End of the Line for Landlines

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Why are we all expected to own a mobile phone these days? More and more companies are refusing to accept landline numbers when they take your details. The first time it happened to me was when I visited a coronavirus test centre. Their system couldn’t take my phone number because it wasn’t a mobile.

The latest company to do this is Ebay. I found I couldn’t sign in and had no idea why. After days of trying to talk to their ‘chat’ people and getting nowhere, I was eventually informed that members now needed to have a mobile number in order to receive texts about security alerts. What security alerts? I asked. And why couldn’t they send me an email? I didn’t get an answer.

I’ve been a member for eleven years and suddenly they cut me off without warning. I’m not going to go out and buy another phone just so that I can sell items on Ebay. I’ve had the same number for twenty years, and an answering machine, and I’ve no use for a mobile phone. I don’t feel the need to keep one glued to my ear because I feel lonely when I walk down the street.

Someone needs to start a ‘Save The Landline’ campaign before it’s too late.

Savelandlines

Nominated by: Allan

74 thoughts on “End of the Line for Landlines”

  2. Theres an app that converts your landline into a mobile number. Probably

  3. Companies can’t phish for your personal data via a landline. But with a moby phone number they can build a profile and potentially sell it on to interested 3rd parties.

    And companies can data-mine further if they insist you install an app to your phone. You are usually prompted to approve certain permissions to allow the app to mine your contacts, photos, emails, WIFI and a shit load more. (Even if the app’s function has little to do with any of these settings!)

    If you don’t agree to this then the app won’t install.

    Cunts

    • I’m more than happy not to install an app that I feel wants to know too much. It’s usually not me that’s missing out. Same with online shopping, get to the checkout and they want to ask you 20 questions and have you open an account so you can buy a 50p thingy. Fuck off is my answer to that, there are plenty of other sites that will sell it without the intrusion. Some even want to know why you have left items in your basket and it’s a great opportunity to tell them I won’t be buying there while they’re a bunch of nosey cunts.

    • LNER have a fucking trick, join their rewards club and get a fiver to start, when you read the t&c you can get signed up online and the fiver But! You can actually spend the fiver against a ticket purchase unless you use their App.
      I have an online account but thatā€™s not good enough for LNER, why would they want to push the App unless itā€™s to have a dig around in your data.
      They can stick the fiver, Cunts!

  4. I’ve mentioned before that I get a very poor mobile signal at home and there are others in the area that get no mobile signal at all….what the fuck is meant to happen in the event of an emergency?

    I believe that mobile-phones are becoming de facto Identity Cards with the added bonus ( for the authorities) of “snoopability”.

  5. Be fair, what would the gormless youth of today have to stare at..
    Though I would wholeheartedly suggest the sun..

  6. The halcyon days of the landline, answering machine, phone directory and Yellow pages.

    Simpler times.

    • Fax machines rather than emails meant you wereā€™nt on call when away from the office.

  7. Landlines don’t track you, leave ‘cookies’, give away personal information, spam the fuck out of you with texts, emails and calls.
    Still think there’s no ultimate control plan?

  8. Sadly I canā€™t really agree with this. Usually I too like the good old days but with land lines I just donā€™t see the point.

    Rental for line. Pah quicker internet maybe but not for me cheaper internet. No again not for me.

    Mrs Everyonesacunt and I have two two phones 50 gb of roaming data. Mobile WiFi at home 150 gb more than enough you endless YouTube etc. All for 80 quid a month.

    She did work for a mobile company (goodness sheā€™s had some bloody jobs) 10 years ago which enables her for a discount. So land lines can fuck off to China for me.

    • Fuck me! Ā£80 per month? My unlimited fibre broadband, line rental and all calls included costs me Ā£20 per month and I use about a tenner per year on a PAYG mobile. My wife uses perhaps Ā£20 per year.

  9. There are areas where mobiles have no signal (Aldborough in Suffolk for one – I was once cut off from the spouse for five whole days – some of the happiest days of my life in the 21st century), so God knows what magic solution BT will come up with to mollify the residents in such places..

    You can be sure this is a way for BT to screw even more money off of punters considering the obscene “standing charges” and “line rentals” they already receive. I suppose that is whu BT bought a share of EE. Greedy cunts.

  10. This is a worrying tend. Maybe their whole operation relies on texting you messages?
    Poor.

  11. I’ve just been through all this bollox when I moved house across the road. I couldn’t take my landline because nobody would provide a service literally 50 metres away.
    Best info. I could glean was all to do with the old copper lines not staying in use.
    I was finally offered VOIP which I declined so no landline any longer. They’re all a bunch of cunts but I’ve gotten used to it. I wouldn’t want to live where the signal is poor like DFF suggests.
    Have to go now it’s 21 degrees.

