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.
Nominated by: Allan
I recently upgraded to superfast broadband from Sky. No faster than their normal broadband but it has crashed 5 times in two weeks and we now loose the phone as well. Utter shit.
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I keep my old Blackberry phone in use- deliberately to fuck businesses off.
Was in shatwest bank branch in town a couple of years ago when they started fucking around with in branch services and getting rid of cashiers and trying to push us to do it all online (according to them their customers want more online service- like fuck do they!) Anyway I asked for a service which a cashier normally does for me (they had a floorwalker who would intercept people going straight up to the cashier, unlike in the past) I was told “soon I would have to do it online using their app” I showed him my Blackberry and said “will it run on this, as it’s not andriod or an iphone?” “Probably not” he said. I said “well, I’m not changing my phone, just because you change your business” He said “in that case in the future you won’t be able to conduct your business with us”
……I very soon closed my account.
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BT/OpenReach plan to get rid of POTS by 2025. OFGEM are trying to get all ISPs to offer Voice Over IP (VOIP) preserving land line numbers as a virtual thing. I have never seen any ISP with “full-fibre” packages offer little adapters so you can connect an old phone to a router. TalkTalk and Sky for instance do not offer this. This has not been well advertised.
People with Alert Systems where you pull a cord if you fall to alert the emergency services and emergency number dialing (999/111) will all have to be converted to some IP thing which will require a broadband subscription. A disgrace. You need a backup for emergency services at least.
This is all so BT/OpenReach can dig up and sell every last bit of copper. POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) has served us well for nearly 100 years. Why destroy it?
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