Post by BruceSPost by Rod SpeedPost by BruceSPost by Rod SpeedPost by BruceSPost by felixPost by Rod SpeedHow long did it take to get the phone number ported ? Took Paul weeks.
I didn't port. TPG gave me a new number
To me, that would be a major hassle. Everyone who has your old
number needs to get your new one, and you need to remember the new
number.
Yeah, and the other problem is the lack of an entry in the phone book.
True, though I don't worry about that. Anyone who needs to look me up
in the book, I probably don't want to talk to.
I've found the opposite. I have had a call from someone
who had everything stolen in egypt as a tourist and
needed to get me to tell them the numbers to call to
have their cards cancelled. Sure, a well prepared person
wouldn’t need to, but most arent that well prepared.
That's a bit unusual a situation,
Yeah, its only ever happened the once.
Post by BruceSand I figure anyone who needs that sort of information from me probably
has my number in their phone.
He didn’t ring me, we always communicated using the net.
And the phone was stolen too.
Post by BruceSPost by Rod SpeedThe cops called me one Saturday to say I could come and pick
up the stuff some stupid kids had been caught with. They were
caught quite literally with a wheel barrow, helping themselves
to stuff out of cars they could get into. I had been out to a pissup
the night before, had got some grog in the drive thru bottleshop
and had managed to forget to lock the passengers door again
after that, in a 73 golf which doesn’t have central locking.
Sure, doesn’t happen that often.
Now *that* should be a very unusual situation!
Yeah, never heard of any other kids being quite that blatant
with a wheelbarrow. That was back in the says before central
locking tho so wouldn’t be as easy to do anymore.
Post by BruceSMy car only has two doors,
I have mostly avoided those.
Post by BruceSand they lock/unlock at the same time,
Yeah, but that was back in the days before central locking.
Post by BruceSbut since it's a ragtop it's not really worth locking when left outside in
public overnight. I do it anyway when in places like airport parking, but
that's mainly as defense with the insurance if anything happens.
Its actually illegal here to leave the car unlocked in public.
Post by BruceSSo far, I've never had anything stolen from a car.
That was the only time its ever happened to me.
People I know have had it happen rather more
than me tho, I don’t live in a state capital.
Post by BruceSPost by Rod SpeedPost by BruceSPost by Rod SpeedPost by BruceSI effectively only have two choices of ISP here,
I don’t believe that. There are dozens that can provide a service to anyone.
I'd forgotten you arent in this country.
I thought the accent was a dead giveaway. Not to mention the Trump hat.
I turn off the video, some of those I usenet with
are so ugly that you need to reach for the round
filing cabinet under the desk to chuck into.
Post by BruceSPost by Rod SpeedPost by BruceSThere are other providers, but no really viable ones.
I found a list of 15 in the area. Several require optical fiber,
which hasn't reached our neighborhood, so that's out. Others are
line-of-sight wireless, at substantially higher prices than the two
big players, and the hilly terrain makes that problematic. We're
really down to the phone company with its DSL or the cable company.
Weird how primitive your system is. Your mobile system too.
Sometimes it seems we're only allowed to be "advanced" in military terms.
That’s overstating it a bit given that you lot did invent the net, consumer
credit, credit cards etc.
But accurate with being about the last place on earth
to still have lots using checks and magnetic stripe cards
and havent even bothered to get rid of 1c and 2c coins.
Post by BruceSPost by Rod SpeedPost by BruceSPost by Rod SpeedPost by BruceSboth pushing phone service (and TV and even home security) as well.
Just because they push it doesn’t mean you cant just say no to that stuff.
Exactly. I don't even bother to reply to their repeated attempts to
get me to "bundle" with services I don't need.
Just had a mate of mine have an optarse sales arsehole
tell him that while optarse does have no contract plans,
that he knows nothing about them and wont sell him one.
Presumably his commission is much higher on the contract plans.
Post by BruceSI get TV over the air, don't need their phone service since I switched
to Ooma, and am not nearly paranoid enough to want a monitored
security system.
I don’t actually know anyone who has one so I
don’t know how well that works in practice anyway.
AIUI the most valuable part of one of those systems is the yard sign.
Supposedly, those discourage burglars, send them next door. This
house, like my last one, had a central security/fire alarm system, but
I never paid for monitoring. During one false alarm at the last house,
we were discussing what happened after shutting it off when a voice
came over the speaker asking us for our secret password. My wife
looked up at it in disbelief and asked "What?!" The question was
repeated, I informed them that this location wasn't supposed to be
monitored, and we never heard from them again. I think they'd crossed
some wires when a new neighbor had a system put in.
Post by Rod SpeedI'm actually the 'monitored security system' for my next door
neighbour and it only costs him free oranges, he's a fruit grower.
And I don’t actually bother with oranges anyway.
Our dogs make a lot of noise when anything unusual happens, like the mail
arrives or the water softener kicks in.
Yeah, I never bothered with a door bell, the dog left it for dead.
Bit of a problem for the postman tho. We have our letterboxes
outside, usually quite close to the hose, not on the road like yours.
I have 13 8'x8' patio doors instead of windows in all the rooms
except the bathrooms, toilets and kitchens and one of the bedrooms
looks over the letterbox on the wing wall at that end of the house.
The postman zooms around on a small motorbike to make it easy
to zoom up to the letterbox, put his feet on the ground and put
the letters and small parcels in the letterbox.
Apparently the huge great alsatian used to hurl himself against
the glass when the postman showed up and the poor bugger
was worried that one day the dog would come straight thru
and eat him alive. Would never happen in practice because
its armoured glass that you cant even get thru with a sledge
hammer as the sales fool delighted in demonstrating when
the doors were first released onto the market in the very
early 70s.
