To just want people to stop nagging us about not having a landline!?

[Cookethenook]

This is probably the most boring subject ever, but i'm getting so annoyed with the more senior members of our family insisting that we have a landline and that emails and voicemails get answered the second we get them.

We both have mobile phones, which we are contactable on most of the time. We have a landline for the internet, but no landline phone as we had issues with not being able to make outgoing calls and the last time we tried to sort it out, it cost us £8 SODDING POUNDS in phone bills. Also both of us have more than enough minutes and texts on our phones to be able to call. I do understand it's more expensive to call a mobile from a BT landline, so i've said it's fine to call/ text and say 'can you call me back?' in order to save our family the bill.

But every time i speak to my parents, or aunts and uncles, i'm constantly nagged about how difficult it is for them to get in contact with us, how expensive it is and how we don't call them back straight away. We often get icy phone calls saying 'i left a message yesterday, why haven't you called us back?' It is driving me UP THE WALL! We are guilty of not calling back straight away, as we have children (1 small baby, so i don't pick up the phone during his nap time) and are busy a lot of the time as we pack a lot into our weekends, but we do call back straight away if it's urgent and at least get back to them during the next day or two. I've even been 'told off' about not commenting on one of their facebook comments on my posts! It's bloody ridiculous!

It is really starting to cause me stress, but i don't want to sound rude or like i don't want to speak to them (because i do!). Should i just give in and get the landline fixed or stand my ground? ARGH!

No, it costs quite a bit more. I have a call inclusive package on my landline but it doesn't include mobile numbers.

Oops - and meant to say it is 35p a min from PAYG mobile.

Apparently having a landline phone number on credit applications increases your likelihood of being accepted!

KatoPotato - I didn't know that but if I need something done around the house (plumbing, decorating, etc) I prefer companies that have a landline number as well as a mobile number. No idea why!

I wonder how fantastically cheap OP's monthly mobile charges are that she finds an £8 landline bill so very expensive. Please direct me to that phone package?

It's rare that I can reliably sit down for an entire conversation. So those of you who Skype, do you use your mobiles+WiFi or another truly portable device?

We have no landline. Due to living rurally, BT is the only provider and a great rip-off. We have PAYG mobiles DH pays a tenner on and I pay nowt as use Viber. Netis mobile and £15/month. If people bitch, they are free to have our bill sent to them to pay, we cannot afford BT.

We pay the landline lljkk for the net, but we don't own a phone to plug into it and when we did have a landline, we were unable to make outgoing calls. We tried to resolve the problem with BT many times, but they were useless.

I wouldn't get rid of my landline, my elderly mum likes to ring me for a chat.

It would cost her a fortune to call my mobile.

up to you.

I have a PAYG mobile and a landline with free unlimited calls to other landlines. I live in a mobile dead spot (and I am not in the middle of nowhere) and even when someone calls me when I'm in coverage the mobile quite often goes straight to voicemail or the signal is terrible. I can only use O2 because no other network has any coverage near where I live.

I don't want to pay £10/£20/£30 plus a month to have a heavy, stealable mobile with free calls when I can pay £10 for six months and have one that tucks in a pocket.

I need the landline for my broadband.

I don't ring mobiles, too bloody expensive even on my tariff.

set your phone message to 'we will call you back when convenient, if very urgent please ring our mobile'. If you are that busy forget facebook, and certainly forget tossers who expect you to comment instantly. Email is not an instant medium and never has been.

in short, partly you but mostly them.

I belong to the seniors and have a landline and no mobiles. I make most of contact with DD on e-mail as she is never at home and can access her e-mails on her @whatever it is called that looks like a mobile with a large screen and she touches it and slides it about.

I do not phone mobiles as costs are extortionate. I don't answer the phone until I can hear on the recorder who it is or I am expecting a call back. If I am out, which these days is no longer than 2.5 hours, any calls can be left on my answering machine. Cold calls have diminished significantly.

