On 12/4/2015 6:32 PM, Ralph Mowery wrote:
"gareth" wrote in message
...

Especially for we old fogies who, to all intents and purposes, do not
have a mobile phone. I do have one, but only switch it on for
emergency-style outgoing calls. 15 years ago I got a £50
pay-as-you-go card upon which I still have baout £7 left.


In the states I don't know of any pay plan that will let you buy a plan that
lasts more than 1 year. I usually buy my wife a 1 year plan for about $ 100
and she probably has $ 90 left at the end of the year. We still have a
regular land line and it gets more in comming calls than out going.

I have a $ 10 per month plan for a smart phone and it is good for cell phone
service as much as I want and data when around a wifi system.

I wish we could get a plan that would actually last for the minuits we pay
for.

I used to shop for the absolute cheapest plans I could find ending up
with Net10 and $60 900 minute cards that only last 3 months, but I had
two years of days on my phone, so I got to use all the minutes. Trouble
was, the Net10 phones get very poor quality connections (Verizon was the
carrier) and their customer support was the worst!

More recently I got on a friend's AT&T account as a second phone and pay
$20 a month with unlimited voice and text. Now I just don't give it a
thought and the thing works pretty well. Much less hassle than buying
the PITA phone cards.

You don't pay for minutes with your land line do you? You may be in the
UK where I think all usage is metered. In the US most people pay
$20-$25 a month for unlimited local use. Think of your $100 a year in
that light.

--

Rick

"rickman" wrote in message
...

More recently I got on a friend's AT&T account as a second phone and pay
$20 a month with unlimited voice and text. Now I just don't give it a
thought and the thing works pretty well. Much less hassle than buying the
PITA phone cards.

You don't pay for minutes with your land line do you? You may be in the
UK where I think all usage is metered. In the US most people pay $20-$25
a month for unlimited local use. Think of your $100 a year in that light.


No I am in the US, North Carolina. Landline is about $ 20 per month, but
they add tax and a bunch of other things to almost double that. That is for
local service. It is 10 cents per minuit for long distance. We usually use
the cell phones for long distance.

My Republic plan is interisting. For $ 10 (12 after tax) I get unlimiated
phone and text. Most of the time the phone will attach to a wifi if close,
but will go to the cell tower if it has to. I also get unlimiated data by
going through wifi only. I don't ever need the data, but do play with it
alot around the house on my wifi and in waiting rooms at doctors. If I get
into a bind and really need data without wifi I can tell the phone to
activate a data plan for about $ 20 per month and when done, go back to
wifi.

I wish the land line was charged by the minuit, I could save a bundle no
more that we use it.
The land line is about 4 times the price of my cellphone service and there
is an added charge for long distance.

On 12/4/2015 7:11 PM, Ralph Mowery wrote:
"rickman" wrote in message
...

More recently I got on a friend's AT&T account as a second phone and pay
$20 a month with unlimited voice and text. Now I just don't give it a
thought and the thing works pretty well. Much less hassle than buying the
PITA phone cards.

You don't pay for minutes with your land line do you? You may be in the
UK where I think all usage is metered. In the US most people pay $20-$25
a month for unlimited local use. Think of your $100 a year in that light.


No I am in the US, North Carolina. Landline is about $ 20 per month, but
they add tax and a bunch of other things to almost double that. That is for
local service. It is 10 cents per minuit for long distance. We usually use
the cell phones for long distance.

Are you sure about your phone rates? My land line is $15 a month total
with more than half being various add ons the phone company would like
you to think are taxes, but aren't. In fact, AT&T once lied to me that
the universal service fee was a tax they were required to collect from
consumers by the government. I contacted the FCC who said it was just a
tax on the phone companies.


My Republic plan is interisting. For $ 10 (12 after tax) I get unlimiated
phone and text. Most of the time the phone will attach to a wifi if close,
but will go to the cell tower if it has to. I also get unlimiated data by
going through wifi only. I don't ever need the data, but do play with it
alot around the house on my wifi and in waiting rooms at doctors. If I get
into a bind and really need data without wifi I can tell the phone to
activate a data plan for about $ 20 per month and when done, go back to
wifi.

