First published: Saturday, March 05, 2005
Revised: Saturday, March 05, 2005
There has been a lot of misconception and confusion regarding the ability to get a hold of me by phone. I will attempt to clear this up on this page.
I first moved into my house in late 1997 and spent the better part of the first week trying to get Bell to come over and install my service. Not long after that, I noticed that the line would go dead occasionally and remain so for 10 to 15 minutes at a time. Half the time, it would die in the middle of a call. This was extremely irritating but I never bothered getting it repaired. This was because over the years my e-mail usage escalated while my phone usage dwindled to almost nothing. By the late 90's, the only calls I ended up getting were from telemarketers and other people I didn't want to talk to. As a result, getting this problem fixed just wasn't a priority with me.
As all of you well know by now, my primary means of communication is e-mail. This will likely never change. Generally speaking, it is simply faster and more efficient than phone contact. For example, I can e-mail you at 2:00 a.m. (which is all too often the only free time I have during the course of a day) but I can't call you then without ticking you off.
If I were to replace all of my outgoing e-mail with equivalent phone conversations, I would probably be on the phone for about 10 hours per day. No, I am not exaggerating. At last check, I have three volleyball teams, my Dungeons And Dragons group, my football crowd as well as numerous friends and family members to keep in touch with. Phoning each member of each group to deliver even a simple message is logistically impractical when a one-shot short e-mail will do the same thing in a fraction of the time. When you factor in all my personal projects and chores, the result is zero time for talking on the phone.
When my sister moved in, she ended up calling Bell about the problem described above. They said they would charge $60 just to come over and look at it. Considering they were already charging me for shoddy service, I thought this was outrageous so I flatly refused. After years of horrible service, I ditched them in April of 2004 upon being prompted by the offer of a free four month trial of Sympatico's VOIP product. That trial ended in October leaving me with no home phone service at all. This experiment (which lasted until the end of February 2005) was a resounding success. There were very, very few people who expressed frustration over not being able to reach me by phone.
Nevertheless, I realized there would be times when I would need to make outgoing calls. This is why I signed up for the My Web Calls service. It works rather well and I have had few quality complaints from the people I have called. Even so, in the past six months I have only spent about $1 American on this service. A very far cry from the over $150 (minimum) Bell would have charged me over the same period!!! Incoming service wasn't a problem because most people would just e-mail me instead as I requested. It was therefore silly to spend $27 a month for nothing.
In February 2005, Rogers offered me a three-year trial of their wireless service. For the reasons explained above, I was all set to tell them to go jump in a lake. The propensity for cell phone users to a) share their conversations with bystanders, b) talk while driving and c) ring during inappropriate times (like church and theaters) has made them the object of my contempt over the years. The representative then told me they would give me 15% off on this service (which amounts to about the same $27 a month) as well as my cable, pay-TV and Internet services. Because all of these currently add up to over $130 a month, that's at least a $20 saving right there. As for the three pitfalls of cell phone use I mentioned, I am confident I can avoid the associated bad habits.
Having said that, it might be nice to get some personal calls done on the bus. As such, if you need to call me then please do so between 9:00 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. or 8:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. on weekdays. You can try me at other times but I will likely not be able to talk for very long. In fact, if you need to leave a voicemail then don't be surprised if I respond to you by e-mail. ;o)
To summarize, if you want to phone me then by all means please do and I will be happy to chat if I have time. Thanks for reading this ...
Dave