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which_chickMy office has a landline, still. This landline is currently being provided by a company. That company was Sprint and Centurylink and Embarq and right now they're Brightspeed.
The company Brightspeed has been calling my phone four or more times per day for long enough that I finally looked into how to block a number and then blocked their number.
I tried answering a few times and they were all Let me tell you about this exciting opportunity that will Save You Money for your business telecommunication needs! You can have Faster Internet! You can use AI to help route calls! We have AN APP! and damn it, I do not have the spoons to navigate that shit. It's all very opaque and I hate it and what I have now works fine and no matter what they say it is going to Cost More and Suck More than what I currently have. (I am, yes, projecting based on prior experience with telecom companies.)
Assholes called me from a different number. They used a person who claims to be my account manager and who speaks regional American English (Florida, maybe eastern Georgia) like a native.
Fuck.
Okay, fine. I was on the phone long enough to get that far, so you got me, I'll stay on the line long enough to see what the hell you want.
What do you want, Brightspeed?
(Here follows a significantly condensed and simplified version of the marketing bullshit spewed at me by this overly enthusiastic "account manager".)
Brightspeed is terminating copper landline phone services and copper DSL internet. Copper is going away. That's not a thing anymore. If I want to maintain an office phone number, I have to buy VOIP phone and "sign up" for it and shit. Fuck. SO ANNOYING.
Also DSL is going away. If I want internet at my office, I have to buy fiber internet so that I can do stuff online (file payroll tax forms, read email, blog post). This is like buying a sledgehammer to kill mosquitoes. I could probably do that with a wifi hotspot on my phone, tbh, but by that point in the conversation I was already so fucking done with hearing about features and apps and "Use AI to improve your call routing!!" (Bro, I am the only fucking person who answers the phone. There is no call routing.) that I just shut down and agreed.
Once Brightspeed does this, there will be no real phone anymore, just computer phone, which, they swear, is way better. (It is in some ways better and in other ways less better. If it were in all ways better, I would not have to sign my awareness and agreement to the fact that if the power's out, the phone is dead.)
There is no way to get out of this, it must be dealt with. By 2027 they will pull the copper line and I will have no phone at all for my work. Fine, fine.
So I did the things. I read and docusigned the agreement. I have Dealt With this unasked for annoyance that the fucking telco wants me to AGREE TO and PARTICIPATE IN and my word I hate it so much. ARGH.
I do understand why they make people participate in the process. It would be worse for ...
Case A: If you don't Be Aware and Proactive, we just fucking shut off your POTS and DSL when we're done playing copper. Fuck you, snoozer and loser. No notice, no sales pitches, Maximum Disruption, Bitches!
Case B: Welcome, we have unilaterally upgraded your service plan in ways you don't know about until you get the huge new bill because your voice as a consumer is not really relevant. We just picked the options we thought you would want. Not happy? Oh, well, it's a twelve-month agreement, so... oopsie?
I do get why they went for Case C: Force the customers to enter into a new service agreement and actively shop for / confirm the services that they'd like to have.
I still hate it. HATE IT. ARGH.
This stupid fucking agreement alleges that "before taxes" this new VOIP shit will cost me less money than my current phone arrangement. I feel like the new quote cost is "before taxes" and the "current phone arrangement" comparison price is after taxes, so that at the end of days, it's a wash.
The company Brightspeed has been calling my phone four or more times per day for long enough that I finally looked into how to block a number and then blocked their number.
I tried answering a few times and they were all Let me tell you about this exciting opportunity that will Save You Money for your business telecommunication needs! You can have Faster Internet! You can use AI to help route calls! We have AN APP! and damn it, I do not have the spoons to navigate that shit. It's all very opaque and I hate it and what I have now works fine and no matter what they say it is going to Cost More and Suck More than what I currently have. (I am, yes, projecting based on prior experience with telecom companies.)
Assholes called me from a different number. They used a person who claims to be my account manager and who speaks regional American English (Florida, maybe eastern Georgia) like a native.
