1)  Landlines have 911 tracing to your home which provides extra protection and security.  This is a main reason why people with children have a landline.  Some cell phone provide tracking. 

2)  You can call your cell phone when you misplace it.  When I only had a cell phone I would search the house for my phone.  There was no way to locate it. 

3)  Cell phones have limited coverage.  The increase in cell phone towers is helping the coverage to get better, however, there are still many places with limited coverage.  Some of my friends have told me that their cell phones do not work well in their homes.

4)  The landline is an additional cost.  This is certainly my biggest complaint of having a landline.  I haven’t missed this extra expense each month.  We have a package deal from the cable company, so it doesn’t seem as bad as once before.

5)  Cell phones receive less telemarketing calls.  In the last five years, I’ve received less than five telemarketing calls on my cell phone.  Now that I have a landline, I’m receiving that many each week.  With a landline, you can register your number with the Do Not Call Registry which cuts down on the number of call you receive.

What other advantages are there to having a landline?

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Post from: Thrifty Mommy

My suggestion is to really watch  your wallet as Karen said.  Here a a few things that allowed us to save a lot of money.

• My phone was eligible for an upgrade so we got a $250 phone for $49.
• We simply renewed our contract for 2 years.  We are happy with the service so why not.
• We took our kids at bedtime and the poor guy wanted to get us out quickly so he recommended a great insurance plan for the phone (which I need) but said we didn’t have to get it just then.  That was perfect as we could wait until the next paycheck to pay for the insurance that we were going to have to get but really couldn’t afford at the time.
• We went to Radio Shack so we didn’t have to do the mail in rebate and took advantage of the instant rebate.

The moral of the story is, if at all possible, wait until you are eligible for an upgrade and go to your local store.  We went to Radio Shack and got great service with a real discount.  Hope this helps.  We were very pleased as a new cell phone was not in our monthly budget.

Post from: Thrifty Mommy

One of my aggravations was the activation fee on EACH phone.  We were facing over $100 in activation fees alone.  Then tack on the price of the phones and the higher monthly rates and we would be paying a small fortune for the cell phone switch.

I don’t know about you, but all these extra gimmicks fees really perturb me.  It’s like they’re telling you the cost is $49.99 a month to make it sound good.  But, oh wait.  You want mobile to mobile minutes, right?  You want your nights and weekends to start at 7 pm?  All those things are extra.  Texting?  Well, that’s $5 a month.  Before you know it, your cell phone bill is over $100 a month. Then if you go over your extra minutes will cost you a house payment, so you might as well get the bigger plan.  Then they don’t tell you that the U.S. Cellular areas totally suck stink and that your phone will say roaming most of the time so then you have to call and get your plan changed so that you won’t be roaming.  And not only that, but somehow you got conned into signing a two year contract.  What??????  Someone please tell me. When did a two year contract become the norm?

My goodness!  I’m ranting a bit aren’t I?  What was the point of all this?  Oh yes.  My husband made great efforts to talk to different cell phone stores to try to save us some money and get the activation fee waved.  None of the U.S. Cellular stores would budge at all on any of the fees.  For a while, I thought we had to bite the bullet and pay a week’s salary to get started on our plan.  Finally, we heard that if we called the U.S. Cellular number off the website they would work with us.

Hubby called and sure enough, they waved the activation fee.  He saved us over $100 by calling them instead of signing up through a local store.  Now getting started will only cost half a week’s pay.  Ok, I’m kidding.  Needless to say, all these fees really get me worked up!!!

So, tell me . . . have you been able to save money on your monthly cell phone bill or fees?  Do all these fees irk you as badly as they do me?

Post from: Thrifty Mommy

So why do we feel like we have to have a cell phone?  The police used to get called for accidents before we had accidents and we used to be able to communicate with other parents  about our kids location before cell phones.  Maybe we would actually talk to other parents more if we didn’t rely on our kids having cell phones.  Am I off base here?  Isn’t this one more way to save money?  Or do we feel that in this day and time a cell phone is a must?

Post from: Thrifty Mommy

1)  U.S. Cellular is an inferior service to Suncom.

2)  U.S. Cellular costs A LOT more than Suncom.

3)  U.S. Cellular nickel and dimes you for every little thing. (nights starting at 7 pm, texting, etc)

4)  U.S. Cellular has done me wrong. 

5)  U.S. Cellular charges an activiation fee for EACH phone.

6)  The roaming areas for U.S. Cellular are just ridiculous!!!!

This is really burning me up!  But, what can I do?  I guess I have to bite the bullet and pay the dough.  This really stinks!!!!  Anyone else having similar problems?

Post from: Thrifty Mommy

I’ve had an old Nokia 3220 for years.  To date, it has been my favorite phone.  I never had any troubles out of it until my husband accidentally dropped it in water.  In the meantime, I used my husband’s old Nokia 3220 (just like mine) until my hubby got me a different phone.  My husband bought me a used chocolate brown Nokia 6260.  Come to find out, it was used in another country and I had an awful time trying to figure out how to use the thing.  I basically just used it to make and receive calls.  lol

One day the chocolate Nokia locked up.  And I mean completely locked up.  Suncom couldn’t even my phone numbers off of it.  I had to completely start over with no phone numbers.  (BTW, if you’re reading this and you haven’t heard from me in a long time, that’s why.    )  While my husband was searching for a new phone for me, I went back to using the same old Nokia 3220. 

Hubby eventually found a brand new Motorola Razor for me online.  It was a small fraction of the price that Suncom wanted for the same phone.  I have to admit, I’ve not been real fond of that phone either.  It really, really hurts my neck when I make calls and multi-task.  And lately, I’ve had problems with it locking up.  I’ve had to take out the battery and restart it several times.  I haven’t even had it for a year!!!!!!!

Today my Motorola locked up . . . possibly for good.  I tried numerous times to restart my phone.  Every now and then I would hear it make some noises like it was starting up, but nothing ever came over the screen.  I began to panic because I didn’t know what I was going to do.  I certainly didn’t want to fork out the money for a new phone and I needed one right away.  Then I remembered about my old faithful Nokia.  I put in my sim card and it works great.

What do you think?  Should I keep my old phone?  Is there a phone that’s durable that you would recommend?

Post from: Thrifty Mommy

Post from: Thrifty Mommy