What do you pay for phone service?

[Alyssa]

Inspired by Brooke's cable thread...

What do you pay for local and long distance phone service? Do you use the same company for both? Do you take advantage of special packages?

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Verizon is our local carrier, and with the changes in the law a few years ago that allowed the local carries to also do long distance, we played around for a while with AT&T and Verizon packages. But now we have what they call the "Freedom" package - $54/month for unlimited and unrestricted local and long distance calls (US/Canada), caller ID, voice mail and call waiting. And we get the $29.95 rate on our DSL. To me this is the best deal we've ever found...the ease of having it all on one bill and never worrying about how many long distance calls we make or when. It's already saving us at least $20/month!!

[Dennis]

Mary works for Qwest, so we get a discount. I think our local service is about $30 a month after all the taxes and we have our long distance with GTC Telecom for 5 cents a minute with no monthly fee. We average about $12 a month on that with all the taxes.

Dennis

[Nocona]

We have SBC and we pay around $30 for service, which includes voice mail, call waiting, caller ID and I believe 3 way calling. We have unlimited local and long distance calling for $20/mo. Then we have DSL through them for $29.95/mo. With taxes and all those damn surcharges, our bill is right around $100/mo.

[Brooke]

We use AT&T's package that includes local and long distance, voicemail, call waiting, and we have a second number/distinctive ring for our fax machine. It's $49.95 a month but after taxes the bill is about $60.

We can't get DSL in our area.

[Nichole]

We have the same package through SBC that Nocona described. I think when I signed up, it was $49.95/month for unlimited local and long distance, plus voice mail, call waiting, caller ID (a necessity!). We also have DSL through them at $29.95/month.

I love having unlimited long distance! It's so nice to not have to think about how long we've been on the phone and when we get the bill and see a 45 minute call, we don't have to freak out. :)

[Nocona]

Yep, that's the same deal we have, Nichole :)

[SarahK]

We don't have long distance--we use phone cards or our cellphones instead...it works out to be a lot cheaper for us. We pay around $30 a month for local service and caller id.

[AahRee]

Our local service is through Verizon, and we pay about $22 a month, after taxes. We don't have long distance on our home phone, because we use a calling card and/or my cell phone for those calls.

[TMFKA-TWTEZNAN]

Local service..NO long distance is $ 23.11..If I had long distance my bill would be $ 500.00. All of my family lives in Louisiana! So, I only use AT&T phone cards!

[Hilary]

We don't have long distance--we use phone cards or our cellphones instead...it works out to be a lot cheaper for us.
:nod: Us too! For our local phone service we have Qwest Popular Choice package I think. It's like $45 a month.

[Shanna]

I pay around $45.00 a month too, but we hardly use it. We use our cell phones more than anything... :dunno:

[Mandi]

I think we are the same as Hilary. We have Qwest and it's around $40 a month. That includes caller ID, 3 way calling & call waiting. For long distance we get calling cards from Costco. They are less than 3 cents a minute that way. Or we use our cells. :)

[Dawnie]

We have SBC for local and it's about $35 a month and that includes caller ID. We use AT&T for long distance. We get billed quarterly and it's usually about $30 to $40 depending on how much we use it.

[Christy]

We use Bellsouth and have their local package and pay just $30 a month. We use our cellphones now if we want to call long-distance.

[harmonielyn]

We dont have a home phone anymore since we use our cellphones for everything. When we did have a phone we used Bellsouth and our bill was about $28 for caller ID. We didnt have call waiting and no long distance. All of my family lives in town and long distance is free on our cell phones so there was no point in having it.

[Karri]

We use SBC and I think its $25 for unlimited local, call waiting & caller ID. We don't have long distance....we use our cellphones for that, since long distance is free on them.

[Tina]

Ugh! We pay almost $45 a month through Bell South just to have local service which really sucks. We just dropped our unlimited long distance through them a couple weeks ago & have been using our cell phones for long distance & we got a phone card from Sam's. We had the deal where they advertise both local & unlimited long distance for $59 but with all the taxes & fees that come with it it was more like $77 a month. I hate paying $45 a month for having a local phone. We have been seriously thinking about just dropping our local phone service & just using our cell phones instead.

