Okay, so I don't actually want to kill them, but I do want to save some $$$$$. SO the question is, do I need to have a long distance company listed on my phone bill. I use a 10-10 number religiously for any long distance calls anyway, but I wasn't sure if I had to have some sort of LD server, as it were, to get LD from any source. For example, if I kill ATT, can I still call long distance with my 10-10? Thanks in advance for any help.

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), February 20, 2001

Answers

Most local servers now also offer LD. Maybe you could list it all together, then use your 10 + instead of the sevice providers.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), February 20, 2001.

Soni : Yes you can eliminate your LD carrier. I did 15 months ago and got rid of that carrier line charge I was being charged every month. I buy At&t PrePaid Telephone cards from Sams Club for 5.9 cents a minute and that is 24 hrs a day. You can program your ID and Pin NO. into the mememory of your telephone . I am saving lot of $$$$$$$$. Call your Tele CO and tell them you don't want a long distance carrier.Hope this HELPS. Jay NC

-- jay vance (jay.l.vance@worldnet.att.net), February 20, 2001.

Got rid of the long distance carrier a few years back. I don't use long distance much at all and what little I do I do on the internet (Dialpad) for FREE!!

-- Bob Johnson (Backwoods_Bob@excite.com), February 20, 2001.

I use Bigzoo.com to buy long distance for either 2.9 or 3.9 cents per minute. Been using it quite a long time, and don't have many complaints about it. I would recommend it.

-- Maylene (zedanka@aol.com), February 20, 2001.

Yep! I killed mine.....the bill part anyway. What's funny is the most recent long distance slaying was MCI and then I dialed 1010220 for almost a year only to get a call from MCI saying they now owned 1010220 and would put me back on straight dial ups for 7 cents per minute anytime at no cost, here's some free long distance ($10 certificate),we love you and are sorry that we messed up in the past....whatever. My bills are still reading out at the 7 cents per minute as long as I make $5 per month I have no carrier fee, so it works out. I had a tiff 10 years ago with ATT and I still won't take anything they offer me! Play them off of each other, Soni.

-- Doreen (animalwaitress@excite.com), February 20, 2001.

Like others here I too dropped off long distance access from my telephone service. I now use an AT&T prepaid telephone card from Sam's club. Jay, you will be happy to know that they recently lowered the cost of them. Well, that's not quite right, they raised them to $20.80 instead or a flat $20, but they went from 350 minutes to 500. This set-up works best for me.

-- Notforprint (Not@thekeyboard.com), February 20, 2001.

My local company wouldn't let me do away with long distance and the big companies wanted at least $5 per month whether I made any calls or not. I finally found a company called essential.com that PAID me $100 to sign up with them and no monthly minimums whether I made calls or not. (I dont know if that $100 offer still exists, but they still dont charge a monthly service fee.) I use BigZoo.com prepaid at 3.9cents per minuter for the few calls I make. Nice thing about the prepaid BigZoo.com is you dont get stuck with all the government add on service fees. Way back when i was with MCI, the $5 minimum and government fees would many times be more on my bill than charges for any calls I made.

My ex by the way was able to get rid of her long distance service altogether (different local phone company than me) but local company charges her a buck or two per month for the priviledge. Worth it for her as some of her boyfriends/guests have run up big bills in past. Guess her guests arent bright enough to use the 10-10 dial around services. Maybe you can block those also, I dont know. She uses BigZoo.

-- Hermit John (hermit@hilltop_homestead.zzn.com), February 21, 2001.

When I started using my 10-10 number for long distance, I called whatever long distance carrier I was using (don't remember) and cancelled. Then I called my local phone company and told them I no longer wanted a long distance carrier.

I still dial 00 a couple of times a month to make sure I haven't been slammed. When you dial 00, it will answer with the name of the long distance carrier you have. When *I* dial 00, they tell me a long distance carrier is needed to complete the call.

-- ~Rogo (rogo2020@yahoo.com), February 21, 2001.

I too cancelled our lond distance carrier and am using prepaid calling cards. The only catch is our local phone company started charging a $ 4. 00 charge each month, when I inquired about this charge they said it was their service fee for the use of their long distance lines which those callin card companies use. I said you should charge them not me and they said, " we do" so now they collect from both. I'm so frustrated with the "being taken to the cleaners" feeling I'm about to say, so long and get a cell phone. The only problem is we have to have a line for our computer. I' m so tired of having to do other peoples jobs for them, yet I'm not reaping any of their pay. LOL!!!

