Verizon Is One Sneaky Telecommunications Corporation!
Author: Nick
Category: Money
Topics: bills, personal, technology
Why, in this era of supercomputers and flying cars, do I still have a landline phone installed in my home? Is it because I feel more secure knowing I have a phone that connects to a wall that connects to all the other phones in the world with wires? Do I have some sort of illicit passion for phone jacks and RJ-11 hinged locking tabs? Or are landlines such a great bargain that I’d be stupid not to fork over the cash each month to have one?
I can assure you that the correct answer is none of the above. Instead, the absolute only reason there is still a telephone plugged into our home’s wall is because of Comcast. You see, my wife and I aren’t big television watchers. In a given week, we’ll spend a combined total of maybe six hours viewing regular television programming. Our TV gets far more use in conjunction with its attached peripherals–the Gamecube, the PlayStation 2, and the DVD player. As such, we don’t have cable or satellite or any other paid service that would give us access to additional programming channels. And since we don’t have cable, we also don’t have access to the high-speed internet services provided by our local cable company, Comcast. In order to purchase Comcast’s internet services without also buying into its cable service, I would need to give them one of my kidneys wrapped in an enormous ball of cash.
While we can live without 430 channels of HBO, my plot to take over the world work and hobbies (like this one!) require some sort of non-dial-up connection to the internet. Verizon to the rescue! We’re signed up for their $15/month 768/128kbps DSL service. For the less technically inclined people out there, those numbers mean that I can download the entire internet in approximately seven seconds. Of course, with cable internet, that time would drop to three seconds, but I’m not in that big of a hurry.
So what does all this have to do with my having a landline phone? Well, it’s because Verizon has this one little caveat to its $15 DSL service–I need to have some sort of landline phone service with them, and not even my cash-wrapped kidney can change that. So instead of paying $40 + $40 + taxes each month for cable and cable internet, we pay $35 + $15 + taxes for a landline telephone with unlimited local and regional calling and DSL internet. Having the landline phone service also allows me to keep my cell phone rate very low since I typically only use it for long-distance calls.
In a few areas, Verizon is starting to roll out its sexy “naked” DSL service. For just an extra $5 a month, this plan would allow you to get Verizon’s DSL internet without any sort of landline service… in theory. In reality, you still need a landline; it just doesn’t need to be with Verizon. Still, if true naked DSL ever appeared in my neck of the woods, we’d just drop the landline and beef up our cell phone service.
So as the situation stands, Verizon takes our $35 each month and gives us all the calls we want in this general area along with common extras like Caller ID, Call Waiting, and unlimited calls to Mars (though that last one has yet to be useful). But with our latest bill came a tiny flyer that I almost threw away without reading. It advertised Verizon’s Freedom package (unlimited calls to anywhere in the U.S.) for just $35 a month. “Why am I paying the same price for a plan with no long distance service?” I thought. So I decided to switch my service to this new plan at my earliest convenience.
Fortunately for me, my earliest convenience was after I had a chance to discuss the plan with some wonderful folks on the internet. They kindly pointed out that the $35 version of Verizon’s Freedom plan included absolutely no extra features. No Caller ID. No Call Waiting. And zero minutes for me to talk to my future Martian friends! I priced all those options individually and found out that the ones I use the most would add an extra $10-15 to my monthly bill. For that price, I may as well have gotten the full-featured Freedom package. And even with the unlimited long distance, I’d still have to hang on to my cell phone at its current rate for the occasional use I make of it away from home.
Nice try, Verizon, but you’re not getting a penny extra from me. And as soon as I finish wiring my massive can-and-string network across Maryland, I’m ditching you altogether!
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89 Responses »
1.
John OMM
March 13th, 2006 at 11:28 am
Our household is under the thumb of Verizon too for the time being but we’re selected a less expensive phone plan. We use Sunrocket for our calling, but we still have a Verizon land line to ensure uninterupted use of our DSL. We pay $32.70 for DSL, plus $11.60 for the cheapest phone service. Verizon does ofer DSL without a land line on a dry loop in our area for about $6 less (no phone charge, but $5 more for DSL) but this would require that the previous service be cancelled first and a period of a week or two with no DSL or phone service. We’re not interested in doing this now, but we’ll probably make the switch next time we go on an extended vacation.
2.
mapgirl
March 13th, 2006 at 11:33 am
Great post! I got my Verizon bill over the weekend and now I’ll be calling them to ask if I can stop paying $40/mo for DSL since I’m a Luddite keeping a landline for 911 calls.
3.
NewsGirly
March 14th, 2006 at 2:18 pm
I found out last year that Verizon has a stealth basic plan for landlines in Maryland. It’s about $12/month + taxes and includes no long distance or extras – it also costs me about $0.08/local call, instead of having unlimited local. We have Verizon cell phones on a discounted family plan that we use for all long distance (free) and many local calls. I make an average of about a call a day on the home phone – $2.40 worth. I kept caller ID only, for about $7/month. I’m still ahead by about $15/month over my previous plan. (I use Comcast for internet and cable, but probably not for much longer. Very very poor customer service.)
4.
Daniel B.
February 11th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
The ‘stealth’ local service mentioned is called message rate service. I’ve had it in Maryland and also in DC. There’s actually two types, one where you get charged about 10 cents for every call you make, and one for a couple bucks more a month where you get an allotment of outgoing calls (like 75?) an then after that you get the per-call charge. That’s the one I use. I’ve never even approached that limit. I’ve found I can do without caller ID (at least half the time it doesn’t work anyway because the other side has it blocked) and call waiting. I use another provider for long distance (bigredwire.com), which doesn’t have any monthly fee or minimum charges. One thing nice about the local landline — once setup it ‘just works’. There aren’t many modern technologies that can approach that.
5.
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October 16th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
LOL that last remark about can and string was hilarious. I’m glad they are not getting an extra penny out of you. These companies try to do that so often, as if they are poor and need the extra cash or something.. I just don’t get it
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February 13th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
It somehow reminds me of this story: http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/
They are indeed tricky and sometimes they too are confused of their tricks.
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May 21st, 2009 at 8:25 pm
This is all been a great help to me. But, what about fax when you ditch the landline? Can you tap into the same line that the DSL is using?
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That new in 2 plan that Verizon has is the ultimate rip-off. Every year and half my wife wants the latest phone and we spend another $200 to purchase the best phone out there and ditch the one that was popular 18 months ago.
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[...] My personal reasons for despising Verizon have manifested themselves on Punny Money before (see Verizon Lies About Dry-Loop DSL Availability and Verizon Is One Sneaky Telecommunications Corporation!), but here are a few others that show why the world would be better with one less Verizon in it. [...]
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