I’m in my mid-thirties, which means I’m old enough to remember a time when public coin-operated payphones were ubiquitous but too young to have used them very much before they were replaced by mobile phones. In addition, I believe that payphone practices varied among countries.
That raised a few questions for me recently when I watched old episodes of Seinfeld, including one that included a joke about payphones. Apparently in the past, it was possible to overstay your time on a payphone, i.e., you could keep talking even after the time that you had inserted coins for ran out. After the end of that excessive call, you would receive another call from the phone company that owned the payphone, asking you to insert money to make up for the shortfall.
That sounds like a pretty dumb system. Is that really how it was done? It’s quite obvious that after the end of the call, the negotiation leverage on the part of the phone company would be very weak; their operator was far away and had no way of enforcing this demand. On top of that, it sounds like running a call centre staffed with human operators for the purpose of calling payphones from where an excessive call had been made would be more costly than the back payments you’d collect that way. Was there some regulatory provision at work which prohibited phone companies from simply cutting off the call when the pre-paid time expired? Or was the policy of letting the call continue a courtesy on the part of the phone company, and they were hoping that the whole scheme would work on an honour basis?
I’ve never heard of them calling you back and asking you to pay more. What I recall them doing is after the time was up (3 minutes IIRC), an operator/robot would cut in and ask you to add more money or the call would be disconnected.
They would interrupt the call and you couldn’t talk to the other person until you put money in the phone.
In the days before electronics, there was an audible tone when you inserted a coin: a “bing” for a nickel, two “bings” for a dime, and a deeper “bong” for a quarter.
Not sure about that specific question. However I do remember as a kid that was too young to drive at the time, I and a lot of friends would get dropped off by one parent to the mall or a skatepark.
We didn’t have cellphones and we would often make a collect phone call from a pay phone and then during the short audio recording where you are supposed to say your name would say something like “Hey Mom, we’re at the skatepark come pick us up!!!”
It was basically a way to make a free phone call but it was sort of ridiculous when I think back now, the calls were so cheap anyway, and our parents had to know to be waiting for the call.
When we needed a ride home from the beach, I’d put a coin in the pay phone, let the phone at my parent’s house ring twice, hang up and get my money back. After a few seconds, I’d do the same thing again. This was the code my Mom and I used when I wanted a ride home. Didn’t everyone do this?
I think it must have varied with location. I recall that sometimes they would interrupt and ask for more money. Other times you would hang up and the operator would call and ask that you deposit money for the overage. I doubt that they got much compliance from the callbacks.
Regarding staffing: human operators were always available from any phone simply by dialing 0. They performed all kinds of functions so no one was being employed just to make payphone callbacks. That was just one of many duties.
Which raises an interesting question. What happens these days if you dial 0. Do you actually get an operator? What possible function would they serve?
I’ve had them call back and demand more money: I didn’t even know I was running out of time. I agree in most situations they wouldn’t have any leverage, as a matter of fact, I was in the middle of walking away when the phone rang, however, in this case, someone else was waiting to use the phone so I needed to pay up or she couldn’t make her call.
Schnitte, do you remember how it was with German pay phones? With 51 I’m older than you and used public phones a lot back then, but I can’t quite remember. I dimly recall that there was some kind of acoustic ticker counting down the last seconds, or maybe later more modern pay phones had a display indicating the remaining time, but I’m unsure about both. It’s been so long ago…
But I’m certain that you never spoke to an operator. The operator just wasn’t a thing in usual telephone communication, if you wanted to talk to a person you called the “Auskunft”, i. e. the information desk, but it had its own phone number (not only dialing zero) and cost fees.
If you failed to pay up. the operator could call the number you had been talking to, and either get them to give your name and home phone number, or the operator could put the unpaid minutes onto the bill of the number you had called.
The phone company worked pretty hard to collect their money!
Not that the nickel or dime for some extra minutes mattered that much to them – they just wanted everyone to know you don’t screw with Ma Bell. (Look at the videos of Ernestine the phone operator. Those sketches didn’t come out of nowhere.
In the UK, the early public phones had two buttons ‘A’ and ‘B’. You had to put some coins in (four pence) and dialled the number; when the connection was made, you pressed button 'A’the coins dropped into the box. An automatic tone told you when your time was up. If you got no answer you pressed ‘B’, to get your money back. As a child, you did not pass a phone booth without pushing button B on the off-chance that the last caller had forgotten to collect their left-over coins. It worked more often than you might have thought and 4d bought you a lot of sweets.
50+ years ago, you could have been in the process of hanging up when the other party answered. So, the phone company would not keep your dime if the call was less than 3 seconds. I had a list of pay phones (subway, school, center-of-town, etc) next to the phone at home. When Mom answered, I would yell, “TWELVE” and she would call number 12 on the list next to the phone.
As for OP, I remember the operator interrupting, “Three minutes. Signal when through”, but the call continued. She would ask for another nickel when you finished. I never knew what would happen if you talked for any longer than another minute or two.
I do not remember a time limit for local calls. except the time limit set by the guy waiting to use the phone when you were done. If it was a long distance call that was different. You would dial for the operator and tell her the number. she would tell you how much the call was for 3 minutes, after you put money in the phone she would put the call through. 3 minutes later she would come back on and tell how much for the next 3 minutes, and you call was interrupted until you paid.
In Aus, the A/B phones were in use at, but the ones I remember from the early 70’s had just a slide, on which you placed your sixpence /5c coin. When the other end answered, you reached up and rolled your coin into the phone.
When the coin went in, it turned on your microphone, and the called party could hear you.
I normally had 5c on me on the few occasions when I planned to use a phone. Lots of other kids did the ‘just ring, then hang up’ thing. But actually, in all old phones there was leakage between the earpiece and the microphone: if you yelled loud enough, the called party could here you, even with the microphone disconnected. Nobody ever did that though: can you imagine yelling to your parents at the top of your voice, while standing alone in public at a public pay phone?
Almost all of Melbourne, around 1/4 of all Australia, was available for 5c. You’d only use the B button when making long distance calls, using an operator.
At college I’d call, my parents would refuse the charges, and then call me back. I know of people who had a set of names each of which represented a situation.
That was Freshman year, 1969. By sophomore year the pay phone by our rooms had a wiring closet we could break into.We inserted a diode in the line used by the operator to collect money. She heard the coins drop, but her signal never got through, so when we hung up all the coins came back.
They took the phones out eventually. So we got one phone installed and wired about ten extensions to it.
It was clearly fated that I’d eventually work for AT&T.
That was my experience. I never even heard of an operator calling back asking for more money.
“Deposit twenty cents for the next three minutes.” Something I heard often.
