Leaving Bell behind.
Well. My life's been full of suck lately, but I haven't felt like actually chronicling most of it. Most of the people in the channel have probably heard some of it, but to sum up from where we left off:
Second accident under annoying circumstances, insurance follies, poor Eagle totalled, four weeks in a rental car, financial nigh-armageddon, more insurance follies, buying a car when broke, every kind of shit you can run into when looking for a used car, seven test drives, so many crappy cars, one of the few halfway decent cars being unsellable due to a mystery check engine light, and finally slinking back to the place I got the Eagle from in utter defeat. I had been there earlier in the process- after the first couple crummy dealer experiences and remembering how effortless buying the Eagle from them was- and test drove a 2002 Grand Prix with a mere 63k on it, but the price was on the high end of what I could afford, and that was assuming I'd have something from the insurance to put down on it, which ended up not happening. But after three weeks of trying to find something cheaper and dealing with all kinds of shitty dealers, they were pretty much my last option before being completely screwed. They seriously magiced up the loan and got me into that same Grand Prix for the same price as when they were assuming a down payment. Still more than I'd like to pay, but it's a lot better than the shit and lies I was getting elsewhere. So yeah, if anyone ever happens to buy a used car in central Mass., you can do a hell of a lot worse than Harbro.
Of course, almost immediately after I finally got out of Car Hell, the fan in my desktop's PSU threw a bearing and started making noises like a lawnmower. So that knocked that computer out for ten days while I researched new PSUs, which just left me slightly terrified of the one I ended up getting- on the basis of it being about the best one on Newegg that I could actually afford- turning out to be a dud and frying all my drives. It's behaving so far, aside from the 12V consistently registering as 11.8V to 11.67V in Speedfan, but still.
Of course, while I was in the middle of replacing that yesterday morning, my phone line and DSL went dead. Now, this wasn't a total surprise; between putting off the bill for Xmas and two months of financial nigh-armageddon, I was already pretty far behind. However, I had also sent in a mantinence check last week, not the full amount owed, but enough to keep just this from happening. Calling Verizon on my cell to find out WTF, I found that they apparently hadn't gotten the check yet. So the lady in billing walked me through doing a one-time emergency payment in the amount needed to get it turned back on, online over some nieghbor's unsecured wifi. Between that and the check, when they actually get the damn thing, I'll end up overpaying by a bit. Which actually puts me in a worrysome position regarding my electric bill, but one crisis at a time, thanks. The DSL was back on within an hour or so, but the voice line is still MIA.
And that, in a roundabout way, brings me to the point of this post. I need to trim costs in a serious way, and my phone service is most blazingly obvious place to do it. I've got Verzion's basic DSL at $20, their base Freedom plan at $50, and ten bucks or so in various taxes and fees, hitting me for $80 a month in total. Of that, the only part I get any serious use out of is the DSL. The Freedom package seemed like a good idea at the time- just about every number I call on a regular basis, aside from the pizza place, counts as long distance, and the price of just a local plan with caller ID and voicemail was comparable to its price at the time. That price, however, has trended upwards over time, while I still only call people on an infrequent basis. I'm paying $50 a month for maybe a few dozen phonecalls a year (much to my mother's annoyance). That's just not feasible anymore. Unfortunately, just about every other option Verizon offers is just as shitty. Hell, even their unlimited regional plan is only four bucks cheaper, and the absolute bottom is measured local calling with no features at $13 a month. As crappy as it is, the Freedom package is still the best value they offer. But the most important thing I learned while on the phone fixing the billing fuckup was that it didn't matter.
Y'see, I've always been under the impression that you had to have a Verzion voice line service to get their DSL. They imply as much all over their web page, anyway. But when I mentioned to the lady in billing how the DSL was the only part of the service that I really used, she recommended switching over to a 'dry loop' account, dropping the voice line completely and only running the DSL. She couldn't do it for me then, but said that as soon as my voice line turned back on, I could call up service and tell them to switch me to a dry loop. If they don't give me any shit and it doesn't jack the price up too much, that leaves me open to switching over to a VoIP service, at at least half the cost of the Verizon package.
I'm specifically looking at Vonage, since they're the name I recognize the most from all the ads they've been running. $25 a month for the same service I was getting from Verizon with 22 more available features isn't something to sneeze at, and they're doing free setup and a cheap intorductory rate until the end of the month, assuming I can get the dry loop set up by then. I'm also tempted to go with Skype, since its semi-unlimited US calling is only three fucking dollars, but it seems like it'd be a bit more complicated. Particularly the part where you have to buy a rated handset, the expense of which isn't really something I want to support just now. (As tempting as something like this baby is.) But beyond those two names, the whole of VoIP is a new and strange world to me. Any suggestions would be very welcome.
