Don't Ever Buy a Doro 7050

            Who can keep up with modern technology?  You purchase any electronic item at the store and it is outdated before you even get it home – possibly before it even hits the showroom floor.  What’s up with that? 

             Once upon a time things were built to last.  Television repariman took pride in their work.  

 Vintage Magazine Book Be Your Own TELEVISION REPAIRMAN 1953 Greenberg Publisher

HD replaced anything from the 2oth century and Smart TV has outdated screens after that.  Less than 6 years ago Roland purchased a BlueRay DVD player with feature to add Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc.  What a relic!  It no longer supports Hulu so if we should want to order Hulu for the TV, we have to purchase newer items which will become relics in less than four years and have to be replaced again!

             We are a throw-away society, inventive, updating that somehow believe in replacing the old SOONER than we can afford to.  Let’s all run out and get the latest because Everybody can afford it, right? Especially now that the economy has been shut down for over a month.  Hey, why not?

             My biggest complaint is the cell phone.  I had an LG that I loved.  Towers don’t support it.  I have to buy a new phone.  I purchased a Doro back in 2014.  It was a good little phone!  The company informed me that as of this year it would be a relic.  I guess I was having some issues with the last row of buttons not recognizing my fingers though not as frustrating as a smart phone or I phone or touch screen or whatever it is called.  Roland has one and I hate it.  He’s had three different models since we have been in Oregon – which hasn’t even been a full five years.

             So I guess it was the end of September that I was having issues.  I called Consumer Cellular – who I like as far as billing service goes, but except for the 2014 model of DORO (or whatever year it was) I haven’t been impressed with the phones themselves.  Before the Doro I had tried one called the Envoy.  Poor sound quality if I remember correctly, but I really didn’t have problems with my Doro until about September of 2019 – and then they were only minor compared to what was ahead.

             So the next phone I tried was called a Link – brand new.  Company had them on promotion as it was a brand new item and cheap.  I guess cheaply made as well as inexpensive.  I thought “You guys are crazy trying to get senior citizens to try and use this when I know that some of them have worse hearing than I do.”

             Not only couldn’t I hear the person on the other end.  They couldn’t hear me.  I wonder if that’s the kind of phone Biff has.  He always sounds like he’s calling from a different area than where his phone is.  I called Consumer Cellular to make inquiries about the phone, but since it was such a brand new product they didn’t have all the answers.  Switch me back to Doro.

             So at the end of October I receive a Doro 7050.  I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS PHONE.  During the time of pandemic is probably not the best time to call either because I am certain there are people who have taken jobs out of desperation and haven’t been trained.  I am so frustrated . . . but let me back up.  So one of the features that I really liked about my original Doro was 1) I could press the back button to turn on the clock without having to open the phone.  2) I could set an alarm that would go off weather the phone was turned on or off (never had that featured before or since;  I still use the old phone to set alarms) 3) I could see who was calling before opening my phone.

            The button on my new Doro 7050 – pretty worthless.  Never did anything when I pushed it.  What was the point?  By December the front of my screen appeared to be shattered to be shattered – though it wasn’t from the outside – the image was.  I didn’t know who was calling unless I answered the phone. But I dealt with that before back in the day of rotaries and calling the next county over was long distance.  It wasn’t that inconvenient. 

    

       

            I started a diary of every problem I had.  I’d call to explain the new problem and was told to take my battery out and put it back in.  Really.  They want me to open my cell phone and remove the battery every time it acts up?  This is not an easy backing to take off – though it seems to be getting easier as I have been removing it each time there is a problem.  What’s up with that? 

             When I couldn’t call on my phone, I used my husband’s which is under a different carrier. I am put through to another department for add on – uh, no. We tried adding him back but they messed up on the date and I’m not trying to activate his phone.  I’m trying to find a way in which I can use my own.

             Though texting has never been a great importance, it is convenient to have – more for receiving and not texting as the flip does not offer a full keyboard.  In all honesty I would just assume use email or facebook to send a message.  Besides, texting really takes a toll on the battery. 

             Anyway, the problems keep changing.  The last call was about my keys that don’t work.  This time I was told to reset everything – thus I lost all information that had been in the phone and now I can’t receive text messages.  I have family who send messages to multi-phones as the Coronavirus infects members of Joh’s family.  It would be nice to read the update on my own phone.  The more I try to use it, the more frustrated I am.

             My phone is under warranty and I asked to replace it.  I was given another number to call and a warranty number.  It didn’t work and I had a chat with another worker who was helpful until she told me to CALL CC – I had been chatting to avoid that.  I asked if we were being recorded and hoped that our conversation was being recorded.  And then I told her “Don’t just give me this number and the warranty because it doesn’t work” and guess what she did?  I told her I probably won’t be dealing with CC anymore and hung up the phone. 

 

            Earlier this evening Roland ordered me an Easyfone Prime A1 3G.  I won’t be receiving it until early June.  It’s got to be better than Doro.  My recommendation: DON’T EVER PURCHASE A DORO 7050!

Two Discussion Posts

          I have now completed my economics course.  My instructor has completed grading all of my work, and so I will go ahead and share what I have turned in.

