so... you're one of "those" who dissed the landline and went 100% mobile...

[Dennis Donovan]

...like me. But my @#$%^& phone went south.

What the FUCK do you do? A payphone? Good luck finding one.

So I'm reduced to going to the neighbor's house, the one you're convinced is a serial killer.

*knock knock*

...

...anyone see Dennis lately?

I'm starting to dig why a few people pine for the 80's. The 1880's...

[RandySF]

1. I'm hesitant to ditch the landline while I have a young child.

I also dissuaded my elderly dad from getting rid of his.

[Dennis Donovan]

2. Good idea!

I would've given a different answer before.

[Meadowoak]

3. Pick up a track phone, they are only like $15. That will see you through until you get your phone

Repaired.

[Dennis Donovan]

6. But, don't I have to fulfill drug orders?

I keed, I keed.

I was on the cusp of switching to T-Mobile, so this might be a sign from the telecom gods...

[radical noodle]

4. We gave up our landline 6 years ago

and have never missed it. Both of us have cell phones so we always have backup. I'd also vote for a cheap tracfone until you have yours back.

[Dennis Donovan]

9. I have all of my old cellphones...

...but there's no apparatus to recover my line.

[TexasTowelie]

11. Not always.

The cell phone towers in my area were down for three days last year when Hurricane Harvey came through. My brother was out of town and the only way I could communicate with him was via email sent to my sister's email address. It was very inconvenient because I was trying to wire money to him, but Western Union was also down.

You can only imagine the messages that were left on my voicemail.

[radical noodle]

21. Oh no!

We lost power after Irma but we always had our cell coverage. I hope (other than the cell coverage) you survived Harvey okay.

[TexasTowelie]

23. It was pretty rough for awhile.

I was lucky to find a loaf of bread on the Thursday night before the first band of showers came through. The following week was tough with no bread or milk around and very little meat available since the stores could not get resupplied. Even 1.5 weeks to 2.5 weeks later there was still some impact with the local grocery store and Walmart staying open for only limited hours. The Colorado River also flooded in Wharton where I live. I didn't have any flooding, but the drainage ditch near the end of property of my apartment complex was only about one feet from overflowing its banks.

The good news is that FEMA has approved about $75 million for levees in the area since it was the second major flood in a three year period.

[radical noodle]

28. I'm so glad you came through it without flooding

They need those levees.

[Little Star]

5. We kept our landline because.....

our police, fire and sometimes other town departments leave messages on there. That doesn't happen with a cell phone.

[radical noodle]

22. Here we get those messages on our cell phones.

Even weather alerts.

[TexasBushwhacker]

7. When I get a new cell phone, I keep my old one

If I lose or break my phone, I just reactivate my old one.

[brush]

14. What do you have to do to reactivate it?

[TexasBushwhacker]

15. Go through its "Settings" on an Android phone

Go to the "General" tab and there will be an "Activate this device" place to click.

[JenniferJuniper]

8. Would you even know what numbers to call?

I have no idea what anyone's number is. They're all in my phone.

[RandomAccess]

12. They used to have these things

called Address Books. Little books where you wrote down people's names, addresses and phone numbers. They were usually alphabetical.

I'm being a little sarcastic but it's not a bad idea for people to write down their key phone numbers and other stuff.

[Kali]

25. or tattoo them to your body

*wished I had done that when I locked myself out of my car last winter*

[zanana1]

34. I have one of those.

I can't afford a cell phone so I have to keep all phone #s in it. I also keep the addresses. It must be convenient to have a cell, but whenever someone needs an address, they call me. If there's a crisis in the family, my landline phone rings off the hook.

[TexasBushwhacker]

16. You can backup your phone contacts to Google Drive

or other cloud storage.

[RainCaster]

10. I will drop my landlines as soon as I can drop dsl

Later this year

[fleur-de-lisa]

13. Ha ha! I keep a landline cuz my mother

Refuses to answer the phone if I call her from my cell. She says she can’t understand a word when I call from the mobile phone.

I feel your pain, though. My mobile died about a month ago and I was lost. No way to recover any data. No contact list, no calendar, no nothing.

How did we survive before smart phones?

