Saving Money With Phone Line Replacements Part 1: XLink

Muny Dews Blog ^ | 2-27-11 | Muny Dews

[Brookhaven]

At one time, having a dedicated land-line phone in your house was a requirement. Like heat or air conditioning, every house had it. With the advent of cell phones I have found it impossible to justify the cost of keeping a land-line phone—I just don't use it that much anymore. When you include taxes, the minimum cost of having a land-line phone in the house (in my state) is $45 a month ($540 ayear). I only used the land-line phone for 5-10 calls a month, which worked out to be over $5 per call.

I thought about getting a land-line phone through my cable company. At $30 a month it was a savings over the phone company, but it still worked out to be at least $3 a call. So I dumped my land-line and went just with my cell phone. This has met all my needs, but it has added a few inconveniences:

(1) I despise carrying my cell phone with me when I'm at home (at home I want to kick back and relax).

(2) I don't want to race across the house to answer my cell phone.

(3) I often don't hear the cell phone across the house and miss calls.

(4) My spouse complains about inconveniences 1, 2, & 3.

So I've started looking for for someway to solve these problems. I've come up with several. I'm going to discuss the first one now: the XLink phone box.

In a nutshell, this box lets you use all the old style land-line phones in your house to talk over your cell phone.

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The cost of the unit is $99 on the XLink web site, but runs $80 on Amazon. It pays for itself in two months. After that it saves you $540 a year.

[Carley]

I merely inquired about lowering my bill when the fun and games began. They cut off the voice mail. When I called they said OOPS. Then they cut off the long distance. More OOPS and So Sorry. Next they cut off the internet.

Disgusting to say the least. They never did call to see what I thought of their service.

When they cut off the voice mail I lost all the saved messages. They told me that there was nothing they could do and that lots of people were furious because they lost voice mails of relatives who had died.

They really didn’t give a damn.

[Titan Magroyne]

Wow. You know when the reps admit that, it’s because they’ve given up on assuaging the customers’ ire. There’s simply too much.

Two comm companies I’ll never again do business with if I can avoid it: Embark and Alltel. Their systems/standards are atrocious.

[Carley]

We have health concerns that mean we must have the landline.

Sickening abuse of the customer. They really don’t care at all.