Post by BruceSIf that isn't enough to deter a burglar,
Yeah, I never had any burglar problem while that dog was alive.
Not much of a problem with the neighbours either. One Italian
fella used to borrow garden tools for a while, but as dogs often
do, the alsatian used to hurl himself at the patio door whenever
he showed up and knocked on the door and he used to get so
close to shitting his pants that he stopped borrowing tools too.
Post by BruceSI have a revolver, a couple of rifles, and a few hundred rounds of ammo to
drive the point home. I expect never to have to use those, but they're
available if I do.
That’s frowned on here post Port Arthur.
Post by BruceSSome guy recently heard three burglars breaking into his home, cleaned the
gene pool of all of them, and the police/DA response was to shake his hand
and charge the getaway driver with three counts of felony murder.
Yeah, you lot can be a bit more gung ho like that than ours.
Post by BruceSPost by Rod SpeedPost by BruceSPost by Rod SpeedPost by BruceSI got tired of porting the phone, and went to an independent VOIP
option, Ooma.
Mine, MyNetFone can't port my number. I was planning to do that
instead of porting it to MyRepublic but discovered that they cant
port my number. And the MNF Whirlpool offer has no fixed monthly
charge at all, so is much better value than Ooma.
The basic Ooma has no fixed monthly charge. Our (U.S.) federal and
state governments charge taxes for phone service (unless you're a
social parasite, in which case they provide it free!), and phone
service providers pass those taxes along. I like the blacklists
enough, and I think there was something else included, that the
$10/month is acceptable to me.
Yeah, your system is quite different with you paying for incoming
calls from mobiles. We don’t, so don’t need blacklists.
I don't pay per-call on the home (Ooma) line,
Yeah, true, forgot about that.
Post by BruceSI just don't want to be bothered by all the scammers, telemarketers,
opinion polls, etc.
Ours mostly use fake varying numbers apart from the pollsters.
Post by BruceSAnyone on one of the blacklists gets a "number no longer in service"
message if they try to call, and my phone doesn't ring. The phone system
itself (a Panasonic cordless set) has an option to block numbers, but it's
a short list, and it still has to let them ring at least once to get the
caller id info.
It should suppress the first ring so it isnt audible.
Post by BruceSPost by Rod SpeedPost by BruceSPost by Rod SpeedPost by BruceSNow I just get Internet service from whichever provider has the best
deal at the time, and should never have to port my number or deal
with the hassle of telling everyone my new number, unless Ooma fails.
But pay significantly more for that.
I'm not sure what you mean.
$10 per month is a lot more than $0 per month.
Ah, right. The $0 is only an option if I go for the Ooma basic plan.
Post by Rod SpeedPost by BruceSI pay a lot less than what I used to for phone service through the
phone or cable companies,
I pay a little less for FTTN than I paid
for a phone service and adsl2+ service
and get that voip service for free.
Only viable for incoming calls for free tho,
but its only $10/month for unlimited calls
to landlines and $20/month for unlimited
calls to landlines and mobiles and $30/month
for unlimited calls to 40 international countrys.
Our line rent for a landline is well over $35/month now.
You have to pay that for the line if you're on DSL, independent of the
charge for the DSL service?
With the old monopoly telco. Since they lost their monopoly,
some of the newer players do offer what they call a naked
service, no POTS phone service and no need to pay for that.
But they have to have their own DSLAMs in the exchange or
RIM or CMUX to be able to do that and only one has their own
DSLAMs in my town and they don’t offer a naked service either.
Post by BruceSPost by Rod SpeedPost by BruceSeven though their service was essentially the same, minus the blacklists.
Post by Rod SpeedPost by BruceSBasic phone service with them is free, just buy the device and pay
the taxes. Of course they push other services, and I use their
$10USD/month phone service, with blacklists and other features.
I do use MNF for all outgoing calls to landlines. I use the mobile
for calls to mobiles and when out of the house.
I rarely use my mobile,
I use it a lot now that we coordinate the opening
times of the garage/yard sales on our mobiles.
Most people I know use mobiles a lot,
Yeah, specially the kids. I was helping a couple of kids move
house, 'kids' in their 30s, and those buggers would ring each
other when telling each other what to move to the car.
Post by BruceSand many of them have given up on home phones.
Yeah, hardly any I know have a landline anymore.
Post by BruceSSo far, that hasn't seemed the best option for us.
I would have if I could have had a naked service but since
I had to have the landline to get the DSL service didn’t bother.
Never called out on it tho unless the net was down or with toll
free numbers. We don’t have the free local call system you lot have.
It’s a close call for me now, I could have unlimited free
national calls and texts on my mobile for $25/month
but normally only spend $10/month.
The cheapest landline service with no calls included is $35/
month which certainly explains why so many don’t have a
landline anymore.
Post by BruceSPost by Rod SpeedPost by BruceSso I have a very cheap service that works best with infrequent use.
I do too, no fixed monthly charge, short calls cost me 12c
I don’t usually spend more than $10/month for calls, texts and data.
Post by BruceSIt's a prepaid
Mine is post paid.
Post by BruceSwith no monthly charge, just a charge for any day I use it
Mine doesn’t have that.
Post by BruceSplus a per-minute charge. I could switch to get rid of the daily
charge and have a higher per-minute, but my pattern of use is
typically long stretches of no use, then moderate use while on
a trip. And now I'm thinking about the cost of the mobile, about
$100/year, plus the cost of the Ooma, $120/year, and wondering just
what I could get for $220/year...
I don’t spend as much as that, $120 a year or so for the mobile,
nothing like that for the voip calls, wouldn’t even be $30 a year
at 10c a call, regardless of the length of the call.