Our phone started acting glitchy a couple weeks ago. On Thursday, July 8 I decided to call the problem in before we lost service altogether, which we did shortly thereafter. The last time this happened was 12 years ago, although that was only for five days, and this time the phone lady said it would be six days before they could get somebody to us. On the seventh day, with no sign of help, I bought a cheap cell phone at Walmart, the kind where you buy a card with pre-paid minutes on it. This is what I did 12 years ago, and they came out and fixed our regular phone the same day, before I even had a chance to call them about it, so I figured it was worth a shot. Well it didn't work this time. Not only did they not fix our regular phone that day, but I was up half the night trying to activate the new cell phone. Funny, I don't remember it being that difficult the last time.
On the eighth day I was preparing to take the new phone back to Walmart to find out what I was doing wrong when we got a call on the regular phone from a telemarketer-scammer. After I greeted him with my usual, "Shut up and leave me alone!" and hung up the phone, my wife picked it back up and reported getting a dial tone. Not knowing if the fix was permanent, I called the phone company back to inquire about the status of my previous complaint. After checking her computer, the phone lady reported that they were still working on the problem and that they would get somebody out to our house sooner or later. Nobody has come to our house yet, but the phone has been working ever since.
Meanwhile, I took the new phone back to Walmart to find out what I was doing wrong anyway because, like I said, I didn't know whether or not the fix on the old phone was permanent. The first thing I found out was the cheap phones of today have way more features on them than they did 12 years ago. I asked the guy if there was any way to by-pass all that useless crap and just make a phone call. He said that there was and graciously showed me how to do it. I took another look at the instructions the next day, and now I think I know how to escape the useless crap mode if I ever stumble into it again. The next thing I learned is, the proper tool for scratching off the number on the back of the prepaid minutes card is a coin, not a fingernail, not a house key, and certainly not a pocket knife. The nice boy even replaced my damaged card for free, even though I admitted that it was probably my fault.
The last time I bought one of those cheap cell phones, I never used it for six months and ended up giving it to my grand daughter, who promised to use up the minutes before they expired. This time, though, I think I'll keep it. The deal they have now is, although the unused minutes are set to expire after 90 days, they carry over if you buy more minutes before the expiration date. That comes out to $80 a year, which is cheaper than any other phone rates that I know of. As old as we are, and living in the country as we do, we really should have a working back up phone in case of emergency. As one of my army buddy's grandmother used to say, "It's good if you never use it."
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