  12. Red telephone boxes of yore. Either :-
    the phone was out of order (due to vandalism)
    you had to be careful to hold the phone handle as you were never sure what cunt who used it previously had scabby hands, greasy lice-ridden hair, or grubby earholes
    the coin slot was jammed
    some drunk cunt had pissed, puked, vomited or all three in the corner of the box

    Moreover, it took an age to dial “999”

    I wonder if the Speaking Clock still works? (“The Time sponsored by Accurist is fuck-knows!”)

  13. Totally agree. I have a basic dumb phone on payg and hardly ever use it. It’s there in case the car breaks down on the way to the airport.

    Smartphones are a con for brain dead wokies and they’re lapping it up. Same cunts who think voice activated assistants are not monitoring you

  14. It’s not just landlines. You are expected to have a smartphone and fucking app for everyfuckingthing.

  15. Call ‘999’ on a landline, the emergency services have your address, mobile, they don’t, so, if you collapse mid-call, we can find you. ‘What Three Words’ are no good if you’re having an MI and can barely speak.

    • Ferrars hall@
      The new lines they put on the poles now are fibre optic replacing the old copper lines. They look the same but deliver the internet supposedly without the faults and no digging the garden up. To get a phone using this line is called VOIP.
      That’s how I understand it anyhow.

      • They may not dig the garden up but my general area in Leicester has had trenches all over the fucking place for the last 18 months, and ongoing, where they’ve been installing the cables. I notice none of the providers have mentioned that not only are the copper cables being ‘switched off’, meaning you can’t have a standard landline bur that VOIP doesn’t work in a power cut whereas current landlines do. Millions of people are potentially fucked.

  17. I havenā€™t had a landline for 15 years and my current phone is a mid range smart phone, free unlimited calls and 1Gig data per month (barely use 1mb) for Ā£5.

    I had a call from someone in 3 marketing trying to sell me the latest whatever unlimited everything Ā£30 a month for 24 month, I said I am happy with what I have so the silly cunt went into the ā€˜what if you need more dataā€™, so I said have a look at my usage, that took the wind out of his sails šŸ˜‚šŸ˜‚šŸ˜‚

  18. There is a reason that businesses and governments like mobile phones. You can be tracked on a mobile. When you use your mobile internet your interests and preferences are all noted and used to tailor advertising to you. You can be emailed and ā€œ phishedā€ 24/7. Itā€™s Big Brothers wet dream.

  19. I got fed up with Brian from Bangalore phoning me every 5 minutes to tell me some cunt had broken into my laptop so I got rid of the land line altogether.

    Yes,mobile phones are basically an I’D card and tracking device but everyone knows Bill Gates is harmless.

    Isn’t he?

    • So they all know we are on this site slagging them off and calling them cunts? Is it too late to take it all back?

      • Why would you want to take it back? I’m looking into ways of ramping up, and backdating, the vitriol.

  20. We’re a bit behind the times where I live. If you want to phone somewhere outside the area you call 100 for the operator and ask to be connected. She then listens to your conversation.
    I miss the old days though, because up until last year we had a party line shared with the bird next door. Listening in to her fuck talk with her bloke didn’t half get my old man standing to attention. Next best thing to being a Peeping Tom.

    • The early cordless phones operating on 49MHz often used to be heard on radio – you had to know where to tune though…..I used to look forward to the conversations I heard from what I assume was
      the local “massage parlour”

      • Baby monitors and cheap walkie talkies used the same frequency band. Made for loads of fun…

    • I went out into the sticks in Ukraine in ’92 and they were still using paper cups and a length of taut string.

  21. They haven’t thought this through.

    My 96 year old mother died last year. She lived in a village with loads of other old folk in bungalows. In an emergency they use the landline to dial 999, and the operator tracks them direct to their home.

    There is no cellphone signal in the village, unless you climb the Church tower – if it is unlocked, that is.

    Is this a deliberate attempt to kill off the oldies, I wonder?

    PS – I have a dumbphone – unsurprisingly, I do not suffer from the anxieties the young seem to get on their “social media”, neither do I get hurt or offended. What’s an App?

  22. Smartphones are a load of shit. Google wants you to own one so they can skullfuck you senseless and then sell you some shit to make up for all the data some shady fraudster is going to use to be you next time they want to order some coke from Bangalore.

  23. I agree with the lovely Kate Bush:that mobile phones are a load of cunt. Yeah, they are useful things to have sometimes. But they are also the instrument of so many cunts, especially in this country. It’s either some ignorant cunt looking at one while walking and bumping into people. Or some Dooshka cunt talking very loud into one. Or some twat in the kidney unit shouting in Bogo Bogo for ages. Or the sort of cunt who is on a bus and phones some other cunt just to tell them they are on a bus. And let us not even start about cunts who use phones in cinemas, theatres, and at sports events and concerts.

