2024, Family, home, Technology

It’s the End of the Line

32 Comments

Year after year people I know have been dumping their land lines.

For awhile I kept ours because I hate putting all my eggs in one basket, even if it’s a mobile-phone-basket.  Then right about the time I was ready to let go, my mom decided to drop hers.  Why would this matter you ask?  Well, my land line was saved in HER cell phone contacts and no matter how many times I said “you know, you should probably just call my cell….”, every 3rd or 4th call went to the land line.  Along with a voicemail saying “Oh, I guess I’ll try your cell”.   Except for picking up calls from Nonny, I’m not sure eitherYA or I have touched the handset in over a year.  Sigh.

Finally I took things into my own hands in January when I was visiting.  I deleted my land line from her contacts and changed “She” to “She-Cell Phone”.   One and done.  If she has even noticed that I don’t have two numbers any longer, she hasn’t said anything.

That was the easy part.  Now I have to figure out all the various reward programs that still have my old phone number attached to them.  Every time I think I have them all, I stumble across another.  The Container Store just two weeks ago still had the land line!

Do you still have a land line?  

32 thoughts on “It’s the End of the Line”

  1. I have to admit the title of this post hit me hard. There’s just no way of making this pretty, at some point you have to realize that you’re at the end of your line.

    As of last month, we no longer have a landline. Like you, we maintained ours mostly out of consideration of a few old friends. Most have managed to find us through other means, so we haven’t lost touch, but there may very well be some who have slipped through the cracks.

    We cut the landline mostly because of Hans’ nagging. In reality only a very few friends still used that line. BUT, there was the occasional old friend who found me because of it; that’s not longer possible. The fact that most of the calls we got on the landline were unsolicited sales calls, often scams, hastened the decision.Alas, now they’re beginning to show up on my cell. Hopefully I’ll be dead before they’re a nuisance.

    Technology is making me feel old and inept, and I don’t appreciate that one bit. Sign me: Young at heart but falling apart.

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  2. We still have a land line, but it’s a connection through our internet service, not a phone company. In fact we had the phone lines strung across our yard taken down along with the line that provided cable.

    For years that was the number we gave out when we were required to provide a phone number as part of a business interaction. That’s also the number Robin’s 102-year-old mother uses when she calls (sometimes). She also calls on Robin’s cell phone but she can never hear the conversation clearly from the cell and Robin has to call her back on the land line.

    Back before our cell phones were “smart” there was no way to set them up to use wi-fi in the house. Without that wi-fi connection our cell service was terrible and we would have to go out on the front or back steps to take or make a call. I presume that’s because of the metal lath under the stucco which forms a sort of Farraday cage. For calls we received at home then the land line was the better option. Caller ID lets us sort which ones we answer.

    Except from the individuals on my contact list, I hate getting calls on my cell phone. I have, in fact, set my phone up to silence any calls not on my contact list. Anyone else can leave a voice mail.

    It’s somewhat irritating that many would-be callers—vendors, clinics, and the like—automatically assume that any number is a cell number and they want to send texts or confirmation codes that way.

    There are still persons who don’t have computers or cell phones. I know of at least two neighbors who don’t. I’m not sure how they are able to function any more but they get little consideration from commercial, social and medical services.

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  3. I lived overseas from 1982 to 2018, do didn’t really deal with this. My in-laws just sort of rolled with the punches. So long as they had phone service from the phone that plugged into the wall, they didn’t care if it was a hardwired “land line” or something that went through the internet. Then, they moved, and the “old thinking” came in. My wife came to the USA to help them with the move in 2017. Her father insisted that he wanted a “land line” (by which he meant, a phone that he could plug into the wall). Because they moved out of their old area code, he insisted on getting a new number, not imagining that he could continue to use the old one they’d been using for 30 years. One of my wife’s tasks was to “get a new land line” (which he insisted had copper wire connectivity, so that it would still work on those occasions when the internet went down.)

    She phoned a lot of placed trying to sort things out. Eventually he was satisfied that the phone plugged into the wall, just like the one where he had always lived, and he referred to that as “the land line.” 

    A year later, we retired and returned to the USA. In setting up services for our household, we got a bundle with TV, internet and a house phone. We did that because “that’s how you do it.” We also each got a cell phone account. So, now between us, we have 3 phone numbers.