Tina

[olcott]

we didn't have a landline until we moved to Riverdale..before that we used our cell phones for everything

right now we pay $85 a month for two cell phones through Alltel (my package is 1000 anytime minutes, free mobile to mobile, and free nights and weekends; robb's is 300 minutes, free nights and weekends, but his start at 8 pm rather than 9 pm like mine)

and then we pay 26.50 a month for our landline, and our long distance is 17 cents a minute, but we never use it, we use our cell phones since mine gets free nationwide long distance

[chefkath]

We use Working Assets. It's $50 per month for unlimited local and long distance, and it includes all the other stuff, like caller ID, call waiting, voice mail, etc. It's a very cool company - we also have our credit card through them. The company donates 1% of all charges on our phone bill and credit card to good causes, like the Center for Economic Justice, Greenpeace, Doctors w/o Borders, etc.

http://www.workingassets.com

[AmyJ]

We have Vonage (through the internet) We pay $33 per month, for caller ID, call waiting, call forwarding and unlimited long distance. We also have a Boston #, so my family can call that when calling us and it costs them nothing.

[lexie]

We also have SBC we have the $49.95 unlimited local and long distance calling with caller id, voicemail, and the rest of the perks! We also have our dial-up service through them which is $15.95. I had a AT&T cell phone for 2 years and had nothing but problems with them and found out that I would get a discount with Cingular if we combined it to our SBC bill. Now we have two cell phones and more minutes than when I had AT&T. We get a 20% discount on our cell phones so all together with taxes and everything we pay on average 150.00 and month for the landline, cell phones and internet.

[Stephanie]

We use our cell phones as our primary phones and pay about $75 for two phones.

[AmyP]

I think we pay $15 at the most. We have service through Verizon, 65 calls per month, and no special services at all. We have AT&T for long distance, but we use our cell phones for long distance. We only kept it because they dropped the monthly fee to keep our business. The only person who is long distance anyway is MIL.

[Amy]

We have SBC basic local service (no options) plus 200 minutes of long distance a month for maybe $25. It's awesome....since I added the Value Plus long distance package, our bill is NEVER over $25, and all of our family is long distance. I used to work for Ameritech (who SBC bought out 4 years ago) and had all the options because they were free or half price...once I left there, I couldn't justify the high prices, and dropped to strict basic dial tone.

We do have cell phones, mine is through AT&T for $30/month, and DH just has some AT&T pre paid wireless cards (he only uses his to call if he's running late coming home from work). However, I get crappy reception inside the house if I call my parents, so I much prefer using landline for long distance. The value plus package is $5.00 for 200 minutes of long distance a month, which is awesome!!

[ksp117]

We have nextel and our bill is about 120.00 a month for both of us. 1000 anytime minutes, all evenings and weekends free and unlimited direct connect.

[AshleyW]

We pay about $29 a month for service. This includes caller id, threeway calling, and call waiting. We use our cell phones or a calling card for long distance.

I need to see if we have SBC in our area. As it is we use Comcast for our DSL and it is like $50 a month. If we could get SBC for $29 that would be great.

[Alysia]

We have Qwest for local w/caller id etc we pay about $30 a month and then my Long distance is with Sprint because they give us a special deal w/ no monthly fee and our first 50 minutes free since we have cell phones with them. (We rarely go over the 50 minutes we use our free long distance on our cell phones 99% of the time)

[MandyLynne]

We have Verizon for Local Service (don't use long distance). We pay $36 a Month for unlimited usage, Caller ID and Taxes.

~Mandy

[tinycandi]

Well, our bill encompases a lot of things.
We have: Local calling, call forwarding, speed calling, three way calling, caller ID, repeat dialing, call return, priority ringing, call screening, call acceptance, caller name delivery, caller id on call waiting, voice mail, long distance, and cable internet. The package is about $65/month. And then our long distance is just per call which we don't make very oftne.