Second accident under annoying circumstances, insurance follies, poor Eagle totalled, four weeks in a rental car, financial nigh-armageddon, more insurance follies, buying a car when broke, every kind of shit you can run into when looking for a used car, seven test drives, so many crappy cars, one of the few halfway decent cars being unsellable due to a mystery check engine light, and finally slinking back to the place I got the Eagle from in utter defeat. I had been there earlier in the process- after the first couple crummy dealer experiences and remembering how effortless buying the Eagle from them was- and test drove a 2002 Grand Prix with a mere 63k on it, but the price was on the high end of what I could afford, and that was assuming I'd have something from the insurance to put down on it, which ended up not happening. But after three weeks of trying to find something cheaper and dealing with all kinds of shitty dealers, they were pretty much my last option before being completely screwed. They seriously magiced up the loan and got me into that same Grand Prix for the same price as when they were assuming a down payment. Still more than I'd like to pay, but it's a lot better than the shit and lies I was getting elsewhere. So yeah, if anyone ever happens to buy a used car in central Mass., you can do a hell of a lot worse than Harbro.
Of course, almost immediately after I finally got out of Car Hell, the fan in my desktop's PSU threw a bearing and started making noises like a lawnmower. So that knocked that computer out for ten days while I researched new PSUs, which just left me slightly terrified of the one I ended up getting- on the basis of it being about the best one on Newegg that I could actually afford- turning out to be a dud and frying all my drives. It's behaving so far, aside from the 12V consistently registering as 11.8V to 11.67V in Speedfan, but still.
Of course, while I was in the middle of replacing that yesterday morning, my phone line and DSL went dead. Now, this wasn't a total surprise; between putting off the bill for Xmas and two months of financial nigh-armageddon, I was already pretty far behind. However, I had also sent in a mantinence check last week, not the full amount owed, but enough to keep just this from happening. Calling Verizon on my cell to find out WTF, I found that they apparently hadn't gotten the check yet. So the lady in billing walked me through doing a one-time emergency payment in the amount needed to get it turned back on, online over some nieghbor's unsecured wifi. Between that and the check, when they actually get the damn thing, I'll end up overpaying by a bit. Which actually puts me in a worrysome position regarding my electric bill, but one crisis at a time, thanks. The DSL was back on within an hour or so, but the voice line is still MIA.
And that, in a roundabout way, brings me to the point of this post. I need to trim costs in a serious way, and my phone service is most blazingly obvious place to do it. I've got Verzion's basic DSL at $20, their base Freedom plan at $50, and ten bucks or so in various taxes and fees, hitting me for $80 a month in total. Of that, the only part I get any serious use out of is the DSL. The Freedom package seemed like a good idea at the time- just about every number I call on a regular basis, aside from the pizza place, counts as long distance, and the price of just a local plan with caller ID and voicemail was comparable to its price at the time. That price, however, has trended upwards over time, while I still only call people on an infrequent basis. I'm paying $50 a month for maybe a few dozen phonecalls a year (much to my mother's annoyance). That's just not feasible anymore. Unfortunately, just about every other option Verizon offers is just as shitty. Hell, even their unlimited regional plan is only four bucks cheaper, and the absolute bottom is measured local calling with no features at $13 a month. As crappy as it is, the Freedom package is still the best value they offer. But the most important thing I learned while on the phone fixing the billing fuckup was that it didn't matter.
Y'see, I've always been under the impression that you had to have a Verzion voice line service to get their DSL. They imply as much all over their web page, anyway. But when I mentioned to the lady in billing how the DSL was the only part of the service that I really used, she recommended switching over to a 'dry loop' account, dropping the voice line completely and only running the DSL. She couldn't do it for me then, but said that as soon as my voice line turned back on, I could call up service and tell them to switch me to a dry loop. If they don't give me any shit and it doesn't jack the price up too much, that leaves me open to switching over to a VoIP service, at at least half the cost of the Verizon package.
I'm specifically looking at Vonage, since they're the name I recognize the most from all the ads they've been running. $25 a month for the same service I was getting from Verizon with 22 more available features isn't something to sneeze at, and they're doing free setup and a cheap intorductory rate until the end of the month, assuming I can get the dry loop set up by then. I'm also tempted to go with Skype, since its semi-unlimited US calling is only three fucking dollars, but it seems like it'd be a bit more complicated. Particularly the part where you have to buy a rated handset, the expense of which isn't really something I want to support just now. (As tempting as something like this baby is.) But beyond those two names, the whole of VoIP is a new and strange world to me. Any suggestions would be very welcome.