I don’t have a cell phone. I’m too poor. But I have a home phone, and service with SBC. And because my family is having some financial struggles right now, I got behind on the phone bill and forgot to pay it before the cut-off date.
So I had to call in my payment. But it was my day off, so I couldn’t call from work. And since I was embarassed about the disconnection, I didn’t want to call from my mom’s phone, because I didn’t want her to know. So since I was out running errands anyway, I drove to the nearest pay phone, which just so happened to be an SBC payphone, and I call SBC.
I get the usual “if you want to pay your bill, press 1, press 2 to deed over your house, press 3 if you are willing to sweep the floors in our office to pay this bill.” and I press the appropriate buttons. Nothing happens. No beeps, no boops, no progress on moving on to more challenging menus. The phone keeps asking me to press buttons, but nothing is happening. So I look at the face of the payphone, and there is a little note that I’ve never seen before. “Keypad is deactivated after connection is made” or words to that effect.
WTF? It’s pratically impossible these days to call any business, or doctor’s office, or even police department without having to choose from a menu, and they make payphones that won’t let you “press 1 for Account Information” Or “enter your password now, followed by the pound sign”???
Why? What could possibly be the reason for not allowing this? You can’t even call them to ask why your phone is out of service? And it’s not like this is some off-brand, fly-by-night payphone company. It’s SBC themselves!!!
I finally had to drive to my son’s girlfriend’s house and make the call from there, and my phone service was back on by the time I got home 10 minutes later. But I couldn’t call them from their own payphone.
Before cell phones became cheap and plentiful, a lot of payphones were modified in this way or prevented from receiving incoming calls supposedly to cut down on drug dealers receiving “orders”. This was done to prevent loitering in areas with a lot of payphones.
And this wasn’t a phone in an area known for it’s drug dealers. It’s the phone in front of the library in a very nice, safe suburb. And because (sigh) this isn’t the first time I’ve had to use this payphone for this purpose, I know it wasn’t set up like that last year. This is a new addition. Or subtraction.
I’m pretty sure this is exactly why the keypad disconnects.
For future reference, don’t hit any buttons. Most menus are still set to default to a rotary system where you get an operator. Congrats on getting it turned back on so fast.
Since disabling the keypad effectively prevents “dialing around”, you could always file a complaint. You could go back to the phone first and try it - it may be that the keypad doesn’t disable if you dial one of the above access numbers.
Odd, that the FCC’s own article doesn’t include the 888 and 877 toll-free numbers in the list.
Doubtful. Typical phreaking needs electronics that emit tones not produced by the phone’s keypad. Disabling it wouldn’t prevent phreaking.
I do buy the argument that it’s to prevent calling card calls, though. Telcos have a hard enough time as it is making pay phones profitable in the face of near-ubiquitous cell phone use.
That said, having a prepaid cell phone for use in emergencies like this might be a good idea. Companies such as Tracfone and Virgin Mobile have rates that are very reasonable. Tracfone’s the cheaper of the two, with a minimum for cost at about $10/month. They typically have promotions where you can get a phone from them for cheap, too. Might be worth thinking about.
The keypad deactivates after the connection. The codes on a calling card are punched in before the connection is completed, as are 10-10 codes. I don’t know from collect calls in the main but when I placed them from my work phone (at the phone company, testing customer lines) I didn’t have to press anything else after dialing 0 and the phone number.
On a somewhat related note, this is one of my pet peeves in movies now. Most phone companies, especially those in large cities, have disabled incoming calls on pay phones, yet writers consistently have characters receiving calls at pay phones.
Since federal law rarely keeps up with technology, I would imagine that federal law doesn’t yet prohibit blocking of 888/877 numbers and that the FCC article reflects that. Not that the FCC wants such a prohibition, anyway – they’ve been sucking Big Media’s dick a lot these past few years…
Shit forgot about that. What I was thinking of were the calling cards. The ones where you connect, then have to dial in a code, then dial in a number. That’s what I was thinking in my first response.
Would it work if you lent out the door and asked a passerby to turn on keypad tones on their mobile and make them into the phone? Come to think of it, that’d be a cool way to steal mobiles too!
NB: In case you don’t know UK mobile=mobile phone=cell phone=cell US iirc.
NB2: Cool as an idea. Stealing phones is uncool. Don’t.
If you would like to order a special dialing wand, mash the keypad with your palm… now.
I decided I should be a little more pro-active about this situation, so I called SBC. They told me it was an option chosen by whoever contracted for the payphone to be installed, and the reason is to discourage the use of the phone by drug dealers.
So I called the branch library where the phone is located to find out why they chose this option. The library manager said it was a system-wide decision based on security concerns. I asked, what security concerns? She repeated the same thing about drug dealers using the phones to enter pager numbers. I joked about how up-and-coming drug dealers all use cell phones these days, and thankfully she laughed. I mentioned that it was very inconvenient since you can’t even call the phone company, and she said she would call the administrative offices and see if the security concerns still existed, and get me a better answer as to why they chose that option. She promised to email me back, so if I get an interesting answer, it’ll be posted here tomorrow.