ANOTHER LAND LINE LOSS

The debate has raged on for years: lose the land line, or keep it.  Having been totally won over to all the goodies a cell phone and the Internet gave him the man refused to even use the phone stuck to the wall in the hallway.  I hated to give it up.

I liked the comfort of how the old fashioned receiver fit in my hand and against my ear on those long chatty calls with my sisters and friends, and how I could grip it between my jaw and shoulder if I had to peel potatoes and talk at the same time, and I liked being able to actually hang up on telemarketers; merely touching a screen just doesn’t give a person the same sense of power and defiance.  The trouble was, for the past year or so, those were the only calls that ever came in on that phone - sister calls and telemarketers.  It’s really hard to justify the bill that kept coming every month for something that we barely used.

Still, I argued.  Firstly there is the land line emergency factor.  Do you realize how useless a cell phone is if the power grid goes down?  I’m not talking about an hour here or there.  People have vehicles and generators to get them through short spans of time.  How about in a real emergency?  Something so catastrophic as to knock the power grid down for days or weeks?  Once you’re out of fuel to run your car or generator you are done – in the middle of a REAL emergency when you will need real help and communication.  Government guidelines won’t even let you set up an emergency command post unless you are equipped with a land line.

My second point of contention is also my pet peeve in life ... people who cancel their land line simply disappear.  You can’t phone them, they are not in the book.  Back in my days as a postmaster the words “this number is no longer in service” became my most frustrating issue.  How do you let someone know their parcel has timed out and is about to be sent back if they are unreachable?  People can have multiple phones on them 24/7 but unless you are one of their inner circle you have no hope of getting in touch with them.

Quietly, back on the home front, I continued to pay the bill, but eventually I decided to look into what the options were for going ‘full cell’.  Not that Sasktel wants to encourage customers to cancel any of their services but they do offer ways to help you out.  They will keep your old number for a set period of time in case you change your mind, and they will install a recording on the old number to inform callers what your new number is.  While this info was comforting I still held back.  The straw that broke the camel’s back though, was when our old phone decided to die.  How was I going to justify buying a new phone for a line we never used?

I gave him the job though.  The account was in his name and he was the one who wanted it gone so it seemed fitting.  And, I will admit I congratulated myself on avoiding the hour plus that he spent on hold to get that job done, but that little bit of self satisfaction has come back to haunt me.

I thought I had provided him with all the info he would need and how to avoid any pitfalls that may arise, but it seems there was one glitch no one saw coming.  Apparently I was a very early subscriber to email.  So long ago that my email account and the phone number it was associated with were married.  When one died, so did the other.  It might have taken me a day or two to become conscious of my lack of email, but with every passing moment since then it’s become more and more painful.

My first call to Sasktel confirmed my fears – that my problem was linked to cancelling the land line, but the gal I was talking to said “no worries” and promised it would be all fixed in five minutes.  She was too young to know what she was talking about.  The fellow I was referred to on day two of my plight was also too young to know about the old ways but knew enough to ask a senior admin.  It seems, back in the day, Sasktel would give their own admin email address to an account and then let you make up your own which they referred to as an ‘alias’.  When gal #1 ‘fixed’ my problem on my first call in everything disappeared.  My buddy from day #2 went looking for it but he couldn’t restore it in the same way.  He left me with my new account and a back door way to be able to go fetch any old emails I might want. At the time we both thought this arrangement had everything covered.

We were wrong.  I have just discovered that the complete list of email addresses in my address book have been obliterated. 

Deep sigh.

And so, should you want to get hold of me by phone the technology is in place for you to do so – NO PROBLEM.  If you ever want me to be able to email you ever again you might want to send me one so I can capture you address ....