    Late last year we got off of the cable TV, and now do only “streaming”. The next thing to go will be that ‘house phone” (which goes through the internet, anyway). Much to my chagrin, I’ll have to get used to keeping my cell phone charged and nearby. I dislike that thing, but recognize and affirm its usefulness.

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    1. I find the “old way” catching up with me, too. When I type my phone number into a field I still use the dashes and the programs do not want the dashes anymore. 

      JacAnon

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      1. Except for the time you remember to take out the dashes and then they want them. Same with the slashes when you’re typing in your birthday.

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        1. Right. It’s not universal. Sometimes you have to type the dashes, sometimes you don’t. It all depends. On what? I have no idea.

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        2. Chalk it up to lazy programmers. Any programmer worth his/her salt would write a routine so that any combination of 10 digits with or without hyphens or parentheses would be correctly interpreted as a phone number. But they don’t want to take the time. 

          Dates are slightly more tricky, because in some cultures the day comes first and the month second, and in the US, it’s mostly month first and day second. Still, any programmer that cares about being user friendly can work it out.

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  4. Still have a landline. Mainly use it to field spam calls. My parents occasionally call us on it, but I usually call them first. Sound is much better through the landline. Sometimes a cell-to-cell conversation is difficult to hear. The landline is bundled with our internet and cable service and only costs about $10/mo, so it’s cheap interference for keeping my cell phone free of robo calls and spammers. But I give out my cell phone number almost all the time when asked for a phone #, so I’m sure we’ll eventually drop the landline. My wife was ready to ditch it a few years ago, but she doesn’t handle the business or finance stuff that I do, so she doesn’t care if we keep it or not.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  5. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    We ditched the landline about 10 years ago when it malfunctioned and we did not use it enough to warrant the high price of repair and rewiring. At my business I had landlines because we needed the complicated numbers associated with voicemails and faxes that are now also replaced by wifi services and computer-based faxes. It makes my head spin.

    OT: Despite husband’s dire diagnoses, we seemed to have reached a new state of stasis. The in-home services such as PT have restored his strength and balance enough that Lou was out in front of the house waiting for his friend to pick him up by 8:30am. He is now sitting with his buds (retired professors, ministers, professional musicians, and a naval officer) talking theology. I have 90 minutes all to myself. I hope this is the state of things for the summer, but it is the state of things today. Garden here I come. Today I will learn to start the lawn mowers and roto-til parts of the garden. Sunday I weeded the raspberry patch and dug out the dandelions. Man was I tired after that.

    To parrot VS, Woot Woot.

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  7. Hello, again. It’s Clyde. My counselor and I decided to make my life as simple as possible among which was dropping all social media. All you have missed is an unending tale of medical issues, mine and Sandra’s. I will spare you all but one detail in a moment.
    I dropped our land line when she went into care. She used it. And I had to have all communication mobile since I was gone from home so much. Dropping it made people quit trying to use it. And now it was recommended I complicate my technology life.
    When I was lying flat on my back, a very painful position for me, in the emergency department with A-fib, it was recommended I acquire a smart watch so I could track my heart rate and run my own ecg’s. Plus other medical data. Sometimes it is good to know. Sometimes it is scary. But amazing to say the least. Worst of all I am not allowed my pain meds.
    Plus the A-fib proves the success of making my life simple, as if this life could be made simple.

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  8. Cell phone coverage for calls is spotty at best in my condo. I can text and use the internet just fine but calls are difficult. So I still have a landline – bundled with internet and cable so it’s not pricey. The landline mostly gets robocalls and I use caller ID to screen calls. My family and friends know to use the landline because of much better sound. There will come a time when I decide to cut the cord for cable (especially mad at Comcast/Bally Sports for ending TV coverage of the Twins and Lynx) and the landline may go at the same time.

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  10. I still have my land line, I love my old rotary phone and the way it rings. Mostly I don’t answer it unless I hear the cell phone ringing at the same time, meaning its coming in via Google Voice so it’s been vetted by Google’s spam filters. I rarely get spammers anymore – I think it’s because I turned the answering machine off for awhile. 

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  11. Linda, your phone looks just like our kitchen wall phone. We later got a longer cord so we didn’t have to stand in the kitchen while talking.

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    1. I’ve bought replacement cords a couple of times, ones that will stretch about ten feet or so into the dining room. Then I can sit down if I want to. I have a cordless as well.

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