so not to plug up the other thread about our phone issues, but we finally reached the end last week of our relationship with ATT.
the landline here has been trouble from the start and how they chose to install it left much to be desired.
24yrs later and probably a hundred or more service calls. the other day before Christmas Eve Mom picked up the phone to call someone and it gave out a horrible screeching noise. so of course she yells at me. i'm right here. i'm an easy target. i tell her to hang up and try again. much worse.
a rational person would hang up and check the connections and perhaps switch phones, but Mom just starts bashing the phone on the counter. so now not only do i have to deal with the phone line being the potential problem, but i no longer am sure i have any kind of reliable phone to use for testing. my other phone is iffy too.
so eventually i get one plugged in but the line is still very bad and the answering machine still works for answering calls, but there is no dial tone on any of the phones and we can't call out.
Mom says, done, no more. i'm ok with that, wasn't planning or even looking at cell phones in quite some time, but at least my internet connection still works and i can tell the siblings via e-mail that our phone is out.
in the meantime we've gotten a few phone calls and the recordings on the answering machine are so bad we can't tell what people are saying but at least we can make out who has called so we can eventually call them back.
fast forward to getting through the holiday and me not wanting to shop on a Monday after Christmas, so i got into town on Tuesday and picked up a basic flip phone that Mom can use and bring it home.
it took some effort to get signed up because we don't have a phone that works so i had to go into town yesterday to finish up what was needed to get the cell phone activated and have the landline phone number changed over to the cell phone, but that won't go through for a few days yet. in the meantime at least we do have a working phone again.
the fun part of getting Mom trained on how to use this new gadget will be coming but i think she'll be ok once she gets over the first negative reactions and resistance.
and then i get a letter from the internet provider saying they want to increase my rate by 66% - hmm, nope. so i wrote them back a note saying i would authorize a 16.66% increase but not any more and that i was already irked i had to pay a 2nd installation fee as it was. we'll see how that goes.
anyways, getting back to this landline and the end of the wire for ATT here. they ran the cable underground through a bunch of neighbors front yards, it isn't buried very deeply. for some reason they didn't use the box that is closest to our property, there's a huge chunk of cable that was run to that box, but that was abandoned. had they used that instead much of our troubles could have been avoided (about a quarter mile and several front yards of people digging and cutting or damaging the cable we're on).
many years ago during a service call the technician said we were on the last two intact wires on that cable and that they weren't even a twisted pair. he had to hunt to find them. at that time the option was for the phone company to replace the cable but they never wanted to do that, of course. with wire lines going aways anyways why would they want to do that work? so we limped along on this as it has been and several times a year we have had to call them because the noise on the line gets so bad or there wouldn't be a dial tone or anything... so, yeah, we're done.
when talking to the ATT person today to make sure there wasn't any issue to hold up getting the phone number transferred she was trying to sell me DishTV and anything else she could but i explained to her that we don't get cable, that our landline connection was very dead, that there was no chance we'd get digital fiber or anything that we'd use. we don't exist in that world. getting a cell phone and being in the 21st century is trauma enough.
soilandhealth.org
