GOODBYE LANDLINE-WELCOME PEACE AND QUIET!

We made a monumental decision this past week at
our house. We finally got rid of our landline, which we
have had for over 48 years.
What inspired this decision after such a long time?
We finally realized that the majority of calls we’ve received
lately on this line are unwanted solicitations for
money, votes or scams. Some callers call back every
half hour.
You may be wondering why we didn’t take advantage
of listing our number with the Don’t Call registry.
Well, we did that years and years ago, when it first
offered protection from unwanted calls. Since then
the scammers (home security providers, repair companies
etc.) have found plenty of ways to outwit the
registry’s efforts to block them. Checkmate!
Even worse, in my opinion, is that we consumers
can’t block calls from politicians or charities. Apparently
our rights are limited to the obligation to pay our
phone bills. Avoiding donation seekers and political
parties is NOT an inalienable right.
One day last week these phone intruders got on
the one nerve I had left, and I threatened to throw the
phone through the window. While I wasn’t completely
serious, it certainly was tempting. And that’s when my
husband made the astute observation that we very
rarely got personal calls on our landline. As he put it,
“Why do we NEED it?”
The next day our 48-year old phone number became
history. It felt wonderful, almost like we were
slamming the phone down on all those unwanted callers.
We realize that we will still get occasional unsolicited
calls on our cell phones, but there will be a lot
fewer of them. And I hear there’s an app you can get
that lets you block a number once you receive a call
from it. Loading that app is at the top of my To Do list
right now.
If any of you regular readers still use a landline, you
might want to keep track of the calls you are receiving.
Do you really want to spend $60 or more a month
to enable these nuisance callers to bother you?
We didn’t. The peace and quiet this past week has
been wonderful!