          On my first post this month I shared a video of a phone service parody.  This is the discussion that went with it:

      "How many of my classmates remember the landline and payphones? Funny how perspective changes from being a child to being an adult. Our responsibilities are not the same, and therefore we view the world in a different way. For example, I never personally had to wait for AT&T to come out and install or repair a telephone, but my mom did. Back then we didn't have the option of cell phones or even provider plans for that matter. The Bell System had a monopoly all across the nation with its "Bell" trademark on every phone booth. Every household that had a phone received a bill from Ma Bell, Mountain Bell, Southwestern Bell and others (depending on which part of the nation you lived).

     "By 1979 AT&T employed over a million people within all of its Bell locations (History). They were the phone company. There was no competition (Easterbrook, 1985). If you had a phone you either dealt with them, or you could forgo dealing with them which meant you also gave up the privilege of having or even using the phones. (Remember all the pay phones were provided by Bell)

      "I was still in high school in 1979 when Ma Bell settled a law suit brought on by the justice department (Barger, 1984). I understood the negative effects that a monopoly causes and was happy about the Bell System's 'break-up" in 1984. My great aunt had worked for and retired from Mountain Bell. I wanted to ask her opinion but was not allowed to bring up the subject. I'd forgotten all about that until I started doing my research for this topic.

     "I think monopolies are dangerous - at least for the consumer. The telephone company is just one example of what a monopoly does to the economy. I wonder how many of my classmates remember the parody included with my references.

          The instructor as well as eight students responded to my post. Here is a funny story I may have shared in a post before.  I brought it up again as different class members would reminisce over the landline:

            "I have to share a funny story that has nothing to do with perfect competition or monopolies, but rather about the rotary phone (remember those?)  My husband was a realtor who would bring home rare treasures every now and then.  One day he brought home a rotary phone to plug into the jack that was in the hallway - this way the boys could answer calls without having to run to the kitchen.
            "Our three boys (all younger than the cell phone) stood around it and looked at it and at each other.  Finally, one of them asked, "How does it work?"

          For this week's discussion, we were given the choice to speak on oligopolies or poverty.  This was my discussion post:

            "Funny how we were given a choice to discuss oligopoly or poverty as I feel that the two seem connected. I am not saying that Oligopoly is solely responsible for poverty, but I do think it is one contributing factor. Let me use an example of the banking industry. There are hundreds of banks, perhaps thousands, located throughout the country. Yet according to the pie graph (Jennings, 2016) below, there are only four banks which deal with over half the nation's money. Half! That is a lot of power to put into four banks.

            "As a customer, having dealt with three of the four banks, though their initial customer service seems to be professional and friendly, it felt like it is only a facade. Once I had been lured in it felt like the Oligopoly (in this case the bank) preys on my financial weakness and feeds itself out of my pocket (Parramore, 2011).

            "In some cases I had not made the choice to deal with the large bank, but had made a loan purchased from a competitor that may no longer be in business as it was swallowed up by the larger bank as well. I think Bare Truth (2013) explains it best when the comparison is made that the "ideal" is someone believing he may share a small piece of the wealth as it may be "melted" onto him, when in reality, the rich get richer by sucking finances from the poor like an inhuman vacuum.

            "If you live from paycheck to paycheck, you are better off putting your money in a smaller bank or credit union. I personally do not support any oligopolies if I can help it. I bank at a local chain that I would guess most of you have never even heard of. I actually had not heard of them until I moved into this county.

            "I think oligopolies seek power, often at the expense of their own employees  in which the dollar seems to be a higher priority than human welfare (My Reality; 2017). In my opinion, supporting oligopolies seems to be allowing them to have unnecessary power.

           

          My instructor than asked me to explain why I would recommend a small bank or credit union over the larger banks.  My response was:

            "In my experience, the larger banks have always "charged" me to keep my money in the bank.  If a deposit (biweekly paycheck) is made on the same day that my written checks (bill pay) have cleared, they will do the withdrawls before the deposits and charge me for each check that has gone over which wouldn't have been an issue if the deposit would have been cleared first. 

            "I realize that my check should not even be written if the money isn't in the bank.  Knowing it will be in the bank, I have taken it on faith that the deposit would clear first.  After the bank "robbed" me by charging me for each check, I was short for the next set of bills.

            "This has never happened for me with the credit union.  The smaller unknown bank  that I am currently with in Oregon is very much like a credit union.  Deposits clear before withdrawals are made.  I don't have to have a mandatory savings to open a checking account.  I only had to have a 25.00 minimum to open an account.

            "I struggled from paycheck to paycheck more with the large banks.  I have not had that problem with my credit union or the bank I am with in Oregon."

          I had also used this response to another class member on her post:

            "I agree that this has been an interesting week for topic discussion.  I took a class once in which the instructor picked two people to represent a very small fraction of the world.  He proceeded to carry out his demonstration by distributing groceries that he would pull from a few bags that he had. He had three of each item and would pass them out accordingly:

            "Each of the two students in front received an entire box of crackers for instance.  The remaining box of crackers would be shared among the remainder of the class (there had to have been at least 28 students) and continue with each grocery item until the bags were empty. 

            "His demonstration wasn't on poverty exactly, but rather the wealth in United States as opposed to some other countries.  US gets two entire boxes of crackers while everyone else has to share just one.  But not all US citizens are enjoying the metaphorical crackers - I think his demonstation would now be less than one cracker per class while the wealthy get to stock up on the remainder.

            "It's a problem that has existed long before the Great Depression.  I think it's well past time that we reevaluate ourselves and our values."
             I will post my final assignment tomorrow.