Friday, May 23, 2014

The Landline Phone

            
True landline phones receive enough electricity to work even when the power is out.  This is not true of cordless phones which are dead when your homes electricity is out.   You should have a corded phone extension on every floor of your house.





      We have an unlisted number in the hope that only family, friends and people who legitimately do business with us, will call.   We also have our land line number on the "Do Not Call" list.   This worked pretty well for the twenty-five years our household has been in business.   However, now with computerized calling for everything from sales calls to political surveys, they often call numbers in sequence.  They might not have any idea who you are, but they are calling 2367, 2368, 2369, 2370 and so on.  In the past several years, this type of call translates into a lot of calls on a daily basis.

               Also in the last few years, everyone in our household has their own cell phone.  Personal calls to individual family members and work related calls usually go to the cell, as do friends calls.  The home landline is there to call 911, and to report power outages, and as a back up during other emergencies. It's also good to have when you need to fax something.   To deal with the high call volume I have a digital answering machine, and when it gets full, the landline has voicemail as part of our phone service.   Both are often full.   I am a very busy person and sometimes it takes me a while to listen to everything on both the digital answering machine and then the backup voicemail.    We have also developed a few policies over the years in dealing with the phone.

1. The phone is there for our convenience, not for anyone else.  We use it when we want, and this means that we don't have extensions to the landline everywhere.  We don't answer when it's not convenient, and we never answer during mealtimes.   I don't answer after about nine-thirty pm because my kids know to call me personally on my cell.

2. When I was in school we were taught that who you vote for and your political leanings are your private personal business, and so we do not, and we will not answer questions for political surveys.  This also goes for our own delegates, our Congressman, and our Senators.  I have already written you about what we want.  Read it, and you'll know what we think.  Don't call.

3.   We don't provide information on the products we use or our feelings about them free of charge to you, over the phone.  We don't exist here for you to farm as marketing information.

4.  We never ever donate money over the phone.  We have selected our charities and we contact THEM when we donate.  If you are doing good things and worthy of donations, mail a letter about it so that our accountant can check you out.

5.  We never ever buy anything over the phone.  There are too many scams and too many opportunities to obtain information for the purpose of identity theft.   If I needed something done on my house, I would call you, when I complete my research which includes the Better Business Bureau.

6.  What makes you think I would buy a vehicle extended warranty from someone I have never heard of, when you don't even know who I am or what type of car I have ?  

7.   Don't call me from India if your English is not good enough to be understood here.  I will hang up when I don't understand you.

8.  Don't suppress your identifying information from caller ID.  Your only hope of my answering is my recognizing your number.  "Head Office" on the caller ID will be ignored.


                I am a little annoyed at the prospect of needing to purge the calls from both my digital answering machine and phone company voicemail twice a day.  I am considering leaving a new message.


             "Due to the high volume of received calls, I may not be able to return your call.   No one here answers political surveys, donates money over the phone, buys products including credit cards or car warranties over the telephone.

              Calls are only returned to individuals we know or companies with whom we are already doing business.   If you are not an individual known to us, or a company with whom we have a longstanding business relationship, please do not leave a message.    Thank you."

  

                   I think it's a little longwinded.





19 comments:

Mamma Bear said...

Or just leave the message...... "you have reached the home of the worlds greatest psychic‎. There is no need to leave your name or number. I know who you are and I know who to call.
bahahaha

Sunnybrook Farm said...

We have no land line because the phone company wouldn't come out and replace the 50 year old lines in the ground that belong to them. They didn't care that the phone wasn't even good enough for voice. It was one of the moments that told me that the outlook for our country was very bleak, when the phone company didn't care if our phone worked. So we dropped the connection, I refuse to use the words phone & service together. Cell works in an emergency, you can report power outages with it, a land line is of no use if the phone company will not keep the system working so you may want to look into a radio if you don't have cell service.

Gorges Smythe said...

You may think it's too long already, but I believe you can request to be put on the do not call list OF THE CALLING COMPANY, and they are legally required to do so, though I could be mistaken.

David said...