-- Kelle in MT. (kvent1729@aol.com), February 21, 2001.

I was using the 10 10 numbers, till MCI matched the rates with no monthly charge and no minimum. I also use bigzoo.com,, thanks to whomever it was that mentioned it a few months ago. I tried dialpad and those others, but when the net is busy,, noone can understand on either end. Works fine during non busy times.

-- Stan (sopal@net-port.com), February 21, 2001.

Soni, You can kill your provider only if the provider is a lawyer.

-- John in S. IN (jsmengel@hotmail.com), February 21, 2001.

John - works for me!

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), February 21, 2001.

I thought you'd understand

-- John in S. IN (jsmengel@hotmail.com), February 21, 2001.

Just checked that Bigzoo you're talking about. Seems like too much to keep track of to save a couple of pennies! (I think I loose a lot more brain cells each day than most! -LOL- ) I've used my 10-10 number for several years. There's no monthly charge, LD calls are 5¢/minute, and they don't charge nearly as much tax as AT&T did. They're coming to my area soon for local calling. It would be nice to get rid of the local Ma Bell.

-- ~Rogo (rogo2020@yahoo.com), February 21, 2001.

soni- you may kill the provider but we must warn you there will be a service fee added to your bill for the priveledge. : )

-- amber (ambrosi75_@hotmail.com), February 21, 2001.

Soni..Amber nailed it. I killed our LD carrier on the pc line. BellSouth added $2.00 fee. Their excuse made absolutely no sense. But such is life.

-- Kenneth in N.C. (wizardsplace13@hotmail.com), February 22, 2001.

I work for a major phone company, though probably not the one you would think. I am also a homesteader(full time later this year), a Countrysider, and sometimes participant of this forum. What I have to say may not be too popular, but it addresses this issue from another perspective; that of one who has worked at providing phone service since the days of 10 party lines and shouting to be heard. I have seen a lot of change in this business in the last 31 years, some of it good, and some not so good. On the good side, your phone has learned a lot of new tricks in the last few years. It will do things that weren't in anyone's wildest dreams in 1970. It has become more dependable than ever, and almost everyone can hear and be heard without effort. Enjoy these things while you have them, because it may not be this way much longer. Because of government meddling in a business that was healthy, the "traditional" phone company may soon be a thing of the past. It will be replaced by computer companies that really couldn't give a rat's rump whether you can call 911 or not. These folks think nothing of arbitrarily shutting down their equipment to do maintenance, or to wait for new parts to arrive. They will not be regulated by government, and will be able to charge what they please for their "services." Providing quality telephone service is an incredibly expensive indeavor. The profit margin on your local service is very small, so the companies must depend on having large numbers of subscribers. If these numbers decrease, then per-line charges must go up. If internet providers install their own networks(which they are currently doing), the phone companies are going to be stuck with the billions of dollars worth of equipment that was purchased to provide that service. This equipment was bought within the last 5 years, with the expectation that it would take 15 years to recover the cost. It will be useless, since much of the long distance phone business is going to go to the internet folks, as well. I could go on and on, but I think you can see my point, by now. So if you are really unhappy at having to pay for what you are getting, just call us and we will disconnect you from the network. Of course, you won't be able to keep in touch with friends and family, or order merchandise over a 1-800 number, or call 911, or participate in this forum. Now, to answer the original question; Yes, you can choose to not have a Preselected InterLata Carrier(long distance co.). This will eliminate the monthly fee charged by the long distance co., but the local company will still charge an access fee to get onto the long distance network. This is only about a buck or so, and is a fair and legitimate charge...you are just pulling your own weight. Be extremely careful using the casual companies(1010220,etc). There is usually a catch. For instance "Just $1 per minute for all calls up to 20 minutes" still costs a dollar if your party isn't home and you get his answering machine. It works out to 5 cents a minute for 20 minutes, a price you can get most anywhere. The prepaid cards are even worse. Be sure yours comes from a MAJOR company. Some of them also have minimum charges for each call. I bought one in Texas, once, and then found it wasn't good in any other state. READ THE FINE PRINT!! I hope you have found this helpful, if not altogether to your liking.

-- Dan the phone man (Stagecoach@hotmail.com), February 23, 2001.

We just got a letter in the mail this past week from a class action lawsuit against MCI, we were overcharged from 1996 on and have $ coming. Recently we were overcharged by our ph company, the former GTE, now verizion. We received 250.00 for charges related to regional calling and maintaince. But we do not have a long distance carrier, we have a block on long distance and use ph cards. but our ph bill is still a lot each month.