I may look into that. Seems they use Sprint for phone calls which not a
good one for coverage. Can you make calls through your Internet
connection?

--

Rick

On Fri, 4 Dec 2015, Ralph Mowery wrote:


"rickman" wrote in message
...
A big issue I have with Yahoo is that they now require you to verify a
new account with a mobile cell number. That's ridiculous.


I have not seen any places that required a phone number. If it did, I would
not give mine out except a bank or similar place.

I have seen several places that would like a phone number for verification,
but not required.

I don't know about Yahoo (I've never looked) but I know google every so
often asks if you want to include a cellphone number. This is an extra
level of security, they'll send you some bit of code or password that you
have to enter also (if you sign up), it sort of being like a "dongle" in
the days of protected software, only you will have that cellphone number
so it's additional proof that it is in fact you.

But so far, it's only been an offer, no demand.

On the other hand, I've seen people talk about this as if it's mandatory,
so either they get a different offer, or have misread it.

Michael

On 12/4/2015 11:00 PM, Michael Black wrote:
On Fri, 4 Dec 2015, Ralph Mowery wrote:


"rickman" wrote in message
...
A big issue I have with Yahoo is that they now require you to verify a
new account with a mobile cell number. That's ridiculous.


I have not seen any places that required a phone number. If it did, I
would
not give mine out except a bank or similar place.

I have seen several places that would like a phone number for
verification,
but not required.

I don't know about Yahoo (I've never looked) but I know google every so
often asks if you want to include a cellphone number. This is an extra
level of security, they'll send you some bit of code or password that
you have to enter also (if you sign up), it sort of being like a
"dongle" in the days of protected software, only you will have that
cellphone number so it's additional proof that it is in fact you.

But so far, it's only been an offer, no demand.

On the other hand, I've seen people talk about this as if it's
mandatory, so either they get a different offer, or have misread it.

Now Yahoo will not let you sign up for a new account without
verification via cell phone. This has been documented in a number of
forums where people ask how to get around this. At one time you could
skip it, later people talked about using burner phone numbers from web
sites, but that also does not work.

If you know a way to get a new Yahoo account without a cell phone number
many would like to know how.

--

Rick

"rickman" wrote in message
...
.

Are you sure about your phone rates? My land line is $15 a month total
with more than half being various add ons the phone company would like you
to think are taxes, but aren't. In fact, AT&T once lied to me that the
universal service fee was a tax they were required to collect from
consumers by the government. I contacted the FCC who said it was just a
tax on the phone companies.


My Republic plan is interisting. For $ 10 (12 after tax) I get
unlimiated
phone and text. Most of the time the phone will attach to a wifi if
close,
but will go to the cell tower if it has to. I also get unlimiated data
by
going through wifi only. I don't ever need the data, but do play with it
alot around the house on my wifi and in waiting rooms at doctors. If I
get
into a bind and really need data without wifi I can tell the phone to
activate a data plan for about $ 20 per month and when done, go back to
wifi.

I may look into that. Seems they use Sprint for phone calls which not a
good one for coverage. Can you make calls through your Internet
connection?


My land line phone rate is close to $ 40 per month. The basic service runs
just under $ 20, then 911, long distance line connect, 10 cents per minuit
long distance and a bunch of other taxes and such run it to about $ 40 per
month.

Republic works by mostly connecting by what ever wifi system it is near. If
no wifi then it will use a cell tower.

The one bad thing is they require you to use one of their smart phones. It
is like any common smart phone using the Android system, but it uses some of
their special software. You buy their phone, I think one is about $ 100
another about $ 200 and another that costs much more. They seem to bepriced
by the ammount of memory and the meg of camera pixals.

