# What The Heck?



## Doxie-Doglover-Too (Jan 25, 2007)

we don't use our home phone for long distance, we use our cell phones because we have nationwide long distance.

This months home phone bill came with the following charge:

Shortfall Charge














$3.50Your Long Distance qualifying charges this month are $.00.







When your long distance charges are less than $3.50, the







Shortfall charge is the difference between those charges and $3.50







All long distance charges except for taxes and surcharges are included.







$0.00
Total Services$3.50


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## john7349 (Jan 13, 2008)

This would be a "monthly minimum charge" your Long Distance carrier will charge you for their service. Most carriers do this. Imagine... not doing a thing and getting paid for it.


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## jcat67 (Aug 8, 2008)

Have you considered removing Long Distance from your phones? We use our cells for LD also so we just had it removed from our land lines.


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## Y-Guy (Jan 30, 2004)

Remove LD from your phone, we never specified a LD carrier when we moved here for this reason.

News story about this


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## mmblantz (Jul 1, 2007)

We removed all but basic service. It's about $12 here plus taxes. Our home line is nothing more than an internet line and call screening now for people that don't have our cells. Of course we have 5 cellphones on our verizon plan.----Mike


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## Doxie-Doglover-Too (Jan 25, 2007)

I am currently waiting for live chat person to come on line....I had told them I didn't want a long distance carrier when we got Verizon but it seems they chose themselves to be it anyway


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## jcat67 (Aug 8, 2008)

Doxie-Doglover-Too said:


> I am currently waiting for live chat person to come on line....I had told them I didn't want a long distance carrier when we got Verizon but it seems they chose themselves to be it anyway


Now you have opened an entirely new can of worms....."currently waiting for live chat person...." Don't you hate that,
Please press 1 if you have a push button phone, please press 1 if you want help, please press 2 for a live person, now press 4 if you want the live person to speak a language you can understand.....Thank you. Please wait and the next available representative that can speak your language will be with you shortly....your wait is approximately 272 minutes....don't hang up or you will be placed at the end of the list.


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## California Jim (Dec 11, 2003)

$42 per year (worse case scenario) seems like cheap insurance to me. If you ever NEED to make a LD call from your land line it will seem irrelevant.


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## Doxie-Doglover-Too (Jan 25, 2007)

California Jim said:


> $42 per year (worse case scenario) seems like cheap insurance to me. If you ever NEED to make a LD call from your land line it will seem irrelevant.


we won't need to, we both have cell phones as does anyone who visits us. When I lived in South America people had locks on their phones to keep anyone from being able to even lift the reciever! of course that was when phones had cords from the reciever to the base of the phone







AND it was rotary dial


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## Doxie-Doglover-Too (Jan 25, 2007)

Live chat lady cancelled my long distance service and applied credit to the bill








2 months ago there was a $9.95 bill for some sort of credit check service. It wasn't called a scam or phishing...it has some other name that I don't recall, one that I had never heard of. Anyway, always check your bills !


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## bill_pfaff (Mar 11, 2005)

I feel your pain, it is one of the 86,722 reasons we dropped the land line and went strictly to cell phones.

I understand if you need the line for INTERNET. We were lucky and have cable so we didn't see the logic for paying for something we didn't use anymore.

To cover any calls where the people didn't have any of the new numbers we had the land line number ported to one of the cell phones.

in order to mange the undesirable calls, if the number is unrecognized by the phone (not in the phone's directory) the phone doesn't get answered and it goes to voice mail. If they didn't leave a message then they didn't really want to speak to us and if they did leave a voice mail it is our option to listen to it and call them back. If it is someone that wasn't in the directory but should be then they get added to the directory and the next time they call we know who it is.

We just got sick of paying for something we didn't use anymore when there was a better solution to our communication needs.


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## Oregon_Camper (Sep 13, 2004)

We use Comcast for Phone/Internet (VOIP). I can call anywhere in the US with no addtional fees.

I don't call anyone overseas...so I had all that removed as an option.


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## California Jim (Dec 11, 2003)

Oregon_Camper said:


> We use Comcast for Phone/Internet (VOIP). I can call anywhere in the US with no addtional fees.
> 
> I don't call anyone overseas...so I had all that removed as an option.


