The Hassle Of Canceling

Farmer H and I have come to a monumental decision. We are about to cancel our landline! Which is through the phone company my dad worked for during the majority of his working life. It's the end of an era! Biting the hand that fed me through childhood, and put me through college. Lowering the value of the stock we still hold, left to me by my mom. Can you sense that I'm dragging my feet?

It seems like such a big deal, although my sister the ex-mayor's wife and the then-mayor canceled their landline many years ago, without a second thought. I've liked having our landline as a backup for when our cell phones didn't work well inside the house. They're better now. I have no problems if I sit at the kitchen table. Farmer H sometimes has to go out on the porch because his won't work in his recliner. But it seems to work fine in the basement!

Anyhoo... we've been having a static-y problem with that landline for over a year. Farmer H was too busy to be here and wait for a repairman. He has a gadget that confirmed the problem with the line was OUTSIDE the house. That means the phone company would be responsible for the repairs, and it wouldn't cost us anything.

I had noticed a month or two ago that we were not getting as many scam calls. In fact, we were not getting ANY calls on the landline. The machine said it had 22 messages. So I knew it wasn't full. I just kept putting that info in the back of my mind. Then a couple days ago, I picked up the phone. Static. Not even a dial tone now. I told Farmer H. He said to call for a repairman, that he'd stay home to deal with it. But I said, "Do we really need it?"

Let the record show that Farmer H has been on-board to drop that landline for several years. So he agreed. We DON'T really need it. We've been paying for nothing for a couple months. Before that, we were paying to get scam calls that we couldn't understand, or messages left by doctors and such that also left messages on our cell phones.

When I was looking up the number to call to cancel our landline service, I saw one link that said it could take 2-4 HOURS to cancel service! What in the NOT-HEAVEN? The thing is, with a cell phone from this company, you can call a different number, and follow an automated system, and cancel without even talking to a person. But for a landline, you get routed around to several people as they ask WHY you want to cancel, try to give you a better deal, and basically keep you waiting until you want to hang up before completing your task.

Believe me, I've been through this with our trash service before. And a TV service. It's no walk in the park. It might take me a few days to work up the gumption to make this call...