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Cell phone etiquette (or not)

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  • #16
    Re: Cell phone etiquette (or not)

    I had an opportunity to travel to Japan for business/pleasure and rode on the bullet train. I found it striking when there were signs posted that cell phone use was not permitted in the train cars, however, smoking was allowed Also, restaurant dining does not permit cell phone use.

    Personally, I use 2 cell phones - one for work (company issued blackberry)and one for my personal use. It's cumbersome to carry 2 phones, however, I prefer to keep my personal call record private from corporate. Having a work phone has allowed me to reduce my minutes - good thing. Compared to my wife, I am the main user of minutes/cell use, but I dread the day when the kids get of age to have one - ohh the texting bill . My 8 yr old daughter has already mentioned that some of her friends already have cells. Yikes! What's wrong with these parents

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    • #17
      Re: Cell phone etiquette (or not)

      Originally posted by mel View Post
      My landline is $14.40 for the basic charges and with the nasty taxes and fees added it is $26.72, which is still way less than the $50 quoted above.

      Plus I don't need the mobility, don't get many calls, don't like being bothered when I am away from my primary phone and don't like the possibility that someday all mobile phones (if they don't all have em) will be able to track your location via GPS.

      Surely the landline is anchored to one address, but when I roam around my community I don't have a GPS tracking where I am going. My car is old so I don't have that in it either.
      well, Mel - looks like you are the last person in the world who needs a cell phone. good for you! I also don't really like any phones and use my cell very rarely - only when I have to. I also don't call folks "just to say hi". Maybe that means I'm anti-social but thats just the way I am
      "Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be."
      – Sydney J. Harris

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      • #18
        Re: Cell phone etiquette (or not)

        Originally posted by mel View Post
        None of the plans I have ever seen were not somehow connected to minutes, and definitely all are tied to a contract of some sort and more expensive than just a basic landline where you don't ever have to think about minutes, quotas, contracts or whatever for a local call.
        I have Mobi's Unlimited Everything plan..."Never count minutes again. Days. Nights. Weekdays. Weekends. We don't care. It's all unlimited." It's now $47/mo with auto bill pay; $50/mo without it. I currently pay approx. $53./mo with taxes & fees.

        And...no contract:
        "welcome to unlimited wireless calling. no contract. no credit check. no catch."
        I signed nothing but a credit card receipt and a rebate form for the phone.

        And Boost boasts..."This is this ultimate option if you want it all without being tied down by a contract. With unlimited talk, text and web, you can stay in touch any way you want, any time you want." That plan is $50/mo.

        You're correct that a landline is cheaper but this thread is about cell phones. And, as I acknowledged in post #4, we know you're happy without a cell. We're just correcting information by sharing the newer, cheaper, no contract plans even tho' it's off topic for this thread.

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        • #19
          Re: Cell phone etiquette (or not)

          I love cell phones. Had them since the mid 80's when they entered the Hawaii market. Been with Verizon since it was called GTE Mobilnet.

          Having a cell makes it easier to adjust plans if and when they change. Allows me to get away from the home when waiting for an important call by not having to hang around.

          Case in point, I pick up two of my younger kids first then my older one right after that at another location three miles away. So I'm picking up the two kids then get a call from my wife that one of my two younger kids has a parent teacher meeting she forgot to tell me. I call my older son and tell him to catch the school bus to the other kid's location and wait for a short while until the meeting is over. He wants to go to the mall so the bus drops him off there.

          The parent meeting is over but there is an event happening at the school and my kids want to check it out. I call my wife who is now finished with work and tell her to call my other son at the mall to be picked up and meet us at McDonalds for dinner. I go to the event with the two younger kids, my wife picks up my older son and they decide to go to Pizza Hut instead. She calls me and tells me the plans have changed and to go to Pizza Hut in half an hour. Ten minutes later she calls me and tells me to reroute to another Pizza hut because the one they were to meet us at was closed for some reason. We go to the right Pizza Hut and have dinner.

          If we didn't have cell phones, life would have been more frustrating that day.

          I was at Honolulu International Airport the other day coming back from a Lion's meeting at JAIMS in Hawaii Kai. I was using the Kiosk to get my e-ticket and realized I didn't have my Hawaiian Airlines Confirmation code with me. While standing at the Kiosk, I call my wife and she pulls it up on her computer at work and recites it to me. I enter it in on the Kiosk's touch screen and viola! Out pops my e-ticket. Couldn't have done that with a pay phone as quickly.

