Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Stop the Robocalls with Wireless!

You might know I replaced my land line phone at home with a wireless home phone.  The box sits out of sight and feeds phones all over the house.  The family hasn't really noticed the difference...but neither have the robocallers.  The idea was to keep the existing home phone number and keep the phones that ring when someone calls the "Home" number.


Of course, most of us now call a person instead of a home, so the home phone has become pretty much just a backup.  With so few legitimate calls coming in on the home phone, we thought it may be time to turn off the ringer and just let the calls go to voice mail.  With the local phone company charging over $50 per month for a line we no longer answer, we are thrilled that the wireless replacement is just $15 per month.  Yes, we could just buy a bargain cell phone and use its voice mail, but my family has a tendency to lose a phone they don't use on a regular basis.  Replacing the home phone with the wireless box gave us what we want: the household backup phone (have you ever thought about what if the babysitter's phone battery went dead?) and a reliable voice mail system.

While we're not stopping the robocalls, few of them leave a message, and the occasional real caller who actually wants to contact us, can still keep in touch.  For a short time we considered the even cheaper broadband-based (VoIP) phone replacement, but our wireless box has work flawlessly for years, compared to our Internet connection that goes out for various lengths of time almost once a month.

BTW, those of you who moved in to your current home and never installed a "home phone", we can't help you.