In article <Xns98435B2C4DA8Anoonehomecom@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Larry <noone@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> If anyone has an elderly parent, you need to go over their phone bills
> every month to prevent this. Telephone employees call them to sell them
> many services they don't need, slamming if you will. Dad paid Bell$outh
> for "maintenance" of his 32' long phone wire to one outlet, some god-
> awful monthly service fee to "guarantee good service". It's a goddamned
> pair of cheap wires and a cheap plastic socket screwed to the baseboard!
> More tech savvy children of the elderly can put a stop to it.
Of course, that assumes there _are_ 1) "tech savvy" children of the
elderly 2) somewhere nearby. I can't defend the phone company's high
cost for maintenance, but people pay the freight when they don't
understand/care how easy it is to do some things. There are folks
out there (maybe your mom) who think people these days are idiots
for buying pre-formed, pre-sheeted chocolate chip cookies when it's
about as easy -- and much cheaper -- to whip up a batch from flour,
sugar, chocolate, etc.
> Some of
> his telephone bills were over $190 just because he was still using Bell
> $outh long distance ripoffs, not some cheap 5c/min aftermarket company
> they made him believe would be intermittent and impossible to hear,
which
> is bull****, of course.
That one probably dates back to our elders' acceptance of authority.
You can't watch TV or read a newspaper without seeing an ad for
cheap long distance. I'd have to think a couple of decades of such a
barrage would have me wondering and asking others who they used for
long distance.
I'm not a huge fan of the Bells, but they are not solely to blame
here.
sd
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