# Something Gotta Give



## endrow (Dec 15, 2011)

Hundred sixty bucks for Comcast internet and cable. I do not watch TV at all my wife watches a little,, grand kids would miss it , but they don't watch much either. 60 bucks for a Verizon phone line because of the fax machine. Add 6 smartphones. I've had it we're going to be making changes


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## IH 1586 (Oct 16, 2014)

Feel for you. We just dropped directv. They kept bumping the price and then charged us to drop it even though we met their criteria. Moving 2 years ago screwed up my Verizon internet that was locked in at 17.99/month for life. Introductory deal when they brought high speed through the area. When I moved woman said "oh I see we have not raised your price in a while we are going to make this a new service" wtf Moved 1/10 of mile, no number change, that is what they call a number transfer. Nope got new service and still have same number. Still pisses me off to this day. They have raise the price about every 6 months, now its $40/month.


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## endrow (Dec 15, 2011)

I I guess I should just look at free TV I have to do a little investigating to see what you need as far as an antenna goes


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## paoutdoorsman (Apr 23, 2016)

I know where you're coming from endrow. I dropped cable 2 years ago and haven't really missed it, but did have to stream some of the presidential debates I wanted to watch as well as election night coverage. My wife and kids thought they would miss it, but they are content streaming Netflix content. Thankfully my area is not serviced by Comcast, but rather a small independent cable company. I still felt the monthly charge was extravagant for the quality of service, and my lack of interest in television in general. I did try a couple of antennas, but I'm not at a good location for that.

As a starting point, check out https://www.antennaweb.org/. Plug in your address or zip code and it will give you an idea of what over the air channels you could get with an antenna.


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## slowzuki (Mar 8, 2011)

Never had a landline of TV put into when we moved to this place 10 years ago. Just 22$ a month flip phone and internet service charges now.

Fax has been an issue but our scanner can send to email addresses which is more common now.


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## r82230 (Mar 1, 2016)

endrow said:


> Hundred sixty bucks for Comcast internet and cable. I do not watch TV at all my wife watches a little,, grand kids would miss it , but they don't watch much either. 60 bucks for a Verizon phone line because of the fax machine. Add 6 smartphones. I've had it we're going to be making changes


At my office (day job), I had to upgrade my internet (Charter), because like IH I had an 'old' service. But my cost when from $54.99 to $79.99 (would have be cheaper if I would have bundled my phones into service) and I had basic cable, which went away.

Here is a suggestion: consider using Nextiva (or one of their competitors), for phone service. I have 4 phone lines at my one location (local phone numbers), an 800 phone number, another local phone number at an office 45 miles away, plus a fax number (think of 7 phone lines/numbers), with all long distance included. The cost is about $130 a month.

You could probably get a phone line (with unlimited long distance) and a what is call a virtual fax (you access their web site to see/print fax)., for maybe $20-30 a month VoIP (Voice over Internet Provider phone service). I purchased my phones for about $100 a piece (Nextiva did supply me with 7 phones at no cost, just I wanted four line phones).

My two cents

Larry

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

endrow said:


> Hundred sixty bucks for Comcast internet and cable. I do not watch TV at all my wife watches a little,, grand kids would miss it , but they don't watch much either. 60 bucks for a Verizon phone line because of the fax machine. Add 6 smartphones. I've had it we're going to be making changes


Use Myfax.com for your fax machine and cancel the phone line for it. I've been using myfax for about 10 years now. Good service. Internet based. Though if you fax a lot you will need to have a good scanner. If you just receive faxes most of the time it's great. You can recieve and send faxes using your 6 smart phones. Cancel Cable. We cancelled Directv and don't miss it. Though I am tempted to get it again just so I can have unlimited data with At & t wireless.


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## Swv.farmer (Jan 2, 2016)

I just cancelled direct tv I'd had it for about 6 years and the first 2 years we're under contract so it was good after that just ever little while they would raise my bill so I let them go now just watch net flix or I should say the kids do.


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## stack em up (Mar 7, 2013)

We don't have landline phone anymore, no Directv or Dish. We do have Netflix. Mediacom internet is $55/month.


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## JD3430 (Jan 1, 2012)

We have extremely poor cell phone "reception" in my area.

Verizon works the best in a bad situation, so Im stuck with them.

Thieves in every sense of the word.

Would like to switch to one of the "cheapy" providers, but their phones wont work in my area.


