Why have a phone?

[Snickerdoodle]

The only people who call are collection agencies. I asked the phone company before they gave us the new number and they said it was a "new" number. Right.

 

Even though I can see the caller id, they are sneaky, listing doctor offices, medical centers, etc. I even have collection agencies from friends I haven't seen in decades calling. :confused:

 

We operate on a cash basis only so don't owe anyone anything.

 

I hate it.

[Mrs Mungo]

We have lived here 2 1/2 years and we *still* get calls (collection calls) for the person who previously had this number. It is really annoying.

[HollyB]

We have had our number for 7 years and still get a couple of calls a month for people looking for the previous person. Once it was from her child's school. :001_huh:

[Dandelion]

In answer to "why have a phone?"... We got rid of our landline and went "cell only" a year ago. My DH has his cell and I have mine (saves us $60 or so a month, long-distance is free and we haven't missed the landline at all).

 

I have never (in the 10+ years I've had this cell #) had a collection call or solicitation call on my cell phone. Neither has DH. I guess it's possible, but this seems to be a problem that's more prevalent with landlines...

 

Anecdotally, we reinstated a landline for my business 2 months ago (I use it only for my business). In those 2 months, I've been contacted by two different collection agencies (for individuals who either had this # or gave this # previously). :glare:

[My3Boys]

I wish we could get rid of our landline, but our cell service can be spotty at times and we really need a backup just in case.

[katilac]

14 years with this number, and we still get calls for the family that had it before us!

[Kirch]

I just called a collection agency back this morning to tell them that SO-AND-SO IS NO LONGER AT THIS NUMBER SO PLEASE STOP CALLING!!!! If we get any more calls for her from them, I'm seriously thinking of figuring out what authorities to call to get them to leave us alone!! :glare:

 

When we lived in NC about 10 years ago, we were getting two or three calls every DAY for the same people for months. Even after we'd had the number for 3-4 years we were still getting calls several times a week--calls to let us know that "Charity" wasn't at school that day, calls from a nursing home or rehab center wanting to discuss health care options for a relative . . . mind-boggling. And collection agencies--they apparently owned a business.

[Alyce]

Since we did that the only calls I get are politicians, who are not held to this law and people trying to get me to sell my timeshare (they must give my name to all the companies that do this, also as I understand it not illegal to do. We keep our landline for several reasons. Our service is not always good here at home, it's great almost everywhere else. Sometimes we forget to charge our cells phone so we need the land line and we live in a hurricane area and when we've had them come through there have been time when the celll towers were downed and we lost our ability to use our cell phone, the landline on the other hand is that it has never failed us in these situations.