Stupid Phone Repair.
Community
Our land line phone went bad at our house so I called to get it repaired. After all kinds of answering I finally got through to a human. She had a foreign accent so I asked her location. PHILIPINES. Can you believe that you talk to someone in the Philippines to get your phone fixed in Ohio. Made me so mad, I asked for an American rep and told I am taking my phone out for good.
Line to house or internal problem? Phone companies are required to repair outside problems. From personal interest (grew up in a MaBell family), who is your land line provider? At present, I am served by TDS and their customer service is not outsourced and has been very very good.
After a number of power outages over the past several years where our wireless phones were useless, I found one of those old tank of a phone built by Western Electric as a back up phone since it could be plugged in and run off of the telephone lines. Best $10 ever spent on technology!
When I bought my Cell phone they called India to get it turned on. I know because I asked the Hispanic women that sold me the phone where she had to call. However, it was quick and easy. I don't have a contract, I just buy minutes as I need them. Real easy and the phone works very well, even way back in the woods where my cousin's phone doesn't work and he has an expensive phone with contract. He always checked in his deer on the phone, my phone. There are more towers now so he can use his own phone. I just use my phone for phone calls even though I can go on line, I don't. The phone cost me $17 and $2 for insurance.
Lex...I replaced our phones at Christmas and was able to activate on line easily. We use TING and no contract.
I highly recommend TING as a cell MVNO provider. They run GSM via T-Mobile and CDMA via Sprint. I have yet to deal with a company that has better customer service than provided by TING. All the reps speak native English, every contact is followed up by an email confirming what was discussed and a reference number. NO PHONE TREE and phones answered in one or two rings.
TING is non-contract and great rates. You pay for what you use. We have two phones, 500 minutes, 1000 texts and 10 M data and our monthly bill runs less than $30 including mandatory fees/taxes.
Only downside is that they do not have subsidized phones. You can purchase phones through them, bring your own or use their recommended SWAPPA. Our new phones were on sale via TING and got two nice smartphones for around $275. Both run the latest Android.
If interested, I have a code for a $25 discount that I can share.
I had a slightly better experience.
Needed to send an Iphone 5 in for replacement. Wasn't sure about how to box it up for return. Called Verizon and after playing phone tag finally got a lady in the Philippines. She understood me about as much as I understood her. But anyway, after trying to explain that I needed boxing instructions, she transferred me to a guy. Finally realized it was Manny Pacquiao.
Cool guy. Shared a few tips. But the one that worked out the best was when he said to just upgrade to an Iphone 6.
Thanks Pac-man!
We have Century Link phone service. They have super fast Internet service which I have to use in our rural area. But I will try not to deal with any company that uses overseas service people. I wanted to explain that we were not home for a month and to stop at our Amish neighbor to open the gate and unlock the house. How do you explain that to some goofball in the Philipines. In the old days, we knew who repaired phones in the area and called them direct.
Jim...that's one of the nice things about TDS.
I met the local service guy when he installed our phone lines in the new post fire house. Had my wireless router/modem go out and service rep was talking about mailing a replacement. Call to the service guy and he swapped out my bad one with a new one a half hour later.
Checked tds out, no service in my area.
Unplug your phone and tke it outside to the network interface box. Open the box and plug it in there. If the phone works it's your inside wiring. If it still doesn't work it's a phone company issue.
Like I said, we are spending the winter in South Texas and won't be home for a month. Often get important phone calls which we check on our answering machine. Now it don't work so will just have to wait till we get back.
Jim - I work for a phone company going on 36 years now, (although not you land line service provider), and DL is right. Ya need to take a "good" phone (take two because one of the phones could be the trouble issue), but anyhow, plug them in the outside jack at the NID (Network Interface Device) to eliminate the inside wiring to determine if it is your inside issue or the phone company's outside issue...
If no friends or family around to do this for you, I would subject call forwarding... Your phone company should be able to remotely do that for you... They may charge you a small fee to do so though, or you could actually apply remote call forwarding to your service... Or add voice mail to your local service... Electronic voice mail is much more reliable than those cheap recording machines, which by the way can always be a trouble spot on any phone line. Don't take much for them to go bad, most are junk nowdays. Not saying that's your trouble, only that cheap electrical devices on landlines are not good...
You are either going to have friend or family check at NID first, or likely pay for service call to where phone company will check their end to the NID, or add one of those landline features...
Feel free to send me a message if questions...
I believe they already did that but when you are talking to some one in the Philipines that you can't understand, I just said the %\ll with it. Will check it out when I get back. Probably buy a signal booster for my cell phone and get rid of it. No family in the area and our Amish Neighbors that take care of our house don't have a phone. They use ours.
The amish will be pizzed when you remove the service...8^)
Back in the day when I was outside plant phone installer-repairman, I sometimes worked the amish community area of Sugarcreek, and we would install-repair payphones at certain amish farms at the end of their lane in buildings or wood booth type things they built so the nearby amish community could use... They wouldn't allow a phone in their house, but was okay at the end of the lane...8^) Go figure, but I could never could figure those people out...8^)
Born and raise and spent most my life in Tuscarawas county, I have many amish stories...8^)
We will still have a phone there, cell phone.
Lived around Amish for over 20 years. More Amish then English friends. They are very smart people and have very good reasons for what they do.
Gotcha beat, have lived around them for over 50 years and my significant other's nephew is married a x-mininite girl?...8^)
Like with all societies, there are good and bad in walks of life...
Have seen some of your trail cam pix... What I'm curious how do some deer survive the following year... If its brown its down when they hit the woods in my area...
We have a thousand acres or more of some of the wildest territory in Ohio. It is steep and hilly and not many people hunt it anymore.
Don't tell your amish buddies, they'll take care of that and whack'm all for ya...8^)
I helped haul out 3 Amish hunters with their deer. All 3 were bucks, killed with a bow on Amish owned land. The Amish own some of that 1000 acres.