[TexasTowelie]

24. I don't know if you are able, but can you go online with your cell phone provider

to view your old bills? I'm with T-Mobile and view the detailed phone statements for the past 12 months. It lists the dates, phone numbers and cities along with the length of time that you were on the call. I occasionally have to hunt up a phone number so I thought that I would pass the tip along to you.

[ooky]

17. I have an OOMA phone to back up my mobile phone. It cost $4 per month for

the subscription, plus one time investment of $100 to purchase the ooma base unit. I've had it about 5 years and is still working great when I need it to. I'm on my third cell phone since getting it.

[forgotmylogin]

18. I used a magic jack for a while.

You plug it in back if your computer then plug a phone into it. It’s a nice emergency extra line for like $30/year.

I know people who won’t give up their actual landline cause their power goes out a lot.

[csziggy]

20. I won't give up my landline

At times, most often during hurricanes or severe thunderstorms, everything goes down and I have no internet, telephone or TV. Last weekend our phone (and a bunch of phones in this neighborhood) went out.

I get no cell signal inside my house. I get no cell signal outside my house unless I walk to the top of the ridge which puts me line of sight of a cell tower. There are no cell towers for ten miles to the east of this north south ridge we live in the shadow of.

So when my landline goes out, I have to go outside to call tech support to report it. Then I end up in a Catch-22 situation. Tech support wants to test my line and needs me next to the landline phone to answer it if it rings. They have no system to simply report an outage - apparently they cannot put in a ticket for a tech to come out unless they can test the line while I am on the phone to them.

The call center techs have never been able to understand the concept of living where you get no cell signal.

[HeiressofBickworth]

19. I've insisted we keep the landline

Everyone I've ever known for the past 45 years knows my phone number. Only a select few have my cell number.

Stores and other retail establishments sell lists of their customers and phone numbers. When it's required to give a phone number, I always give the landline in order to protect my cell phone from garbage calls.

We never actually answer the landline, figuring that if it was something important, we'd get a voicemail. We do listen to voicemail messages.

[greatauntoftriplets]

26. They'll pry my landline from my cold, dead hands.

I live alone and have four landline phones. Yes, I also have a cell.

[area51]

32. +1 n/t

[dawg day]

27. I keep an old cell phone just in case.

I would probably keep a landline-- compared to a cell plan, it's CHEAP!-- but I got tired of all the junk calls. Now of course they're all calling my cell number.

[2naSalit]

29. There's a jack in my new place

and I still have a TrinLine model from my last landline experience but I maintain a prepay phone because it's just easier since all I want it for is to be a phone.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

30. I can't imagine ever giving up my landline.

For one thing, the reception on it is vastly better than my cell phone reception.

For another, when I first moved here (to Santa Fe) there were enormous problems with not enough cell towers and not enough bandwidth, and sometimes I'd go two or three days unable to get a signal on my cell phone. Things have improved vastly, and I'm never without a signal at home any more.

I want both.

Oh, and for what it's worth, I have not yet switched to a smart phone. I have a very dumb phone which makes and receives calls, makes and receives texts. I'm sure I will eventually get a "smart" phone, but for now I'm fine without one.

Perhaps it's my age, 70 next month, that is a huge factor. I grew up when Ma Bell was the only game in town, and even worked for her at the beginning of my working life. Back then you had to wait for an installer to show up at your house to put in the new phone every time you moved to a new place. You usually didn't have to wait more than a few days, and one installer showed me how to turn the ring off on my phone so I didn't have to hear it if I didn't want. Of course, everything was corded: the phone itself hardwired into the phone jack, the hand set attached with a cord to the base. By the 1960's it was possible to buy a 25 foot cord, so you were nearly as free to roam about as the later cordless phones. And oh, my! weren't those amazing!

Anyway, far be it from me to try to persuade someone to add a landline back into their lives, but I'm not going to give mine up any time soon.

Oh, and I'm under the distinct impression that in much of New England it's mountainous enough that cell phones are hardly worth it. Has that changed?

[DFW]

31. Never did it

Never will-- for that very reason

[Demovictory9]

33. I had two cell phones for a bit. a 2nd cheap from Target pay as you go $20 phone

but to keep it going need to by $10 of minutes every month or two. didn't keep it up to date.

I Should start that back up plan again.

Couldn't find my smart phone at home, didn't have one to call it, went online and sent a text to it so I could hear it ring. lol