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## Thorim (Jan 19, 2015)

I am not a fan of cell phones in general, five or six years ago the daughter and wife got me a trac phone to carry when pursuing my hobby, I guess it was 2g phone???? Well last summer trac phone sent me a new phone, for free, said they was discontinuing 2g service lol so they sent me a 3g phone guess I went form as old as dinosaur droppings to just plain ancient.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

I'm stuck with ATT where I'm at, most of the time couldn't even get one bar with Sprint or Verizon.

Actually had a land line hooked back up for the other business line just because its a sh*t ton easier to have the fax machine plugged into a land line than mess with internet faxes.

With the state park across the road from me and using the antennae web.org tool I could get maybe 7 free channels. The wife would not be happy if she misses her BBC programs. Not to mention I'm a bit of a Game of Thrones and Walking Dead junkie.


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## Lewis Ranch (Jul 15, 2013)

No cable bill for me, 14 channels here on the antenna. My cousin 15 miles to the west on a hilltop gets over 30 channels. His antenna was $90 mine was around $30.


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

What do you guys use faxes for these days? I very rarely use my fax service.


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## somedevildawg (Jun 20, 2011)

I'm always telling folk to "fax me an email" my way of saying, give me a call.....
Mediacom for home internet and TV service....Verizon for cell service, stupidly priced on both ends, I also have local antenna and rotor but only get about 6 channels, and 3 of them aren't worth anything....but the picture quality with antenna is so much better than what you get with any service


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## deadmoose (Oct 30, 2011)

JD3430 said:


> We have extremely poor cell phone "reception" in my area.
> Verizon works the best in a bad situation, so Im stuck with them.
> Thieves in every sense of the word.
> Would like to switch to one of the "cheapy" providers, but their phones wont work in my area.


Hmmm. Sounds kinda like here. As in, well worth it to me to pay them cause it works.

And not worth it for others to make it work.

They aren't making a killing. Just covering costs and some profit. Just like you, right?


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## deadmoose (Oct 30, 2011)

Teslan said:


> What do you guys use faxes for these days? I very rarely use my fax service.


No doubt. @ Work, I no longer fax ANYTHING. I email it off copier to myself and fwd as necessary. Then,when fax (email here) was "not received" aka misplaced, I just resend.


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## r82230 (Mar 1, 2016)

Teslan said:


> What do you guys use faxes for these days? I very rarely use my fax service.


Required to have a fax number by company that owns franchise. But that is why I went with a 'virtual fax number' and a good scanner. I get an e-mail telling me I have a fax, I go to carrier site, log in, look at fax and print/trash/save (usually trash, being I have had fax number for a long time, I get a lot of 'junk' faxes). As far as business related faxes, maybe one per month (incoming). Same for outgoing, have some paperwork that can't be e-mailed but can be faxed (I know doesn't make sense to me either).

Larry


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

r82230 said:


> Required to have a fax number by company that owns franchise. But that is why I went with a 'virtual fax number' and a good scanner. I get an e-mail telling me I have a fax, I go to carrier site, log in, look at fax and print/trash/save (usually trash, being I have had fax number for a long time, I get a lot of 'junk' faxes). As far as business related faxes, maybe one per month (incoming). Same for outgoing, have some paperwork that can't be e-mailed but can be faxed (I know doesn't make sense to me either).
> 
> Larry


I have a virtual fax for our real estate company. We used to use it a lot when real estate contracts were sent by fax to get signatures, but now thanks to Docusign that has been largely eliminated. For farm stuff I only send one a year to temporarily disconnect power to a pivot for the winter, but every year that fax never gets to where it's supposed to so I end up having to e-mail it. Lousy Xcel energy.


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## endrow (Dec 15, 2011)

Yes that's a good point my wife said she did not I want to give up the fax line it's pretty convenient for her but hearing what you said she will give it up I am currently teaching her how to use our scanner to scan documents to email


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Not sure why but sometimes when I email stuff to corporate in Manitoba they have problems enlarging the scanned documents, so I shoot it off in a fax. I've also faxed quotes to people as they either don't even have email, let alone a computer and printer. To me a fax is archaic, I had a PC, printer, scanner decades before I had a fax machine.


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

mlappin said:


> Not sure why but sometimes when I email stuff to corporate in Manitoba they have problems enlarging the scanned documents, so I shoot it off in a fax. I've also faxed quotes to people as they either don't even have email, let alone a computer and printer. To me a fax is archaic, I had a PC, printer, scanner decades before I had a fax machine.


scanning can be a mystery sometimes. I've received contracts that are 20 seperate pages of jpeg pictures. At that point I call and just ask them to fax it. Though for sure my scanning skills have been lacking at times as well.