          Cell phones serve a purpose for those who have intertwined lives with others. My elderly mom's car broke down on the highway. She calls me telling me she needs help. I hop in my car and call a tow wagon to hook up my mom's car. I get there five minutes before the tow wagon. We put her groceries in my car, I take her home while the tow wagon hitches up with instructions to take it to our home.

          I realize it probably would be better to tow it to my friend's home who fixes cars, so I call my friend and he says go ahead. I pull out the tow wagon's cell phone number from his business card and call him as we're driving to my home. I tell him to redirect to my friend's home where he will receive the car. I tell him I'm going to continue to my home before the hamburger spoils. He continues to my friend's home, I bring my mom to our home, unload her groceries and relax.

          The response and redirect was so quick, my mom was home and her car in the garage within an hour with her and her car separated by over 30-miles.

          Cell phones...it works for me.
          Life is what you make of it...so please read the instructions carefully.

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          • #20
            Re: Cell phone etiquette (or not)

            Originally posted by Jake's Ohana View Post
            ... but I dread the day when the kids get of age to have one - ohh the texting bill . My 8 yr old daughter has already mentioned that some of her friends already have cells. Yikes! What's wrong with these parents
            Let me recant on that one.

            We resisted getting our kid a cell phone for years. The day she landed a part-time job (age 14), she took herself to the AT&T store and bought her pay-as-you-go cell phone. We parents made sure that she was still contributing most of her salary to her Roth IRA and then just shrugged our shoulders. Crazy whippersnappers gotta make their own mistakes to learn these things for themselves.

            I see a cell phone as a grownups tool for getting work done, perhaps for making life easier (perhaps not). However for teens it's become an essential social tool. It's not just the gossip, angst, & drama. It's also the impromptu study group that meets after school, the project group swapping data from the physics lab, photos for the school newsletter, the video of the demonstration for part of the grade on the senior project, and the change in plans for the next meeting of the National Honor Society.

            After watching the improvement in her life, we realized that a monthly cell phone bill is just another expense of doing well in school-- no worse than the cost of a tutor or school supplies or athletic gear. It's not absolutely necessary but it certainly gives a kid a leg up.

            With her iPhone Internet access between classes, she's even more productive on homework & projects (and scholarship applications!). When the study group has research questions, websites & answers are just a few clicks away. And because Shazam has an iPhone app, the teachers don't even play "Stop The Music" for extra credit anymore.

            Now that she's 17 years old and driving, we parents have gotten awful lazy. She maps out the directions for family outings, checks traffic reports, drives us there, looks up barcodes on her iPhone app, takes photos for comparison shopping, checks website prices, finds the nearest fast-food place-- the list goes on & on. I don't even have to put on my reading glasses.

            But we only subsidize the first 200 texts/month. After that she's on her own...
            Youth may be wasted on the young, but retirement is wasted on the old.
            Live like you're dying, invest like you're immortal.
            We grow old if we stop playing, but it's never too late to have a happy childhood.
            Forget about who you were-- discover who you are.

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            • #21
              Re: Cell phone etiquette (or not)

              my 14-year old has had a cell phone for about a year now. Would I get one for my 12-year old next year? Probably not. Like my kids, one can't group all teenagers or children as one incompetant group. My 14-year old has very little use for a cell phone but he is a social creature and does go out with his friends.

              He has been raised with an attitude that cell phones can enhance once's efficient use of time management and uses it only if he has to call us that he will be late or needs to be picked up at another location. His friends also know that of his use of cells so they don't bother chatting with him because he'll only cut them off in mid sentence and tell them to continue their conversation when he gets to them in person. He's boring and they eventually stop the calls themselves.

              My 12-year old on the other hand loves to tinker and I'm afraid he'll take a cell phone apart given the opportunity.

              How one raises their children and how they inform them of the use of cell phones will guide them into how they eventually will use these devices.

              I don't have a problem with my kids having cell phones at all. They don't abuse them and they know if they do, it's gone. Only one child had a problem with cell phones and that's because I failed to communicate to him effectively. Once the message got out to him, he's good now with cell phone use as an adult.

              With responsible use of cell phones under their belt, proper manners follow, so they don't need to be reminded about when it's right to answer or make a call.
              Life is what you make of it...so please read the instructions carefully.

