Well, it seems that phone companies always find another way to gouge anyone who is desperate enough to try to make a call using their services…
I was on United a couple of weeks ago, and the phone in the seatback in front of me was actually advertising that it would only cost $10 to connect and $10 per minute… courtesy of Verizon I believe…
Well, I, for one, am not happy at all to see pay phones disappear. I don’t have a cellphone. There is only one number that I would call with any frequency and for that I would have to pay thirty dollars a month? No thank you.
But I do have occasions where I’m out in public needing to call for an emergency or some such. And now I cannot be sure that a pay phone would be available.
So no, I’m not happy to see pay phones go.
You really need to check out Virgin Mobile… You can get away with about $12 a month if I remember correctly… I had one of their phones for the longest time, and it cost very little… and worked fine…
I hated public payphones because I never trusted that whoever the sick bastard that last used it hadn’t wiped his nose or something worse on it before he left. At a job I had in the late 80’s, we used to skip the charges by using the static on our walkie-talkies.
Instead of “0” then the area code and number, we’d use “1” and the number. and just as the recording said to deposit our coins, hit the squelch button so the static came out, hold that to phone (maximum volume) for 20 seconds or so. When you’d go back to listen, you’d always have 70 or 80 cents worth of credit. Never knew how it worked, but it did.
The static must have imitated the tones that coins make when they are dropped into the slot. When the phone detects a quarter, it makes a series of five quick, high-pitched beeps. A dime makes two beeps, and a nickel makes one. The phone could automatically use these tones to count the money, and, as an operator, I could also tell what sort of coins people had dropped in while I was listening. This was useful if people were having trouble with the phone for some reason, or if people were ignoring the phone’s automatic requests for more money–then the call would go to the operator, and we would ask for more money. If the person did not comply, we would disconnect the call.
My cell phone died at the airport the other day, and I looked everywhere for a payphone and couldn’t find one…I was supposed to call my mom to let her know that I’d landed and which pick-up area I’d be in…
Til then it hadn’t really crossed my mind that payphones are vanishing at a remarkable rate.
As it was, I had to beg a random woman to let me borrow her cell phone.
And that’s when I realized that thanks to my cell phone, I don’t have ANYBODY’S number memorized anymore.
:smack:
If any place should keep some payphones, airports should, IMO. I noticed last time I was at MSP that they were pretty much gone, and that surprised me.
However, I was also in Yellowstone National Park about two years ago, and there, the payphone was alive and well. I got absolutely no signal for my cell, but the campground had plenty of payphones and my prepaid phone card worked just fine. (However, I also found that Qwest has closed the loophole that allowed people to avoid the “calling from payphone minute deduction” from those cards. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.) I suppose someday they will uglyfy the Park with a few cell towers and take out those phones, too.
One of the reasons for the demise of the payphone was the fact that, except in airports, the big phone companies abandoned them and lots of “phone companies” who didn’t have a single technician to their name, started owning them and not maintaining them.
I bought a cellphone shortly after having money “eaten” by phones with no dial tone, dead keys, static, not hearable with volume controls set all the way up, etc.
Many years ago when my sister’s then-boyfriend was in prison :rolleyes:, they had a system to talk on the phone for free. At a designated time, he would make a collect call to the pay phone outside the gas station near our home. My sister would be there to answer the phone and accept the charges, but she never had to put any money into the phone. Free collect call.
I, too, am saddened by the demise of payphones. This reminds of the film Phone Booth (2002), in which Colin Farrell is essentially held hostage by a sniper in New York City’s last remaining phone booth.
Some areas limited pay phones to only calling out because they were being used by drug dealers to do business. The dealers treated the pay phones like an order line.
This. I had to call 911 and my cellphone wasn’t charged I was running around like an idiot wasting precious time until I was able to flag down a motorist who had a phone. (Another motorist had stopped to help but also had no phone.)
If they really have to phase out payphones, they should put up emergency phones like those old fire department things or Doctor Who police boxes the public can use or something.
I know why Arab women wear black face masks. They have their bluetooth headsets and iPods under there. Trust me. I know.
Make that bear-in-heat pheromones and sex starved grizzly bears and I think we have a deal.
I’ve seen pay phones with signs on them that read, “These phones do not make calls to pagers,” or some such which I find to be pretty funny. The city’s last pay phone is across the street from my apartment. The guy and I refer to it as “The Meth Phone.”
Now seriously, you guys ever been stranded with a dead cell phone battery (or whatever situation that disables you from using your cell phone), and had to make the 35 mile trek in the scorching sun because the city seems to have enacted some sort of one phone booth limit? The last place in America within walking distance where one can find a phone: the bar.
I would think it would be easy to find a cellphone to borrow if yours is dead. But maybe a lot of people don’t like the idea of a stranger using their phone.
Plus some people don’t like the idea of having to ask strangers to use their cell phone. I know I don’t. I’ve never been unable to make a call before, but it could happen. I’m always either with someone, or walk into a bar. I’ve never been in a bar that doesn’t have a pay phone, or where the staff doesn’t know me well enough to let me use theirs for free. Now if I were in a foreign neighborhood and didn’t have any change…
Wow! Did you ever get a good deal …
My brother-in-law recently got nabbed on an old warrant that had been satisfied 11 years ago - took us 3 days and 6 collect calls to get it all cleared up and get his ass out of jail.
6 calls = 49 minutes total talk time - Billed @ $14.41/min = $706.09*
I don’t think there’s any rational way any rational person can rationally justify that …
My wife now understands that accepting such calls in the future will have dire consequences.
Lucy
*Does Not include taxes
I still need payphones sometimes when I can’t get cell service. I don’t call collect or use coins; I use a phone card. And that really sucks, because the one I have deducts 30 minutes for using a pay phone at all, plus minutes used. Grrr.
The US is weird. There’s still an abundant supply of pay phones here. They may not be on every corner, but you can pretty much find one when you need one.
The metro, for example (no signal down there except in certain places).
Actually, one thing that honks me off is that I simply can’t accept collect calls on my cell phone. I find that idiotic. The boy in Winnipeg I like has no cellphone and is rather impecunious. For a while we were stuck when he didn’t have a phone – here I was with the cellphone of the gods and no way to either accept or place a call to him.