- Expense. Local telephone landline service is a monthly expense that many folks are tired of having to pay. With the predominance of cell phones, a number of people are deciding that paying for that monthly service is something to be done away with.
- Asking for Help. Trying to get help with a bill or a service problem from some of the landline service companies can be a little bit like pulling teeth without an anesthetic, only it takes longer. Those endless minutes stretch into fractions of hours spent on hold. People have been driven to distraction waiting for the only person that can actually help them.
- Long Distance Plans. If you believe the advertising, there are a lot of really good, really simple long distance plans available. Most people have finally learned not to believe the advertising. The plans are almost always more complex than advertised, and virtually never as inexpensive as they’ve led you to believe before signing up.
- Contract Bundling. “What do you mean I have to buy your internet service and alarm service and pet walking service in order to get the best price? I don’t even have a pet!” Sometimes it feels as if you’re being blackmailed to pay for multiple services, when all you want is to be able to call 911 for an ambulance after the stroke that their so-called service department gave you while not solving your billing problem.
- Limited mobility. Ever forget that you’re on a landline call and walk out to the mailbox, only to find that you’ve lost the signal on an important call? Now you have to call that person back and either lie, or admit to having forgotten which phone you were using.
- Fax Machines. Ever answer the phone, just to find that you’ve been called by a fax machine? That annoying sound of maniacal electrons would simply be ‘annoying’, if it wasn’t always coming through at maximum volume. It can be loud enough to hurt!
- Answering Machines. How many times do you try to listen to a message that your answering machine has garbled beyond intelligibility? Beating the recording unit with the handheld unit doesn’t seem to help, does it?
- Telemarketers. Need I say more?
- Wrong Numbers. There is little in life more frustrating than running from the shower with nothing but a towel around you, slipping on the kitchen linoleum and stubbing your toe while tripping over a chair, only to pick up the phone and get yelled at because some guy’s delivery pizza hasn’t arrived yet.
- Interruptions. The cliché about phone calls always coming as you’re sitting down to a meal or right at the most dramatic moment of a television show or sports event, is a cliché because it’s true. It’s been suggested that this is a conspiracy between the phone company and satellite surveillance companies, to delay calls from being completed until these moments, but that may simply be paranoia creeping in.
These are the 10 most cited reasons that people are unhappy with their landlines, so this must mean that people are in love with their mobile phone service, right? Well, from reports we’ve heard, there may be another 10 frustrations to report about, soon.
