Let's Talk Phones

[gailkate]

Our cell phone is an antique. Truly, I'm embarrassed to let anyone see it. In the next few months, our carrier will stop its service (a shame as we had a terrific bargain) and we must decide on another.

This, of course, means picking a carrier and a new phone. I am overwhelmed by the various models and functions, as we use ours simply for emergencies. (Barring inclement weather, that means me calling Jerry to say, yes, I'm STILL at the craft store).

So what do you all have and - most important - what do you actually use?

[qhperson]

I have a Motorola model that has no extras to speak of. There's no plan, either--I go to the website every two or three months and buy minutes. Since I keep the phone in the car and rarely use it, I have two or three hours built up.
It's mostly for emergencies (I got it one day after my car stalled and left me stranded), but I also make all my long distance calls with it since my phone co. decided to tack on $7.50/month if I made even one long-distance call from the landline.

[gailkate]

One LD call? Lord. And given your frequent bad weather, don't you kind of need a landline? Or is it that you just don't use that one for LD calls?

Your phone sounds like the one we'll have to replace. Or maybe we don't - can we just sign up with somebody and use our old phone? In the years since I got my first, I think we've had 3 or 4 - each time the phone came with the package, so I don't really understand why anybody buys one. But there are so many now, able to do GPS and take videos, even some with a little keyboard the pops up or pulls out like a drawer. What I want is one that's as big as an old desk phone with gigantic numbers.

[qhperson]

I need the landline for the computer more than anything at this point.
The cell phone, though, since I don't live near a tower or whatever it uses as a relay, is really limited. For example, I have to go out in the driveway (usually sit on the tailgate of the truck) to make calls. It doesn't work inside the house and sometimes not even anywhere but in the driveway. And it doesn't work at all if there's a significant loss of power, as after hurricane Rita.

The main problem for me is that almost any call I make is long-distance even though the actual distances involved aren't very long. As soon as I call someone in another county, it's long distance even though the mileage is 10 miles or so.

Back before Ma Bell got busted up by the government, things were a hell of a lot better. For instance, calls inside the county were free, and a call to, say, Nacogdoches was 11 cents for the first 3 minutes. And I had one company (Southern Bell or whatever it was) to handle everything, local and long-distance and whatever.
Now I've got Consolidated Communications for local and internet service and AT&T for long-distance, and that's were ConCom slams me: a $7.50 service fee for connecting me to AT&T.
It's not like there's a choice of carriers out here. Even the electric company has competition on the ground; with the phone co., it's ConCom or cellular or, in extreme circumstances, satellite.

[liriodendron]

Tomorrow we are getting new cell phones for everyone in our family, even though the one that I currently have works just fine and I have no clue how to use most of the features on it. Trust me, you don't want, or need, the cell phones we are getting.

This all began when we asked our 18-year-old what he wanted for his birthday and graduation (both of which occurred in close proximity last month). Well, what he wanted was a cool looking cell phone - one with one of those little keyboards so he could send text messages more easily. He finally figured out what he wanted (one with a touch screen) and we discovered that if we purchased one of these fancy phones, we could get up to four other less exotic phones for free. Since we'd planned to add our soon-to-be 13-year-old to our plan when school starts (it's hard to find a pay phone these days and he's getting of an age where he wants to be dropped off and picked up at various activities), this seemed like a good deal to pursue.

At any rate, my new phone will have a better camera than the one in my current phone (which I have no idea how to use), a bigger screen (useful, I suppose, for aging eyes trying to see what time it is), and can play music (although if this feature costs extra, we will not be using it). It will also have an alarm clock (as does my current phone and I do use this feature when traveling), and, um, I'm not sure what else. It's an LG VX8360 and our service is with Verizon, which has good coverage overall in our area, just not inside our house.

We have a family plan with, I believe, 700 shared minutes per month (and sadly, we have gone over that allotment a few times, which gets VERY pricey). The two older boys pay for a set number of text messages per month for their lines (I think they share 500 messages per month), since we refused to pay for that service and they insisted they couldn't live without it. We will be getting new two-year contracts on all the phones, as that is the price for getting the four free ones.

A few years back, I thought cell phones were a luxury that we simply didn't need. My husband had one for work and that was it. Then, his employer changed the way that they paid for the cell phone, and instead gave him a monthly allowance towards his own cell phone plan. Well, that money was sufficient to add a phone for me and one for the two older kids to share (to be taken with them when they went, for example, to a football game at the high school and needed to call for a ride to come home). Now I use it all the time - I call from the grocery store, the mall, on my way home from work, to order pizza while I'm out running other errands - you name it. I can't imagine doing without it. And, of course, you never know when your car might break down and you need to call a tow truck. LOL

For your purposes, though, gk, I would suggest one of those pay-as-you-go phones. You can pick them up at Target or Walmart (or probably the drugstore or the grocery store, though I've never looked there). You can buy minutes and add them as you need them, which would be cost effective if you are only using it for emergencies. The only downside is that if you don't keep adding new minutes before the old ones expire, you will lose the ones you haven't yet used. Still, for about $100 per year, plus the cost of the phone, you should be set. Unless, of course, you want to start taking pictures and listening to music.

