Still stuck paying $35 or more for a home phone that you can’t or don’t want to give up? I have a new option that could lower your cost for the same service to $15 a month.
Verizon and Straight Talk are teaming up to introduce Home Phone Connect, which promises unlimited local and long-distance calling, voicemail, caller ID, three-way calling and more, all with no contract.
This home phone service does not require an Internet connection. You basically purchase a $99 wireless base station that you put wherever you happen to get a good signal in your home.
Once you purchase it, you can even port your number over from the monopoly local phone company.
One word of caution: This is not compatible with home security systems, fax machines, DVR services, credit card images or medical alert systems.
But if this works for your life, it will allow you to fire the monopoly local phone company and stop paying $35 or more for their service that doesn’t include any special features.
Meanwhile, Consumer Reports rated phone service last year and AT&T got the lowest score of all 25 companies rated for value and customer service.
The absolute highest score again went to Ooma, the VoIP provider, for the second year in a row. You buy the Ooma device for $129-$199 and then pay a $3 monthly FCC pass-through charge and that’s it for the life of Ooma.
MagicJack, meanwhile, got poor scores on reliability, call quality and customer service, but the pricing makes it the cheapest option for local and long-distance calling. The first year is effectively $60 and each year after that is $30.
Consumer expert Clark Howard's column appears here each Thursday in conjunction with Deal Spotter, a weekly print section in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Find more answers to your consumer questions at Clark's website. And get more savings tips from Clark's previous blog posts.
-- Clark Howard -- Save More, Spend Less, Avoid Rip-offs