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              • #22
                Re: Cell phone etiquette (or not)

                I think if parents educate their children on the correct ways to use cell phones (such as the examples given above), manners will get better with time. Now that I think about it, I don't see as many people having loud conversations as I did five years ago. Definitely not as many as ten years ago. Cell phones aren't the novelty they once were. "Now I'm calling you from my car! Now I'm calling you from the mall!"

                There will always be people who don't care about anyone except themselves, but I think there have been so many stories written about phone etiquette, rules and laws banning them in certain places/situations, and friends and family members just flat out saying, "You're being rude," that the problem is lessening and will continue to get better. And at least texting is quieter- provided the phone is on silent.

                Can't think of anything creative this time

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                • #23
                  Re: Cell phone etiquette (or not)

                  Is there a difference when a person holds up a finger or a whole hand to signal I see you, but I'm on the phone now?
                  You can't press the plastic pop up terminals when you want the person to hang up or yank the phone cord anymore. So, you have to make like SNL Andy Sandberg and just throw it to the ground.
                  Last edited by Walkoff Balk; January 20, 2010, 07:26 PM. Reason: add

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                  • #24
                    Re: Cell phone etiquette (or not)

                    Originally posted by tutusue View Post
                    You're correct that a landline is cheaper
                    And that is the bottom line for me.
                    I'm still here. Are you?

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                    • #25
                      Re: Cell phone etiquette (or not)

                      I really hate it when you're talking to someone and your call drops. That is a bad thing about cell phones. You know how some companies offer free upgrades every so often? Well, for a few years, my husband kept taking them for himself even though my phone was a total POS. It was all crackly and I could barely hear anyone. One of our friends had an old phone he gave me, but it still sucked, so I did this to it. Jason was so embarrassed to be seen with me in public when I was talking on that, he quickly gave me the next upgrade! Ha!
                      Attached Files

                      Can't think of anything creative this time

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                      • #26
                        Re: Cell phone etiquette (or not)

                        Originally posted by mel View Post
                        And that is the bottom line for me.
                        You're doing what works best for you without extending yourself using equipment you don't need. But are you now aware that there are, in fact, cell plans that are no longer tied to minutes and contracts?

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                        • #27
                          Re: Cell phone etiquette (or not)

                          Originally posted by Walkoff Balk View Post
                          Is there a difference when a person holds up a finger or a whole hand to signal I see you, but I'm on the phone now?
                          You can't press the plastic pop up terminals when you want the person to hang up or yank the phone cord anymore. So, you have to make like SNL Andy Sandberg and just throw it to the ground.
                          I would think that regardless of someone is on the phone engaged in a conversation when a live person walks into a room to start another conversation, proper etiquette would dicated that the first conversation has priority over the second regardless how it's being conducted.
                          Life is what you make of it...so please read the instructions carefully.

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                          • #28
                            Re: Cell phone etiquette (or not)

                            If you're one that is pretty much stationary throughout the day, then a landline is perfectly sufficient. However if you aren't then a cell phone is beneficial for reasons I stated in my previous posts.

                            How did we get along without cell phones? I can tell you when I had a pager it still meant going to my job site only to find out after 45-minutes of driving in traffic to find out the meeting was cancelled 44-minutes ago after I hung up the landline and hopped in my car when the other person realized they had another appointment scheduled and that person tried to call me back to reschedule then paged me on my pager which I couldn't respond to because I was stuck on the freeway in traffic with no way to get to a payphone to respond.

                            In other words, my life was a frustrating experience without cell phones. Talk about wasting time and gas and that amounts to wasted money which could have paid for a cell phone calling plan.
                            Life is what you make of it...so please read the instructions carefully.

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                            • #29
                              Re: Cell phone etiquette (or not)

                              Originally posted by tutusue View Post
                              You're doing what works best for you without extending yourself using equipment you don't need. But are you now aware that there are, in fact, cell plans that are no longer tied to minutes and contracts?
                              Yes. It works best for me. Been on the earth for more than 50+ years and never needed it, and don't need it. It costs too much for me. I've prioritized my monthly budget and cell phones don't fit anywhere in the equation.
                              I'm still here. Are you?

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                              • #30
                                Re: Cell phone etiquette (or not)

                                Originally posted by mel View Post
                                Yes. It works best for me. Been on the earth for more than 50+ years and never needed it, and don't need it. It costs too much for me. I've prioritized my monthly budget and cell phones don't fit anywhere in the equation.
                                You forgot to answer the question, Mel. "But are you now aware that there are, in fact, cell plans that are no longer tied to minutes and contracts?"

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