I pay $32.17 a month for a landline that doesn’t see much use. Thank you <telco> for increasing this 7-9% every single year around September for the past three years. The majority of the actual use is telemarketers and survey takers calling me, being put through to my voicemail, and then them never leaving a message.

*Update 2014-06-25 – Received the latest bill. It’s now $32.50/month all-in. With no time like the present when you’re fired up about it already – I phoned <telco> right away to cancel the service. They immediately with no questions asked offered to chop the fees in half for a year. ~$15/month for 12 months, then $20/month afterwards (which would be plus fees and taxes). That’s pretty comparable to the $12.49-$18.82 that I expect be paying under the new regime. I want to think that it would be different if they had offered the lower rate on their own initiative based on my usage, but I’m not sure it would have been. It would have made a huge percentage impact on my initial cost/benefit – and while I would be less perturbed about their incessant fee increases I would probably have justified the capital cost as “It’s a project” and called it even with the same operating costs. OR maybe I’m just justifying it because I already spent the cash. Continue reading →