I don’t often do this, but every so often I come across a question that I need help deciding. What’s the use of having a moderately popular blog (alas, 3,000 visits a day do not constitute an “immensely popular” blog) if I can’t sometimes use it for my own nefarious purposes, right?
The question is simple, and, I expect, one that many of my readers have experience with.
My wife and I have been contemplating getting rid of our land line telephone and going just with our mobile phones. One of the reasons we’re contemplating this is that Verizon just keeps increasing the price for basic service. For a phone with Caller-ID and voice mail (two absolutely essential features, as far as I’m concerned; we long ago gave up using an answering machine) has crept up past the $40 a month range. That’s nearly $500 a year. Given that we make most of our calls these days on or cellular phones and that my wife now receives most of her calls on her cell phone, we’ve started to question whether we need the land line anymore. We rarely go over our daytime minutes. (Actually, I never go over my minutes and in fact probably have more than I need; although my wife on occasion flirts with going over hers)
The advantage of ditching the land line is obvious: Not having to pay for it anymore. But what are the disadvantages? One that I can think of is that if there’s a prolonged power outage, the batteries in the cell towers run out and you can’t make calls, whereas with a land line, as long as you have a basic phone that doesn’t require plugging in to work, you still can. But is that consideration worth $500 a year? One other disadvantage that I can think of is that, when I leave my phone upstairs and I’m downstairs, I often don’t hear it if there’s a call, particularly if the TV is on. With a land line we have phones both upstairs and downstairs that ring when someone calls. Again, I don’t know if that’s worth $500 a year anymore. And are there any disadvantages that I haven’t thought of, that only someone who has ditched their land line would have discovered.
The comments are open.