Bernice

-- Bernice (geminigoats@yahoo.com), February 23, 2001.

Hi-- We have a strong commitment NOT to support big corporations as much as it is possible to avoid. Disposable phone cards purchased thru "Sams Club" (isn't that a part of Wal-Mart??) just don't fit in our values system. We have been totally satisfied with our use of "Earth Tones" Long Distance Telephone Service, which describes itself as "The Environmental Phone Co." They are located at 444 Lafayette Rd. in Noblesville, IN 46060, and phone # is 1-800-466-1550. Very reasonable, user-friendly. Each month's bill includes specific information about steps you can take to let your voice be heard re legislation, etc. related to urban sprawl, protecting wilderness and open spaces, fighting funding for more mega-malls,highway projects, and lots more.... There is always a suggested "5-minute action step" you can take, such as sending a postcard or calling a specific phone number to register your opinion. Helps us feel less powerless re all the corporate and big-money efforts to make the world over to suit their own, personal greedy goals.

-- Marilee T. (hotjmmt@ados.com), February 23, 2001.

Bernice, I'm still waiting for my check to arrive from Verizon. Everyone in my vanpool received their checks last week but ours hasn't arrived yet. If we don't get it next week, I plan to contact them to find out where it is. It would certainly be a nice windfall. Hubby keeps asking why I am so wound up about not getting it. I figure our mail system screwed up like it usually does and delivered it to someone else who is too lazy to put it back in their mailbox and threw it out. I figure we have it coming and I'm going to make sure we get it. One of the ladies in my vanpool got a check for $297. That was the highest one I heard of.

-- Colleen (pyramidgreatdanes@erols.com), February 23, 2001.

I had a problem with the Sprint cell phone company. I closed down my account in Sept. and had a refund coming, told it would take 4-6 weeks. Called in Dec. said it would take 4-6 weeks they forgot to put in for the refund. In the meantime they deducted money every month that they did not send my refund, therefore making my refund smaller. I called them on this and if you don't have a phone with them they are darn hard to get a hold of. Also, they sent another copy of my bill showing me I now had a zero bal. and my refund was for the smaller amount. I also tried calling the number on the check or voucher that was listed. Guess what! They are all so busy in other areas. 911 surcharge of.27 per month, state deaf tax surcharge .12 per month and .01 USA fed tax per month. Forgot to mention, the reason we cancelled our service is our cell phone broke and we decided not to use a cell phone anymore. Jan. 28 we did recieve our refund check for $29.00. It started out as a credit for $31. 40 Needless to say I have told everyone I know what I think of a company that does this to people. I guess I was long winded here, but I am still angry that someone keeps charging you for services you do not use and put you on hold for 25 to 30 minutes when you want to talk to them about this. Best one yet, got a phone call wanting to know if I wanted to sign up for their service.

-- jenn@home (normaj3@countrylife.net), February 23, 2001.

We killed ours years ago when the first charge of $3.00 + tax appeared on our bill. We have never been charged a extra charge for not having it. All our family except one brother lives locally. He works for a major, yes one of the biggies, phone company and has an 800 number at home. So why pay for a service we never used? No one in my family pays for the priviledge of NOT making long distance calls.

I called our phone company and told them to remove the Long Distance calling option from my phone. After several calls they finally did this, we keep a prepaid phone call near the phone, a yellow mount rotary dial phone I might add, and use it whenever we need, very rarely. It is used mostly when we go on vacation to call home and check on things.

At first we used those 10-10 services until my parents got a huge bill one time when they used it. Seems there are only a limited number of "cheap rate" lines. If those lines are busy you are routed to the regular lines for premium prices. Since you have no way of knowing this is happening you get a shock when you open the bill. My brother comfirmed happens with all the phone companies. This is when we began using the prepaid phone cards instead. Plus you can not use 10-10 from a motel room.

If you check the internet you can sometimes find free minutes for subscribing to an e-zine, just delete if you don't want to read it, the minutes are still free. This is what we have done for several years, until I got tired of searching through all the freebies for something we don't use often.

Good luck.

-- Viv in TX (kudzu1@webtv.net), February 25, 2001.

You dont have to have a LD carrier, but having one or not having one isnt going to save you money. The "interconnect" charge will contune to be on your bill with or without a LD provider.