[qhperson]

I got mine at Walmart, but this is very important--make sure you get the battery charger with the phone when you buy it, if you get something different. I bought my phone and since it was my first, I didn't know I had to recharge the battery--I thought I could just put a new battery in it when I needed to, like with a radio.
Big surprise! Bigger surprise when I found out that none of the regular stores carried a battery charger for my phone. I ended up at a little hole-in-the-wall type of phone place, just one woman working there and the place open only when she was there. I showed her my phone, and she hunted down and ordered a charger for me, and the charger cost as much as the phone cost since I bought them separately. Nice.
So beware! Beware!

[doctork]

I have a Palm Treo 700 smartphone, which is smarter than me, as I think you all know. It was expensive but I paid for it for 2 reasons: 1) at the time, some medical software I needed for the PDA function was only available on Palm; and 2) I was hoping the internet access would allow the Treo to replace my laptop when I travel. It's too slow for that (and fraught with quirks as has been apparent when I try to log in on Saturdays during the show), and the software is now more widely available on Windows, though the Palm OS is still more stable than Windows. (The medical software on the PDA is helpful in the patient exam room) It is a dandy phone that also takes good pictures, or good enough for me anyway, but I wouldn't buy it again now unless it has come down a lot in price.

My phone is on Verizon which works well pretty much every place I go. Spencer's phone is on my family plan, and it is a simpler phone, so the two together were not a bad buy 2 - 3 years ago.

Howard has a pay-for-minutes-as-you-go phone which works very well for him; for occasional use, I think it's the best buy. But I notice Howard often borrows my phone to call his friends when he wants to talk a long time. As long as he doesn't go over our minutes, I guess that's OK. I mainly use the phone for outbound calls at my convenience.

[joew]

qh —

I got my cell phone for emergencies as well, and I only use it for said emergencies and when I'm visiting rellies in Colorado or PEI and need to check in.

I don't use it for long distance because I've got AT&T still for that. I also have Verizon for the local service (it's the successor to the Baby Bell for our area). Verizon (silly name — I don't think it means anything) does'nt charge me anything to put a call through to AT&T.

Couldn't you have gone back to Wal-Mart for the charger?

[qhperson]

I tried, of course. They didn't have it and didn't know where I could get one. Since I didn't even know what I was looking for, I just went hither and thither, looking for someone to help me.
Eventually I suppose I would have tried online sources, like the company I bought the phone from, but I seem to recall checking their website and having no luck.

Out here in the country where there's no competition, you tend to take what is available and learn to live with it. One thing I especially hate about my ISP is how often I lose my internet connection, and almost always the phone is dead, then, too.
And they always tell me it's my equipment that's faulty, even though my "equipment" amounts to a piece of cable that runs from the junction box (everything on the other side of the junction box and the box itself is theirs) right into the phone or the computer--it's just the wire with the phone jack on one end. And with DSL, the line plugs into the router they supplied, not even into the computer.

[doctork]

Agree with the "out in the country" choice limits.

I had to get my own router for DSL service from SkyBest, and though I haven't yet finished programming it for wireless access, the wired access is good. Everyone in town raved about it, so I hope it fulfills those promises.

There are advantages to country living and disadvantages...The real mystery to me is: if there are so few people actually living in the country, why are there so many country music radio stations? Even in the city? What do city dwellers know about green tractors, and beer drinkers in country bars? And if I drop into a country bar, do you think someone will leave me a million dollars in their will too?

[gailkate]

Thanks for all this information! I've been going through all your comments and wondering whether I can admit I didn't know about the pay-as-you-go phones. My ignorance really doesn't embarrass me that much anymore, as it's too pervasive. Like, duh....

My friend who always has the latest gadget said her iPod was "very old," though it contained all her pics of grandkids and maps for both TX and MI, maybe even the checklist for launching the space shuttle. She kept waving her hand over it in a funny little dismissive gesture, like a queen flicking away sycophants. I laughed and she laughed back - it's just how you scroll from one app to another.

But what a picture - my friend of 47 years, standing in her MI yard surrounded by evergreens, wearing a purple chenille robe because it had gotten chilly, talking to her 3-yr-old granddaughter in Texas. "Callie? wait honey, Grandma has to move to a better spot - ok, tell me again...." When we were freshman at Michigan we were tied to our wallphone. What a marvel to have our own phone and what a burden - what if we missed calls for dates or the assignment for English History or heaven knows what? Answering machines and voicemail were still decades away. Do people even have answering machines anymore? Probably they're collectors' items on Ebay.

Anyway, unless we get some incredible package, this idea of buying minutes seems pretty slick.