MarkF48]

72 years old and still have a Verizon landline and the wife I both have Tracfones that run a shade over $100 a year each. The Tracfones are primarily just used in the cars to call home or friends or if for emergency if the car should have a problem. Long distance calls as well rather than Verizon which would be a long distance charge. I seldom use my Tracfone and it has accrued close to 6000 minutes in air time. My wife did have a Tracfone fail a few years ago and the minutes did get rolled over to the new one.

The thing I find a PIA is that many online financial sites and a few others want a cell phone number to text a code as part of a 2-step verification. I don't keep my cell phone with me, nor do I have it on unless I'm out with it and may make a call or expect one, so to receive a text I need to go get the cell phone, turn it on, and try to remember how to get a text, hopefully before the time limit to use the code has expired.
Had to do a tele-health 'visit' with my doc a few months ago as Covid prevented a real visit. He was surprised I didn't have phone that could do a 'video' tele-health

 

[RSR]

I'm not too old, but lack of customer service is a major irritant with me. That's actually the reason I stay with ATT as my cell phone provider.

I dealt with Verizon for a landline years ago and swore I would never support them again. My parents are on straight talk and it works great, until it doesn't. My only option for cable is Spectrum. They are atrocious and any time you call them about a problem, it is 2 hours minimum.

The few times I have ever had problems (2-3 in the past 9 years that I've been with ATT2) I can get someone in the US within a minute or two, and get my problem resolved quickly.

I could pay less for a company that provides better coverage in the area I live, but I'll never do it because good customer service is more important to me when I need it.

 

[3Ts]

I have Verizon because they're the only carrier in this area and don't have reliable coverage yet so we also have a land line. A tower company just built a new tower just a few miles down the road from us to rent out tower space, hoping they put the cell antennas up soon. We'll consider dropping our landline at that time, the land line sometimes works, sometimes not, and we're getting someone else's long distance calls billed to us. We have a flat rate for long distance so it doesn't affect our bill, but who are these numbers that are being called and tagged with our number?

 

[RalphVa]

We had lots of troubles with internet DSL on CenturyLink because they could not maintain the DSL speed with all this traffic lately. So, finally convinced the wife to switch over to Comcast. Had them for TV for about the 1st 10 years here until Xfinity bought them out. Then they became unreasonable. Got TV through CL from space. Didn't like that. Cancelled and got Roku/Sling. Roku/Sling became problematic with slower DSL.

Now on Comcast for internet and phone. Works great. We had 2 dumb phones, but costs of those kept going up. Researched all sorts of things for portable phone (need fixed phone for my heart monitor). Down to 1 dumb phone that is grabbed when 1 or both of us go out. You need a phone in hand to get into some places closed except by phone when you're there.

Cancelled Sling services because hardly anything on ESPN any more. Get lots of free movies via Roku or Tubi channels on the Roku gizmo. Xfinity also gave us a device that provides old movies and Tubi. Don't like it.

Ralph

 

[Norm W]

I have a flip phone that I carry with me. Texting is blocked. If they can't talk to me, then it probably wasn't important. My land line number I've had for over 50 years. The cost was getting crazy, and that was with no long distance. To fix that I got the least expensive flip phone I could, and had the land line number put on it. Now the total phone bill is $25 less than with the land line and I have free long distance.

 

[Industrial Toys]

Funny times. You can have a BELL land line for decades and end up paying a lot. Then a reseller comes along, and offers the "SAME" BELL lines for half the price. They bill you, but BELL still comes to repair the line.

 

[RustyA]

Centurylink dsl less than 1mb just barely enough to stream. Dish for tv expensive and terrible customer service. Share a 4 line plan with neighbors on Cricket. Unlimited everything on all 4 phones for $130 month all fees included. If they offered a mobey plan we would ditch CenturyLink in a second. Good service reasonable priced devices and no surprises in bill.