I can sit in my house (or anywhere there is wifi) and look at most anything
on the internet. With the cable tv or direct tv I can even watch much of
what I subscribe to. Not sure if that is over the internet or from the
device hooked to the tv. I think it is over the internet.

I don't know what phone service they use. I seldom make phone calls. Just
mostly want it for emergencies.

In article ,
Jeff Liebermann wrote:

I won't say anything nice about Yahoo Groups.

Nor will I.

I just received yet another mailing from a moderator apologizing
for lost messages, missing files, corrupted indexing, etc. It has
been getting worse since the massive UI rewrite of about 3 years
ago, which removed useful features, added considerable
advertising, and broke just about everything that was left.

I subscribe to the KX3 Yahoo group. The solution is neither to read them
nor to post to them using a web browser. Once one is subscribed which as
far as I can tell does require use of a web browser, you can arrange for
postings to be seen in plain text and sent to you as e-mail either in
digest form or (as I prefer) individually. If you use a good e-mail
program (best I've seen and still use is the Mac version of Eudora, but
it quit working at about Mac OS 10.9 if I recall; nor problem since I do
almost everything using 10.6.8) you can set up a mailbox to grab all
incoming mail from an individual Yahoo group and you can look at it when
you see fit; the mail goes into my KX3 mailbox, not my general In box.
I've got my KX3 mailbox set up so as to sort by Subject, so all the
items in a given thread appear together, oldest at the top. If a thread
is of no interest I can Shift-click and delete the whole thread, or what
has already arrived in it. If I don't want ever to see anything from
VE7EZM (that's my call, so I won't offend anyone by using it as an
example) Eudora is wonderful for filtering things, as is MT-NewsWatcher.
To post something I just use Eudora to send e-mail to the Yahoo KX3
group. No fuss, no muss, no ads, and the only time I have to use the
browser is if someone posts a graphic.

You do have to use a real, old-fashioned e-mail program to do things
like this. The closest imitation among currently supported ones (but
it's a pale imitation) is Thunderbird. When the day comes that I have to
use a more advanced operating system than 10.6.8, I'll just run 10.6.8
under it in a virtual machine and thus be able to keep Eudora and lots
of other good things that won't work with 2015 system software.

I do the same thing with the QRP-L group and Eudora, but that's not a
Yahoo group.

Web browsers are for web browsing and using them for mail or news or to
bake a cake is unwise.

David, VE7EZM and AF7BZ

--
David Ryeburn

To send e-mail, change "netz" to "net"

In article ,
"Ralph Mowery" writes:

"rickman" wrote in message
...
A big issue I have with Yahoo is that they now require you to verify a
new account with a mobile cell number. That's ridiculous.

I have not seen any places that required a phone number. If it did, I would
not give mine out except a bank or similar place.

Yes, it happens. My ISP, U.S. cable provider Charter Communications,
is changing to something called Charter Spectrum and is now requiring
reentry of all personal information, disclosure of one's cell number,
and acquiescence to a their latest and greatest terms and conditions.

You know, all the ordinary stuff: they get rights to your first born
child; if anything goes wrong it's your fault and you compensate them;
they have no liability for anything beyond one month's charges; and
you can't sue or participate in class action lawsuits against them.

OK, no first born child clause. But the rest is roughly correct.
And, yes, you do have arbitration and small claims court, but with the
ridiculously low liability limit these are hardly worth the effort.

Not to mention that there's a secrecy clause regarding results of
arbitration, and a no jury, ever, ever, clause should your case
despite all odds make its way into a real courtroom.

Oh, and if it looked as if you were not going to do the sign up
by the end of the month, they started hijacking certain web pages:
instead of just getting to your page you got a dire warning about
Charter's deadline as the top 50+ percent of the screen, followed,
almost as an afterthought, by the target page at the bottom.

[OK, enough. We all know large scale government sanctioned monopolies suck]

I have seen several places that would like a phone number for verification,
but not required.

This one was required. I did experiment a bit and it looked as if it
might take my land line number, possibly due to it having been a cell
number to begin with anyway.

George