My company has a phone system that allows people who work at home to have their company phone routed to a home phone.  Further, there are ways to set it up so that your home phone can dial directly into the internal phone network.  But to avoid interfering with the existing home phone service they recommend getting a second phone line.  All that’s required is a basic local phone line.  You don’t need call waiting (the system routes callers to voice mail if you’re already on the line) or voice mail (they actively discourage using non-company voice mail systems). 

So I called Verizon yesterday afternoon to inquire about the costs of a second phone line.  Their most basic service is $21.25 per month (before all of the fees, surcharges, and other annoying overhead crap).  I also wanted to get Caller ID to deal with the annoyance of telemarketers (I got three of them within an hour while working at home on Wednesday).  If you want Caller ID ‘ala carte’, it’s an additional $7.95 per month (bringing the total to $29.20).  Further, if you get just the basic service there will be a $50.00 “installation” fee (which is just for connecting the outside wire to your network interface box; no inside wiring is included).  However, if you get their handy bundle of services for $34.95 per month you can get free installation and it includes Caller ID (along with a bunch of other crap I didn’t need).  This is a great scam.  It entices you into spending more per month for services you don’t really want and for services that don’t cost them much to provide.  I have a hard time believing that it costs them anywhere near $7.95 per month to provide Caller ID.  But by pricing it there it helps steer people into their bundled services, which provides them with a nice monthly revenue stream.

I also asked them about having their technician run a new jack into my office.  I’ve done my own phone wiring in the past, but it’s kind of a pain in the butt and I don’t like traipsing around in the attic.  They told me that they can do it, but they charge $91.00 for the first half-hour and $53.00 for each half-hour after that.  Damn.  At that rate I suppose I’ll just do it myself.