I travel a lot between different locations and have been doing so for years and I’ve always had to fight with the phone companies in getting and keeping service. Ultimately the process of doing so has usually been time consuming and worst of all expensive. I live basically in two places – half here in Hawaii and half in Oregon.

Recently I signed up with Vonage for VOIP service which seems like a good idea in my situation since I can just drag the virtual phone number with me wherever I go so I no longer have to go through the hassle of signing up for phone service disconnecting or otherwise dealing with the phone company.

For the last few months that’s left me with three different phones and numbers: My Maui main phone, Vonage and my cell phone. The good news is that I can forward to the cell from either number so at least I can get the cell phone to ring from any of these phones.

Anyway, today I decided that it’s time to reduce the standard phone service down to pretty much incoming call line. In theory I could ditch the landline altogether in favor of Vonage which works great, but since I’ve been using this phone number for years for my business it seemed a good idea to leave it running for a while longer while I update all references to the old number on electronic and printed forms. The reasoning behind this is that the phone service costs over $40 a month for basically a line that is barely used at all and acts as little more than a call forwarding mechanism. So I call Verizon to see if I can just get the absolute minimal service. Sure enough for $17 a month & a $45, I can get a call-forwarding service. Never mind the fact that this is a blatant rip off. $45 to flip a switch and $17 a month for something that practically happens automatically. But Ok, it has value and is cheaper than my current situation. Or for $25 a month I could get basic phone service which provides incoming calls. Interestingly enough they charge for Interstate calling fees on that – the basic charge is like $10.00 and the rest is ‘required’ surcharges of services that you really don’t need. In short, there’s no such thing as basic service offered by Verizon.

It gets worse though. So now I figure I just go with the cheapest option which is the call forwarding gig. But it turns out that Verizon wants to charge me for forwarding calls to non-local numbers. They want to charge a per minute charge for the long distance fees. Hmmmm… let me see – if I call somebody from my phone and the call gets forwarded I have to pay for the call, but Verizon figures they can charge the person forwarding as well? I know this is the way it has traditionally worked for phone companies but that’s a ridiculous scheme if you think about it.  Isn’t call forwarding little more than re-routing a telephone signal? It’s not like the conversation actually goes through the local interchange, all it does is re-route the connection.

It seems to me the phone companies are going to get buried and soon as people figure out alternatives. Land lines are going down en-masse already anyway in favor of cell phones, which unfortunately are even worse when it comes to Telephone company policies and trying to nickel and dime you to death.

So, after that conversation with an additionally rude person on the other line I just cancelled the line altogether. Screw them. I’m not willing to put any more money into that machine – at least now that I have a choice. And this is what really bites. If I think of the amount of money that has been going into phone service that was never used much at all it really stinks. Especially since there really wasn’t a choice – you could only get local phone service from a single company.

So now I’m down to two phones. Vonage is working out well so far although I had a number of issues on my flakey wireless Internet connection in Hood River. Here on Maui with a solid Cable connection though quality and stability is great. For $30 a month I get a phone I can take with me, free long distance and free call forwarding. What’s even nicer is that the call forwarding can ring both the local line and my cell phone at the same time so I no longer have to forward calls to the cell phone when I leave the office – both phones are always on.

So let’s see here. The phone company lost $40+ month subscription, the chance to at least keep a $20/month subscription plus a ridiculous switching fee by making services available at rigid and non-competitive rates. Seems to me the phone companies have plenty to be worried about…