Isn't It a Shame?

You gotta pat Bell Canada on the back and congratulate them for being good at milking their customers for all it's worth.

I'm sure you all at some point or rather (and by 'you' I really mean 'your parents') had one of those black rotary dial phones. The ones that you didn't own, but rather rented from bell for like $5/month. For 20 years...meaning you ended up paying $1000 for that cute little black phone. I was actually reading an article online about a lady in the states who had moved in 1985 and had kept her little black phone as a momento, an antique. Well, she's just now realized she's been paying for it to sit in her closet for the past 20 years, and the cost associated with it ran in to the $2000 range!!! Can you imagine!?

I'm the only person using/paying for the landline in my apartment here - the other two people have abandoned ship and moved over to cell phones leaving me paying the bill. It's relatively expensive all things considered equal - close to $40 per month when alls said and done. Why?

Actual phone line. $20.
Bell Answering thing. $7
Network Charge $3
"Touch Tone Service" $3
Phone Care $5.

Let's look at some of these a little closer...

The Bell Answering thing is nice and certainly handy...but at $84/year + tax = ~$95/year I'm sure I can buy a radio shack answering machine for much less than that. I hardly ever get phone messages(that aren't so old lady yelling chinese/italian into the phone), so I'm paying like $3/message. Please, feel free to leave me a message any time. All said and done, we've had this phone line since 2002 meaning close to $400 for the bell answering thing.

Touch Tone Service...$3? See, this I just don't understand. Like...? I'm paying $40/year to have touch tone? I'm sure I've now paid bell close to $500 over the years for the priviledge of having touch tone?

PhoneCare...$5. This one I love. When you move in and or get a new line with Bell, they heavily encourage you to add this to your line...then they require you to keep it for one year. Essentially it's "insurance" for if either you need someone to come to fix the phones for something that isn't actually Bell's fault, or for if somehow your phone gets damaged by the phone line. I called this morning to see if I could cancel this...and yes, in fact PhoneCare had been on the line since 2002(when the first roomie moved in here). So 4x12x5 = $240+tax = $270 for phone care. I think Bell counts on you forgetting what the heck it is after that first year, and just blindly paying your bill.

My next plan of attack is to get rid of that $7/month answering machine, then the phone will actually be down to a much more reasonable cost.

Point of the story - bell makes lots of money off monthly things