-- Gary (gws@redbird.net), February 27, 2001.

I wouldn't advise getting rid of your long-distance provider. I was using bigzoo.com's pre-paid long-distance features for the last two months. But in the last few days, their toll-free access number (required to make a long-distance call if you don't have a local access number OR if you want to call international) has been disconnected, leaving me with $30 in "credit" at a company that appears to be folding. I had to make a call to Canada last night, and had to call directly. While it will cost me a bundle, at least i COULD call because I hadn't cancelled AT&T, something I had considered doing. AT&T is incredibly expensive, so I guess it's time to shop around and find lower rates.

-- Angela (anims@springsted.com), April 11, 2001.

I've been using bigzoo.com for the past 1.5 years. Good quality and I really didn’t have any major problems with them. Although I know someone whos card had gotten extra charged for some reason but he got credit back (after sending bigzoo many emails which were left unanswered). Last night I re-charged my card for $10.00. Usually after charging your card, bigzoo automatically sends you a confirmaton/recipt email. I got up this morning and checked my email and I had three confirmation emails form bigzoo! I thought their server must have screwed up (which has happened before) but I noticed that one of the emails listed a charge to one of my credit cards that I had not used for some while. I quickly went to their site to check my account but guess what, there was a big cartoon figure on the left side of the screen and a note that some hacker group had taken over their site and having access to all the credit card numbers. Since I really don’t trust hackers I canceled both credit cards that I had used to purchase calling cards from them. Oh their site is currently down. I’m still not sure whether the hacker really did get access to the credit card numbers, or they were just able to modify the main page of bigzoo.com. Anyways they had a good rate but my credit history is more important to me than saving a couple of cents.

-- Arman (arman@wam.umd.edu), April 15, 2001.

AAAhhhhhh progress. The free market. Deregulation... Years back, I used to be a residential repair telephone person. For that one monthly fee you were connected, we came out and repaired phones, wiring, anything relevant to the phone system at no charge. If you were out of service we had x number of hours to put things right and some times that meant I got called out on a cold rainy night. On new installations we had to provide service within a short period of time. All complaints sent to the public service commission were looked at when the next rate increase came along. Things were a far cry from what we have today. In my opinion customers had a reasonable level of service for a reasonable rate. Phone company employees got a reasonable wage with benefits. Stockholders had a reasonable, almost, GUARANTEED rate of return. Phone companies had their own tech schools and didn't depend on the taxpayer to fund tech schools to train their employees. Enough skilled employees were retained to maintain the infrastructure. I realize that with the advent of cell phones the idea of a phone monopoly no longer is true in the sense of years past but I think this may be very important pertaining to power deregulation. It's that same slippery slope where the consumer will eventually get ripped.

-- jz (oz49us@yahoo.com), April 15, 2001.

I don't recommend to cancel your LD or PIC ( presubscribed interexchange carrier). You should have a backup plan. Nobody can forecast when 10-10rate will change. It's actually changing the rate every 3-4 months. I'm currently using bigzoo which gives me the great rate 2.9c/m for local access. I was using a lot of 1010 but nothing compares with bigzoo. I chose PIC which won't charge any fee e.g. monthly fee, minimum usage, PIC fee. You won't have to pay USF if you don't make any call via your PIC. You can check list of PIC from some website e.g. abelltolls, getconnected.com I'm using ecglongdistance as my PIC for both interlata and intralata. They have no monthly fee at all except 6.7% USF and tax. Their interstate rate is 4.9 c/m which is reasonable if you forget to dial 1010.

-- Karn (karnd@hotmail.com), April 15, 2001.

Yes the calling cards are good ideas; but yes you must research and reverify before you buy. Yes you can use a 10-10 number no matter who your long distance carrier isn't. i just have the name of a carrier on my account who doesn't ever get any business from me!

-- Donna M. Davis-Prusik (Seven9erkilo@knoxcomm.net), April 16, 2001.

Although my phone company said they would charge me $5 a month if I removed my long distance carrier completely I found a way around it. I told them I wanted to use "unidial" as my carrier but I wasn't sure of their code so we went thru a list over the phone until we were pretty much sure we had the right company and setup. Here's the trick; after we finish she told me to contact unidial to finish up the connection on their side. I never did and I never heard from either one of them again. I've been using 1010-811 for quite a while now. I found this site looking for other 1010 #'s that might be cheaper that 8 cents a minute.

-- Edward (louis@keyhosting.com), February 11, 2002.