We've turned off voicemails on the landline and only answer when it's convenient. It's usually only cold calling (despite being on various exemption lists). We ring the olds rather than them ringing us as they're more likely to be available.

If you don't answer unexpected call and don't call mobiles, how do you call back people who phone you unexpectedly, from a mobile?

People who are "too busy" to talk to you probably just don't want to talk to you as often or as long as you want to talk to them.

lljk - "I wonder how fantastically cheap OP's monthly mobile charges are that she finds an £8 landline bill so very expensive. Please direct me to that phone package?"

T-Mobile Sim Only - Unlimited land Line, Unlimited Data, 500 minutes Mobile to Mobile & Unlimitied texts. £9.79 per month. (I've been with them a few years)

The mere fact that I have to pay £14 per month just to have a landline winds me up beyond all belief, I'd never pay to actually use it.

£9.79 > £8.
So still does not compute.
500 minutes+unlimited XYZ is pointless if you don't mostly use it all up.
If OP paid £8 this last yr for landline calls & £100 for mobile that was vastly under-utilised, then landline still very good value compared to mobile.

If OP paid for calls she never made I can totally understand the rancour.

Well, I must fit into "the more senior members of the family" then
All calls to landline numbers from my landline are free. All calls to mobiles are expensive. Unless it is an emergency I wouldn't call anyone from home, to a mobile number.
I can understand their moaning, if you've said, that to get round that you'll call them back, and then you don't bother - I'm surprised you can't see why that doesn't hurt them.

My SIS and BIL don't even have an answering machine. BIL says they shouldn't have to pay to call back. If it's important they will phone them again. Now they have Skype and phone for free at their convenience.

Lljkk,

I'm pretty sure the op is not complaining about her phone bill being £8 it sounds more like calls to her phone provider costing £8 on top of what she had to pay for her other calls,

Lots of people who check out there bill and realised they had paid £8 to phone one company to sort out that companies error would be pissed off.

I have both, a landline for if/when the networks go down and there might be an emergency, like a fire or something and I want to get the emergency services asap, extreme caution maybe for me! and a mobile for when I am out, I'm not far off 40 and prefer my mobile, and the lady I work with is 64 and has all sorts of gadgets that she updates regularly and would be horrified as being thought of as ancient

No land line AND virtually non existent mobile reception is a pain in the bum.

(DD3s best friends family have this. The child has to go and stand in the center of the village to receive any calls/texts - which means she is unreachable/cannot reach her friends unless she has pre arranged to go out and stand there. And obviously not ever after dark. It's caused a good few situations re; play date arrangements and time changes really difficult. God knows how her parents manage)

im the opposite of most people - i dont have a mobile. I refuse to let them rule my life like they seem to do with 99% of people who have them. i refuse to allow people to contact me 24hrs a day when it suits them. also not paying for a mobile when i have a perfectly good house phone (which I dont pay the rental for) if someone wants to send a txt they can txt the house phone. I also find it rude that if you are talking to someone they spend time fiddling with their mobile, either a txt message or they get a call and answer it - thats rude - i didnt come out to be sat about while you are on your phone to someone else - you ARE NOT important enough that you cannot miss some calls or txt messages for a few hours.

i would ban mobiles - they are the work of the devil - they teach people to be rude an un-sociable.

I am in my 20s and prefer landline conversations to mobile ones. I love my mobile but for a proper chat a landline is so much better.

peggy - i completely agree with you regarding constant fiddling with mobiles while in company ...

BUT - genuine question - would you answer your house phone if it rang next to you while you had a guest in the room?

YANBU.

The only people who call my landline are my mother, my MiL, very occasionally my sister, and the odd telemarketing/scam call that slips through despite being ex-directory/using the TPS/avoiding putting my phone number on forms as much as possible.

I've been thinking of getting rid of it, but the contract is part of a bundle of broadband & TV etc, so if I get rid of it, I'd probably find my other charges get bumped up to compensate.

I also think my mother might have trouble getting her head round the idea of not having a landline (they have two).