We are heading this way too. Verizon is installing our new FIOS service tomorrow. Aside from the great TV service and "all you can eat" free long distance, I'm looking forward to a smokin internet connection. My home connection will be better than the T1 line at my office









All bundled together for less than I currently pay for phone, internet, and cable TV seperately.

Hope it's as good as the hype.


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## Jim Savage (May 27, 2008)

California Jim said:


> We use Comcast for Phone/Internet (VOIP). I can call anywhere in the US with no addtional fees.
> 
> I don't call anyone overseas...so I had all that removed as an option.


We are heading this way too. Verizon is installing our new FIOS service tomorrow. Aside from the great TV service and "all you can eat" free long distance, I'm looking forward to a smokin internet connection. My home connection will be better than the T1 line at my office









All bundled together for less than I currently pay for phone, internet, and cable TV seperately.

Hope it's as good as the hype.
[/quote]

We got the FIOS installed a few month ago. they offered to us was a $250 american express gift card or a flat screen TV as an incentive. I went for the gift card its been 6 months now and still nothing. The customer service has been awful we were called and asked if we wanted the $250 gift card as a credit on the account I said yes ... it is still not there that was 2 months ago. I called to see what ws going on with the account they had no idea when i would get my gift card or the money but i could have a free month of HBO for my trouble... didn't get that either! We still have not seen the $300 rebate for the 3 references we sent to them. I still get phone calls from them trying to sell me the FIOS service when I allready have it. On the other hand I love the internet connection!!


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## California Jim (Dec 11, 2003)

Jim Savage said:


> We use Comcast for Phone/Internet (VOIP). I can call anywhere in the US with no addtional fees.
> 
> I don't call anyone overseas...so I had all that removed as an option.


We are heading this way too. Verizon is installing our new FIOS service tomorrow. Aside from the great TV service and "all you can eat" free long distance, I'm looking forward to a smokin internet connection. My home connection will be better than the T1 line at my office









All bundled together for less than I currently pay for phone, internet, and cable TV seperately.

Hope it's as good as the hype.
[/quote]

We got the FIOS installed a few month ago. they offered to us was a $250 american express gift card or a flat screen TV as an incentive. I went for the gift card its been 6 months now and still nothing. The customer service has been awful we were called and asked if we wanted the $250 gift card as a credit on the account I said yes ... it is still not there that was 2 months ago. I called to see what ws going on with the account they had no idea when i would get my gift card or the money but i could have a free month of HBO for my trouble... didn't get that either! We still have not seen the $300 rebate for the 3 references we sent to them. I still get phone calls from them trying to sell me the FIOS service when I allready have it. On the other hand I love the internet connection!!
[/quote]

Yeah, Verizon's total failure at customer service is well documented. Fortunately the FIOS system seems to be up to the hype once it's in and working. It's that whole "in and working" part I'm nervous about! 1 hour until Verizon truck arrives


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## raynardo (Jun 8, 2007)

I totally got rid of all my land lines, and use the ooma device (http://www.ooma.com). You need to have high speed (broadband) Internet access to use this device, but once you buy it, I paid $250, that's all you have to pay - ever. You get all the neat phone features, including caller ID and an answering machine (you can even have an email sent to you letting you know you received a message).

I've had it for three months now, my monthly phone bill used to be over $50/month for two lines without any long distance - all those other "access" charges. I got a special ooma deal what gives me two phone lines, so in an other two months I'll be breaking even, and after that it's all gravy!

I'd highly recommend this over Vonage and other services that still require a monthly charge.


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## California Jim (Dec 11, 2003)

raynardo said:


> I totally got rid of all my land lines, and use the ooma device (http://www.ooma.com). You need to have high speed (broadband) Internet access to use this device, but once you buy it, I paid $250, that's all you have to pay - ever. You get all the neat phone features, including caller ID and an answering machine (you can even have an email sent to you letting you know you received a message).
> 
> I've had it for three months now, my monthly phone bill used to be over $50/month for two lines without any long distance - all those other "access" charges. I got a special ooma deal what gives me two phone lines, so in an other two months I'll be breaking even, and after that it's all gravy!
> 
> I'd highly recommend this over Vonage and other services that still require a monthly charge.


ooma is a great option, especially if you have a quick return on investment for the start-up. Unfortunately companies like this have an exceptionally high mortality rate. It will be interesting to see if their model and company survives.


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