With you 100%. Been heavily screening our landline calls and blocking the worst offenders (we only can block 10 numbers at a time with our service) which has cut down on the worst offenders. Don't think your speech is longwinded enough - they waste our time, why not waste theirs? I too refuse to be held hostage by my phone and will answer it at my own convenience - not anyone else's. And I too refuse to pick up for numbers I don't recognize, particularly toll-free or area codes I don't know anybody from. Oh yeah - never EVER deal with a collection agency on the phone. Period. Settle with the original creditor if the debt is legit, or let them mail you.

JaneofVirginia said...

Priceless ! Thanks for posting, Mamma Bear !

JaneofVirginia said...

Unbelievable, isn't it ? Mail is still not delivered here. We have to travel twenty miles to pick up our mail, and they are considering closing THAT post office, even though they have closed what was used as out post office in this area three times, each time leaving people in this area traveling longer and longer.

JaneofVirginia said...

I think you're right, but I also think a lot of the calls are criminals who are seeking info in order to use for identity theft. I don't think they are going to do anything I ask. Thanks for posting.

JaneofVirginia said...

A couple of years ago, we received a call for a medical bill which had been sent to collection when we had never received one via the mail in the first place. We paid it, but they continued to hound us for a long time, even afterward If I were going to stiff them it wouldn't have been for such a small amount of money ! LOL

Tewshooz said...

I love your message. If I talk fast, it won't seem so long and the people in India won't be able to understand it, lol. We, too, have an old line that did not support FAX or caller ID and the phone company wouldn't upgrade it cause only 2 houses were on that line. So we switched our land line number to my cell phone. Saved us over 40 dollars a month.

Dani said...

We can't have a landline on our smallholding as the unemployed steal tge cables for the copper they contain.
But junk calls to our cell phones - have you tried asking the caller to hold on, place the cell phone down, and only pick it up 10 - 15 minutes later? They will have rung off lol
Irritate the junk callers as much as they irritate you - perhaps they'll get the message...

JaneofVirginia said...

That's quite a savings ! I hope to hold onto the landline here because cellphone service here is patchy and often there is an echo, making it hard to hear the person for anything other than a call which says, "I will be home in twenty minutes". We have tried ALL the companies that provide service including Verizon. The phone company says that eventually, there will be no landlines, and all will be wireless. They have quite a bit of work to do before the service is reliable enough for that.

JaneofVirginia said...

Fascinating idea (the cellphone strategy, not stealing the copper....LOL) Our cables are buried, are they not buried or do unemployed folks simply dig them up ?
Thanks for the strategy of asking them to hold on.....LOL.

kymber said...

Jane - we have a community mailbox at the end of our road but if your mail is thicker than a magazine, we have to travel 30kms (but it takes about 48 minutes because of the roads) to pick up our parcels/packages. and they are thinking of closing that little post office down which means we will have to travel even farther into the city to get parcels/packages. it's a real sign of the times.

kymber said...

sweet Jane - we have cordless handsets that we use regularly but we also have 2 rotary dial phones. if the power goes out, we plug in one of the rotary phones and then can call in the power outage and get detailed updates. most people here only have cordless phones....therefore, we can't call to check up on them, nor can they call NS Power for updates. we have already decided that for Christmas this year - we are getting all of our friends a rotary dial phone.

another excellent post. much love to you and all of yours! your friend,
kymber

Dani said...

No, they are not buried but sit atop gumpoles on the road verge.

Not so much unemployed as just plain theives - very lucrative business selling the copper to unscrupulous scrapyards.

JaneofVirginia said...

Copper is stolen here also. Copper parts from heatpumps and copper flashing and downspouts on expensive homes are often stolen. Theives are everywhere.

JaneofVirginia said...

I like the community mailbox idea as implemented in Nova Scotia. I like that the boxes are lockable. Three times the nearest post office here has been closed. I hope our current one is able to stay open in the long term. I would only make it there once every two weeks if they close another one and make it even farther away.

JaneofVirginia said...

What a lovely idea for a gift ! It has been harder and harder to find plug in style landline phones lately. I keep several in case we need to plug one in and the ones we have don't work anymore. We are always the only people who report power outages up here because no one else keeps a plug in phone, so they can't call when there is an outage !
Love to you both !

JaneofVirginia said...

Sonu, I do not usually include ads, but I have here because this is on subject and it might help some of our readers. Thanks for your post.