Fuck.
Okay, fine. I was on the phone long enough to get that far, so you got me, I'll stay on the line long enough to see what the hell you want.
What do you want, Brightspeed?
(Here follows a significantly condensed and simplified version of the marketing bullshit spewed at me by this overly enthusiastic "account manager".)
Brightspeed is terminating copper landline phone services and copper DSL internet. Copper is going away. That's not a thing anymore. If I want to maintain an office phone number, I have to buy VOIP phone and "sign up" for it and shit. Fuck. SO ANNOYING.
Also DSL is going away. If I want internet at my office, I have to buy fiber internet so that I can do stuff online (file payroll tax forms, read email, blog post). This is like buying a sledgehammer to kill mosquitoes. I could probably do that with a wifi hotspot on my phone, tbh, but by that point in the conversation I was already so fucking done with hearing about features and apps and "Use AI to improve your call routing!!" (Bro, I am the only fucking person who answers the phone. There is no call routing.) that I just shut down and agreed.
Once Brightspeed does this, there will be no real phone anymore, just computer phone, which, they swear, is way better. (It is in some ways better and in other ways less better. If it were in all ways better, I would not have to sign my awareness and agreement to the fact that if the power's out, the phone is dead.)
There is no way to get out of this, it must be dealt with. By 2027 they will pull the copper line and I will have no phone at all for my work. Fine, fine.
So I did the things. I read and docusigned the agreement. I have Dealt With this unasked for annoyance that the fucking telco wants me to AGREE TO and PARTICIPATE IN and my word I hate it so much. ARGH.
I do understand why they make people participate in the process. It would be worse for ...
Case A: If you don't Be Aware and Proactive, we just fucking shut off your POTS and DSL when we're done playing copper. Fuck you, snoozer and loser. No notice, no sales pitches, Maximum Disruption, Bitches!
Case B: Welcome, we have unilaterally upgraded your service plan in ways you don't know about until you get the huge new bill because your voice as a consumer is not really relevant. We just picked the options we thought you would want. Not happy? Oh, well, it's a twelve-month agreement, so... oopsie?
I do get why they went for Case C: Force the customers to enter into a new service agreement and actively shop for / confirm the services that they'd like to have.
I still hate it. HATE IT. ARGH.
This stupid fucking agreement alleges that "before taxes" this new VOIP shit will cost me less money than my current phone arrangement. I feel like the new quote cost is "before taxes" and the "current phone arrangement" comparison price is after taxes, so that at the end of days, it's a wash.
no subject
Date: 2026-05-12 06:47 pm (UTC)Then we shut the office down and moved out, and didn't have a place to move to, so we all worked from home.
Now what?
Each of us ended up with a voip phone - mine was through my internet provider at home - worked fine.
But we had a main company phone number that had to go ...somewhere?
We had been forwarding all calls to the "main" line, to an answering service anyway - since we didn't have a dedicated receptionist and didn't get a lot of outbound calls. So one option was to have the answering service "take over" our number - problem being, then THEY 'own' it and if we want to take it back they have to agree - so not a good solution.
I ended up calling AT&T who were our phone provider and explaining our problem - and they came up with a fabulous solution. We got a single cell phone line, and they sent me the cheapest phone. I charged it up, and then used the cell phone to forward the phone number to the answering service, and then turned off the phone and put it in a desk drawer. Now we have a single phone number, that we still control, and pay something like $35 a month for (cheapest plan, no data, no real "minutes" used) and we can still forward the phone to the answering service.
Do I *remember* where this phone is? Not at all :D Has it been charged up and/or used in the last 9 years? Also no.
Does ANYONE else in the company remember what we did? Probably not :D Maybe Bossman does, if he looks at the AT&T bill, but I suspect he has it on autopay on his credit card, tbh.
All that to say - I totally get it - change is annoying and this phone stuff is stupid and should Just Work.