Puddle Jumpers

I’m hatching a rant. And it will be about cell phone rates in the province of BC Canada.

Once upon a time, not very much money would pay for a home phone that you could use anytime, any day. There was no such thing as call waiting, call display or whatever other “feature” can be added to phones these days. Nope, there was local calling and long distance calling. You paid a fixed fee for local, and per minute for long distance.

These days, the home phone, aka “land line”, is still reasonaby priced. But, and here’s where my rant gets going, cell phones are ubiquitous, they are also OUTRAGEOUSLY priced: The cost of the plans to use these phones is unreasonably expensive.

Is it right that a person should pay between $600 – $1200/year for a phone that may give you between 450 – 700 minutes/ month? That’s for a “large” package. 450 minutes over a month translates to approximately 15 minutes a day! And, if you go over, the sky’s the limit in how much you can pay. It’s highway robbery!

I hate the greediness of these corporations, and I’m incensed that the Fed. Gov’t. won’t regulate them.

As these stupid cell phones are gradually replacing the “land line”, then it stands to reason that the price of having one should be comparable to a land line. Instead, the carriers happily charge through the nose and profit considerably, while we dummies on the ground shell more money for a luxury we can’t afford.

It’s time to revolt and correct the discrepancies! If we’re going to use the cell in the same manner as the lowly “land line”, then we should pay the same price as it.

Times are a’ changin’ and we communicate differently than we did 10-20 years ago. But we shouldn’t be penalized for it. We’re being pushed into the technology, and believe me, I resisted a long time before I got one of those damned phones. Now that I have one, I can’t seem to get a decent plan where I can talk on the phone and not get soaked for it.

What to do… what to do.

Wanting to drown cell phone rates in the puddle…

Ingrid