Getting Spammed to death by calls for medicare Advantage

[Fishmanic]

I use MagicJack, an internet based phone service, for my house phone. It cost $49 for a full year of service. I use a cordless phone which has 5 extension phones throughout the house.
I pay $35 a month for internet service with wifi and all equipment rentals; price is locked for 2 years. My smart phone cost $8 per month for 2 GB of data, unlimited texts, and 300 minutes of voice calls. . My magic jack also has an app on the phone so I can make calls over wifi. I don't get many spam calls but I don't pick up the phone if number is not recognized by me. They can leave a message via voice mail but most spammers won't leave a message..

For TV, I use an antenna and get like 50 channels...maybe 15 of which are worth watching. Occasionally, I will sign up for a pay streaming service. Presently, I signed up for a Black Friday introductory subscription to ParamountPlus which for two months at only $2.95 per month. ParamountPlus has loads of ad-free movies, TV shows, etc . It includes all shows that are shown on CBS and you can watch on demand without commercials. I have 4 Roku devices on my 4 tvs which gives access to loads of free movies and many many free TV shows.

 

[jaylach]

My phone is also VOIP.

I've been waiting for Blue Peak to wire my apartments so I can get rid of Spectrum but with what is going on now I'm not so sure. Spectrum is now including a lot of streams including Peacock (NBC), AMC+, Disney+, Paramount+ (CBS), BET+, Discovery+, ESPN+ and MAX. The strange thing is there was no price increase.

 

[fishorama]

Our prescription insurer called last week & said our coverage would change, Uh oh, my husband takes many meds, so I looked online. Our premiums went down $10/mo but 1 drug won't be covered anymore. It's not 1 he takes often so only ~$100 /yr more.

My few meds are old 1s, pretty cheap. I almost didn't look them up, good thing I did. My meds went up a lot & by switching plans with the same co. I'll save over $500/yr. Of course, I have a bad case of "phone ear" from calling today but well worth it.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

We have over 100 channels via cable. But, as part of a settlement with Verizon we got HBO and Showtime free for our lifetime with FIOS. We also have one of the better packages in terms of channels.

I do not consider Verizon to be all that great compared to alternatives except for one thing. Their system here is self powered at lower voltages. So when there is a power outage the Verizon service doesn't go down. Moreover, so many homes here have back up generators that we power the Verizon lines some. For us to lose service the fiber optic lines must be cut.

We do no streaming services at all. The closest we come is we have Amazon Prime for the house. Because of having a decent amount ot money at Citibank (mostly bro's as I have most of mine invested). We get Prime at a discount. However, We find almost nothing to watch on the streaming. The one thing I did watch on Prime was The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Most of it I managed to watch at a friend house in another state when visiting for a weekend or when Amazon do a free month of Prime to bring in new customers.

I am old school. The one thing in the digital world I have used since 1987 is a PC. I have laptop which I got in 2013 and barely used. It is now back to running with Windows 11. I must use 11 in order to use TurboTax for 2025. So, that is the only thing I will do on the laptop which will not even be turned on except from mid-March to mid-April until the last day to file one's taxes. I will continue to use 10 for another 4 or 5 years. I have subscribed to the extended security updates. My first year is free but I will have to pay after that if they keep going. I do not have a Microsoft account.

There are two incoming phone numbers for this house. The original phone number is from 1961 when my parents built the house and is still the main one coming into the house. I let my bro have it as Verizon only allows one name on an account. If you get a call from my number, the second line, it says on the ID it is my bro calling. My number was installed in in the late 1980s. We have no intention of changing those numbers.

Money has not been a serious worry for me since the late 1970s. I am not super rich by any means, but I do OK. My income now that I am retired and old is mostly from dividends on investments and then a small amount of Social Security. But I am well insured medically speaking. '

 

[gimme30]

I do not consider Verizon to be all that great compared to alternatives

For mobile they're better than most. Fios isn't available here so I can't comment on that but the low voltage option is pretty interesting tech, combining the latest with a very old solution that allowed our copper landlines to work during outages. While Verizon wasn't the first to offer fiber optic service they were the first to offer it "to the curb," and were the impetus for the competition to get with the times and upgrade their networks. Speaking of cuts, one of the great things about fiber is unless the cable is cut completely through you'll never see an interruption in service due to the huge amount of bandwidth available through those tiny little lines. Whereas with the twisted pair, if some dimwit with a trencher cuts through half of a 600 pair cable 300 people are out of service.
But I digress. Ex-phone guy here, so I geek out on this stuff.

VoIP comes at a cost, somewhere between $25-$40 a month, so that's a consideration even if you are sitting flush. Verizon offers it as do many 3rd party vendors. The better options allow you to fine tune to a strict chokehold if desired, and all of them are 100% effective at stopping robocalls, which make up a large percentage of Medicare calls. Live criminals are stopped by what amounts to a virtual personal assistant-They'll hear "Dial 1 if you are a scumsucking dirtbag..." (I wish. Unfortunately it's more polite than I'd be) before it ever rings through to your phone. That won't stop the more determined dregs so that's where fine tuning comes into play, which is a bit too involved to get into here, and varies from one provider to the next.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

We live in a 4 acre zoning area. There are 3 properties on the driveway which is 1/8 of a mile long from the public road to the house at the top of the hill. Combined, the 3 properties total about 23-24 acres. We are bordered on two sides by nature sanctuaries and 3 other properties of almost 30 acres total. When we switched to using Verizon and their fiber optics, they ran a very long line to our house.

When they are stringing fiber optic cable they work from large rolls. When they get to the end of a roll they can splice in the new one and continiue the line. When they have to do a splice in areas like where we live, they bring the cable down the utility pole and atttach a small box. The splice is done insed the small box and the line then is run back up. This allows easy access the make the splice, protects the line at that point as well as providing easy future ccess to the splice.

The problem with this set-up in the woods are ants. Yhey will climb the pole and were then abe to get into the box, There they chewed on the fiber optic cable which effectively cut the line. I know all of this as it happened to us and Verizon came out an fixed things. They explained it all top me. They had new ant proof boxes and replaced the older one and made a new splice. Things have worked fine since. This was likely at least 8 years ago, and more likely 10.

 

[gimme30]

Nature is determined to keep us offline. Out here most fiber is buried, but susceptible to mice and other burrowing creatures like the aforementioned dimwit with a trencher. The interface at the house if incorrectly sealed can host all sorts of many-legged critters, cockroaches being my least favorite. Disgusting things.
Aerial cable allows even more critters to feast on your bits and bytes. Ants aren't an issue here but birds and wasps do an amazing amount of damage. And squirrels. There's something in the sheathing that attracts them. Boy do I hate squirrels. I've never been able to shake one off the strand while working aloft-they have tenacious grip! Fortunately today's access points are much more critter-resistant than the old rubber covers.