By the end of the month, I will have cut a cord that has been in my entire (almost 6 decade) life – a landline phone. And I can thank the striking FairPoint Unions for giving me the impetus for having done so for shoddy service. If the service your company provides fails to meet expectations (or even worse, fail to deliver even the BASIC level of service), don’t be surprised that when consumers have alternative choices, they take them. And so I have.
When those that strike at a company because they believe they have been hurt, what they often fail to take in consideration is that those that REALLY get hurt are their customers. You know, the folks that actually pay for their salaries and bennies. In a monopoly situation, they have no recourse – they have to suck it up, sit in silence, and just steam while the strikers strike; customers be damned as they just become part of the process. Even better, in some cases, as the “wronged” customers would be bringing heat to the company – another club, indirectly, wielded by customers on the part of the strikers.
That is if the company / strikers have no competition. When there is, there are options. And so I did.
Early in December we had a power failure here for about an hour and a half. No big deal – PSNH had the problem remedied quickly and the only grousing was the typical one: “what, NOW we gotta go set all the clocks right again”? Yes, a First World problem, a First World grumping, and a few minutes to fix. Not a big deal.
But no dial tone. Yes, another First World problem – how DARE I not be able to communicate with distantly located folks at the push of a few buttons (and yes, I remember using a rotary dial phone all through college too). No dial tone with our high tech cordless system and checking it with our cell phones (hint – competitor #1) yielded no inbound rings. Nada, nein, nope, nothing. Just dead. Went and out of my hardware archives and pulled out “Ole’ Faithful” – a POTS phone. Plain Old Telephone service, Southwestern Bell princess phone (er, how many of you actually REMEMBER that kind of phone – princess?) that has no plug into an electrical outlet because it runs strictly off the current provided by the massive battery banks in a phone company’s Central Office cellar – plug it into the phone jack and I expected to have service back in moments. ALWAYS good to have such a phone, or so I thought
Yeah – I was being optimistic. Nada, nein, nope, nothing. Just dead. One day, two days, three days….yeah, we had emailed FairPoint to register a repair ticket. We were told “sometime between Monday and Thursday, someone will come.” Thursday came – once, twice, thrice. Nada, nein, nope, nothing from FairPoint “sorry, no one is coming and we have to delay”. Make the call, send the email; same message back “between Monday and Thursday”. To be honest, during this time, we “regained” some inbound calls – not a regular ring but “quick chirps” from the POTS phone. Practicing our 10 yard dash times, we learned that if we reached the phone before that second chirp, we could talk with people. No outbound, but we could talk IF we were quicker than the second chirp. If not, the person on the other end got a fast busy (at best).
Outbound? It improved – but only at the surface level. Got a dial tone back and I could dial the exchange number (e.g., XXX) but as soon as I dialed the first digit of the loop number (the 4 digits of 9999), it would go haywire with a really weird tone.
Finally, someone showed up. YAY! I thought – no more incommunicado. Since this is going long, let’s just say he had to flop us to a new pair at the neighborhood pedestal just outside the house. He then claimed that his work was done. Yet, my POTS phone (remember, not attached to anything at the time of the outage and needs no AC power) still didn’t work. Neither did my regular phone and he decided that he didn’t have to listen to answers of “hey, there’s not enough inbound juice to run them”. He just said “go buy a new phone”.
So I did, with an angry countenance. And I also “bought” a new phone provider – by the end of the week, I’ll have moved my service to my cable provider – and I’ll be saving money overall as I already pay for high def TV and the fastest ‘Net access they offer. Adding in the VOIP (Voice Over IP) phone basically just added some taxes to the bill.
And I will now explore life without a landline. Yes, I could have gone with just my cell phone provider (competitor #2) but while I could have gotten a Network Extender (e.g., a “fempto-cell tower for the house that would have redirected cell calls through my Internet connection) as I have lousy coverage as the cell tower is at the top of the mountain on which I live on its side (e.g., “cone of silence”), they haven’t relented on not counting calls routed through that N.E., against our paid minutes. Didn’t quite work the numbers there, so back to competitor #1.
Competition. Soon I be safely ensconced on the couch again comfortably sitting with my high tech handset / headset instead of running back decades ago “to the future” where the ONLY phone in the house was generally in the kitchen like when I was growing up.
Competition – thank you, FairPoint strikers! You helped me to shake off decades of insomnia, of “that’s the way it is”. You opened my eyes to my own fallacy and gave lie to one of my longest held beliefs – stay with “Ma Bell” because the phone will work even with the electricity doesn’t. You proved me wrong – I really DON’T need you anymore.
Thank you, FairPoint strikers – even as you put yourselves first, I can now put me first. And I have.
But I have choices and took one – you soon may not. Landlines are a dying breed. First Law of Thermodynamics – I was just one of those whose inertia kept me from action. Your “unbalanced force” propelled me to action. I bet others will be following.
And then, when your customers have left, then what?