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

endrow said:


> Hundred sixty bucks for Comcast internet and cable. I do not watch TV at all my wife watches a little,, grand kids would miss it , but they don't watch much either. 60 bucks for a Verizon phone line because of the fax machine. Add 6 smartphones. I've had it we're going to be making changes


Yeah, we're just about done with the satellite TV... it's over $100 bucks a month and we don't watch ANYTHING live on it anymore (I DVR "AgPhD" and a few other shows on RFD, and a few things here and there when something's on worth watching on the History Channel or the few remaining science channels, when they have anything worth watching (which is rare anymore). Only thing I watch "regularly" on there is when I DVR "Vikings" and "Turn: Washington's Spies". Everything else they can keep...

What makes me mad is, you pay ALL THAT MONEY, and the [email protected] thing is STILL overrun with FRIGGIN' COMMERCIALS! I simply can't stand to watch anything on there LIVE as-it's-broadcast, because of ALL THOSE STUPID COMMERCIALS! I don't hardly even bother with DVR'ing movies on satellite anymore-- they'll take an hour-and-a-half movie and stretch it out over THREE HOURS because of all the added flippin' commercials they stick in there! You get to the last 30 minutes of the movie, and you'll LITERALLY have five minutes of movie, then FIVE MINUTES of stupid commercials! Then you get to the last ten minutes of the movie and you'll have about 2 minutes of movie, and about 5-6 minutes or more of commercials... some of the shows are doing that now too... last time I watched "Deadliest Catch" they'd build the commercials the longer the show went, and they'd have a five minute commercial break, come back to the show for about a minute, then launch into another 2-3 minute commercial break before coming back to the show... Drives me crazy, even with the DVR and forwarding past all that CRAP... I just don't like having to wade through hip-deep sh!t just to watch a stupid show or movie!

I remember when folks started getting satellite dishes-- mostly to get COMMERCIAL FREE TV, because they were tired of being "overrun" with commercials on regular broadcast TV.

Course, what makes me mad is, *WHY* am I paying $100 bucks a month for a TV signal, and then being BOMBARDED with commercials?? That made sense when the first TV and radio signals were first invented, and there was NO other way to "pay for it" except with advertising, since it was IMPOSSIBLE to bill folks for RECEIVING the signal on analog radios and TV sets... Of course the big companies got greedy and you got bombarded with commercials out the wazoo... BUT, I'm PAYING for the satellite TV... if I don't want ANY commercials, I *should* be able to get it WITHOUT commercials... INSTEAD the robber companies are double-dipping from BOTH SIDES, charging me exorbitant rates for their satellite signal, then bombarding me with unwanted commercials from companies they're charging high advertising rates on as well... SO I'm ready to say "screw em" and go back to the antenna, and streaming TV via Amazon Firestick, which is what we watch 90% of the time now anyway. Nothing produced in the last 10 years on television worth watching anyway (except for Vikings and Turn: Washington Spies which I have to watch alone because Betty doesn't like them... Keira likes "Turn" and will watch it with me but Vikings is too violent/gory for her, despite being historically realistic).

As for the phones, we dropped the land line years ago. We still have it for the internet, as it was cheaper to do that than doing anything else for internet, and we actually have a good "high speed over landline" setup here. BUT, we got sick and tired of the exorbitant taxes and fees for something we weren't using, so we had them can our phone number and voice line... we're data only now, though we CAN use the phone to "call out" in an emergency-- we just cannot RECEIVE calls... that reduced our bill to a modest fee which is reasonable for the internet... cheaper than anything else we could get. We use cell phones only around here. I have one, Betty has one, Keira has a track-phone as a "training phone" and well see how she does with it for a year, THEN we'll consider adding her to our plan. I think our plan is about $100 bucks and some change a month, pretty modest. We don't do a lot of data except with wi-fi so it doesn't cost us...

Later! OL J R


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

IH 1586 said:


> Feel for you. We just dropped directv. They kept bumping the price and then charged us to drop it even though we met their criteria. Moving 2 years ago screwed up my Verizon internet that was locked in at 17.99/month for life. Introductory deal when they brought high speed through the area. When I moved woman said "oh I see we have not raised your price in a while we are going to make this a new service" wtf Moved 1/10 of mile, no number change, that is what they call a number transfer. Nope got new service and still have same number. Still pisses me off to this day. They have raise the price about every 6 months, now its $40/month.


I'd sh!tcan them myself just on principle... I'd give the business to ANYBODY else worth having, IF you have anybody else providing a decent service for about the same money...

I don't reward crooks with my business... I just refuse to do business with them if I have a viable choice...

Later! OL J R


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

slowzuki said:


> Never had a landline of TV put into when we moved to this place 10 years ago. Just 22$ a month flip phone and internet service charges now.
> 
> Fax has been an issue but our scanner can send to email addresses which is more common now.