  24. I dislike telephones intensely and rarely ever make calls or answer them.

    Had a landline with the same number since the mid ’70s. Also have a Ā£20 mobile, but only because my bank and some savings accounts insist on sending me a code whenever I log in online, otherwise I never touch the fucker. Anyway, hereā€™s the thing. Letā€™s say you live in a decent size house like Creampuff Manor, your mobile is on the kitchen table, and meanwhile youā€™ve gone upstairs to the servants quarters for something. With landlines and at least one phone on each floor, you can hear and answer the phones ringing no matter where you are in the house. With mine I can also hear the answering facility when it kicks in so wonā€™t miss an important call, not that I ever get any.

    As others have pointed out, making emergency calls from a landline works better too because the number is associated with your address and mobiles cannot be pinpointed with the same degree of accuracy.

    And then thereā€™s the phones themselves. A standard wired landline phone lasts forever and thereā€™s no need to charge it. A cordless landline phone needs to be charged but the charge lasts a lot longer than with a mobile and the batteries are inexpensive to replace.

    Regarding Ebay, Iā€™ve had an account, buying and selling, for 25 years+ and have not had any problems signing in. Yet. They did at one time ask for my mobile number which I provided, but they havenā€™t made use of it as far as I know.

    Btw, is it getting hot yet where you are?

    Much the same as yesterday here in Portmerion… very Mediterranean. šŸŒž

    • My GP surgery had my mobile and they always rang that instead of the landline which, like you, I can hear anywhere in the house. So I had to ring them back to find out what they wanted. Eventually I told them I no longer had a mobile. Now they are forced to ring the landline and, guess what, I am able to answer it every time. Unless I’m not home, before some pedantic cunt, apart from me, thinks of it.

      • Actually I’ve just gone outside. It was like walking into Terry’s oven. Should’ve listened to the Monster Raving Loony Party and had air conditioning units fitted on the outside.

      • Morning Ruff.

        You haven’t got Willie washing the Bentley in this weather have you? I know that standards must be maintained but at least let him take off his morning coat.

      • Morning LL. šŸ‘

        No, I provided that he wash the Bentley at 3am this morning as a treat. As an employer I am nothing if not considerate of my employees welfare, as I’m sure you would attest.

        Willie is currently trying to fit an air conditioning unit to the sun dial on the south facing lawn.

      • No Mis, I grease the pole, balls are hot because the PLANET IS ON FIRE!

        Weā€™re all going to burn, the headlines today ā€˜Itā€™s hotter than the Saharaā€™ šŸ˜‚

        Years ago I went down the Nile Luxor to Aswan, early/mid June and there was hot air blowing in from Saudiā€¦ā€¦. 47C , thank fuck the boat was air conditioned

  25. You cant look at porn on a landline.

    Or buy sheepskin underpants.

    Fuckin useless.

    Ive a landline that rarely rings and when it does I ignore it.

    Its time has passed,
    Like the Dodo, the legwarmer, gas mantle,.

    Couldnt give a flying fuck.

      • I tend to wear a full lenth fishnet mack in hot weather LL.
        But what with the flies and this infernal heat im not bothering this week,
        Sticking to dirty phonecalls.
        On the landlinešŸ˜

      • Just get rid of land lines.
        The people who use them are the same people whining they cant buy 78rmp vinyl records in Woolworths or a Quill &ink writing kit.

        Probably fuckin Quakers or Amish or something?

        Whinging the local apothecary shut down and Boots doesnt sell leeches.

      • The only time I’ve used my landline in the last four years it to get hold of the service provider to tell them how shit they are, and sort out my fucking broadband and TV.
        The cunts.
        Fuck landlines. I understand that emergency services can find you quicker if you happen to be at home, but I’m most likely to need it up the hills. No service? Well, I have a dogtag with contact details for next of kin if someone finds my rotting cadaver on some windswept mountain path.

    • I think Buzby was voiced by Richard Briers. Bloody annoying ads, anyway. Private Jap’sEye did a good pisstake.
      “All lines to everywhere are engaged. Don’t try calling later. Just fuck off.”

  27. Haven’t had a land line in about 20 years. The market and demand should determine the fate of the landline just like anything else.

  28. The only people that call our land line are robots and nogerian scam artists.

    Meanwhile, on SkyNooz… The temperature in Greater Snoring is more frequently heard than “so,” “like,” etc.
    Cuntitude. Nice and cool inside. Have to wait til 8pm for the inevitable terminal boot up Tugendfart’s arse.

  29. I don’t have a landline but I do have a really basic dummy phone for ya know………. making phone calls (yeah revolutionary idea I know).

    Everything is going mobile now to the extent that I tried to get a My Morrisons Card and was informed that the physical cards have been abolished and it’s now a mobile app. Fuck smart phones and fuck Morrisons.

  30. Landlines I found were a much safer form of communication. Funny things have happened over the years, with people getting scammed using their mobile. This was never an issue with the landline. I still use a cheque book, whenever I can, another safer way of doing buisness.

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