William Reardon’s Blog

That’s it, I’ve joined the cellular-only pack. I’ve given up the land-line and am relying exclusively on my cell phone for voice communications. I still technically have a landline — I have a contract getting me the “Pro” level of DSL for $18/month for until Feb, but I called SBC today and have them deactivate everything else. No CallerId, no 3-way calling, no long distance, no “local long distance” (whatever the hell that was). In the end, it’ll save me about $40/month and what I pay SBC now is cheaper than what it would have been to add Internet onto Cable, so I’m fine with it.

What finally pushed me over the edge? Well, a few things:

• About two months ago, my answering machine broke. Not a big deal — I’ve had it for, what, 8 years? It used a cassette tape for Pete’s sake! When trying to replace it, I learned that’s pretty uncommon now. In fact, even just an answering machine by itself is pretty uncommon. My only choices at Fry’s where a full-fledged automated telcom system or a combo cordless/answering machine for ~$100. Screw that. I just want an answering machine.

• A few weeks ago, the static on my cordless became more pronounced, to the point where I sometimes couldn’t hear the person on the other end. (It was fine on the wired $7 Walgreens phone, so I know it wasn’t the line.)

• I looked at my most recent phone bill and noticed I pay ~$20 for DSL, ~$20 for the long distance plan, and ~$20 for “normal” service. In other words, ~$40 for a bunch of crap I hardly use.
  

With all that — a new answering machine, a new phone, on top of close $40/month — I decided it just wasn’t worth it, so goodbye SBC.

It’ll be interesting to see how telephony has changed in about 50 years, if the big telcos are still around, and if so, in what form. They clearly have to change as they’re built on a model accustom to having a monopoly. Customer service is usually pretty bad, adding/changing options is fairly complex, typically require some kind of satanic bundling, and worse, in most cases, to change anything, you can’t do it yourself online — you have to call in, wait on hold, etc.

Personally, considering the abuse they’ve dolled out to their customers , I’m hoping SBC/AT&T will be out of business.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 1st, 2006 at 1:50 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.