Yeah, faxes are sorta passe IMHO...

Later! OL J R


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## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

You guys are going to laugh, but then again I am a sheep farmer too so I am kind of used to it...

Anyway I don't have a cell phone...and I don't mean I don't have a smart phone, I mean I don't have a cell phone *whatsoever*!! And my air antenna...I saw a video on Youtube on making your own, took a piece of copper tubing, literally beat it with a hammer on some concrete flooring to mash it flat, formed it into a diamond shape and attached a splitter and coaxial cable. I spent ZERO dollars on it as I had all the parts, and told my daughter, "there is a 0 percent chance of this working." I then plugged it into the TV and the silly thing brings in 15 channels. RUKU brings us enough channels for the kids to be happy.

ZERO DOLLARS!

We have a landline phone though and high speed internet.

As you can tell I am VERY frugal. I am also out of the loop on current events and would make a great juror. When the BP oil spill in the Gulf occurred I heard people talking about it, but I thought it was just some little spill sensationalized by the media, it was 5 weeks later when I saw video of the event. Everyone thought I was an idiot because they had become immune to it and I was bedazzled by the size of it all. Yeah I am out of the loop on things, but as soon as my off-grid cabin deep in the woods is built, I'll be completely happy! 

If anyone wants a free antenna for their TV, get a hammer and some copper tubing, the thing works and this is my 3rd year using it...in Maine...summer and winter!


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

RuttedField said:


> You guys are going to laugh, but then again I am a sheep farmer too so I am kind of used to it...
> 
> Anyway I don't have a cell phone...and I don't mean I don't have a smart phone, I mean I don't have a cell phone *whatsoever*!! And my air antenna...I saw a video on Youtube on making your own, took a piece of copper tubing, literally beat it with a hammer on some concrete flooring to mash it flat, formed it into a diamond shape and attached a splitter and coaxial cable. I spent ZERO dollars on it as I had all the parts, and told my daughter, "there is a 0 percent chance of this working." I then plugged it into the TV and the silly thing brings in 15 channels. RUKU brings us enough channels for the kids to be happy.
> 
> ...


sometimes I think about ditching a smart phone for a flip phone or a cell phone altogether. But I like texting to much:


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## somedevildawg (Jun 20, 2011)

Me too.....and sending pics, and watching radar, and checking for torque specs, and checking out YouTube, and watching the grandkids at day care, and jumping on haytalk, and ........


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

I like my Droid Maxx... Like devildog said, I like checking the radar, and having a lot of other apps handy (like the level app that comes in handy setting up the hay mower on the 3 point hitch, etc). AgPhD has a TON of good farm-related apps, BTW.

We ditched the land line because if you REALLY look at your phone bill, MOST of what you pay is stupid taxes and fees. We pay about a hundred a month and my wife and I have unlimited talk and text and PLENTY of data for looking stuff up on the net, etc. when we're away from any wi-fi. Very handy and not too expensive. Our phones weren't very expensive as upgrades over our previous ones (I had a flip phone til two years ago).

I don't miss the house phone one bit... nobody ever called on the stupid thing but telemarketers anyway, and I don't want to talk to that scum. Just a waste of time and money. We'd have had to pay extra to get caller ID and I wasn't about to do that, so we NEVER answered the house land line anyway-- we let the answering machine screen the calls for us and then decided to answer. Caller ID is built in to the smart phones. If you get called by someone you don't recognize the number, I simply ignore it. If I get called by some annoying folks I'd rather not talk to right then, I hit "ignore" and the phone stops ringing. Easy peasy...

IMHO cell phones are SO worth it. I wouldn't even have a phone if I had to go back to a stupid landline...

Later! OL J R


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## r82230 (Mar 1, 2016)

Couple of options for those who maybe interested:


Straight Talk (Android only I think) $45 ($44 auto pay) per month no contract (uses Verizon, ATT, Spring & T-Mobile networks).
Cricket $40 ($35 auto pay) per month no contract (uses ATT network). Android & Apple phones.

Me, I will stick with my TracFone, flip and all, for about $10 a month.

Larry


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## somedevildawg (Jun 20, 2011)

r82230 said:


> Couple of options for those who maybe interested:
> 
> 
> Straight Talk (Android only I think) $45 ($44 auto pay) per month no contract (uses Verizon, ATT, Spring & T-Mobile networks).
> ...


Damn that's cheap


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

Is Straight Talk any good? It would seem to me that a company that would use the networks of all 3 of the other providers might possibly provide the best connection where ever you are. I wonder how the phone chooses connection networks.


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