A local phone call is a lousy quarter, 35 cents in some places. Get a phone installed you almost always get a calling card billable to your home phone bill. Pre-paid phone cards are getting cheaper & cheaper. So, who is making all the collect calls that there are 1,000,006 commercials on every channel, every day for 1-800-collect, 1-800-AT&T,1-800-U-R-Paying-I-M-NOT, etc… There can’t be that many people who are so flat broke they can’t afford two bits, or a pre-paid phone card. And I can’t believe there are so many people stranded on the road with no money or phone card that they have to call collect. But those phone companies are spending millions to get the business of somebody.
But who?
The only situation I can think of where you had no other options except to call collect was if you were in jail. Is that who 1-800-paythroughDnose is advertising to?
Yeah, yeah. I know these things happen. And I know there are times when people absolutely have to make a collect call.
My point is, the are an awful lot of commercials for collect call services. Enough to give the impression that there must be huge money to be made in serving folks making collect calls. Are there that many people in a pinch that are making collect calls that AT&T, MCI., etc, are willing to spend millions, maybe even billions advirtising it?
In 40 years I can only recall making 1 collect call myself.
Theres seems to be a lot of money being spent on these ads.
As one who knows a few people who find themselves in legal(police?) trouble every now and again, I can tell you that the “one phone call” allwed by police is often made collect. And those incarcerated are some collect-callin’ sonofaguns!
This whole thing probably belongs in the Pit anyway, but I find the entire slew of these commercials to be absolutely absurd.
Now, if we accept the premise that the target audience of these ads is college kids, then I have to wonder just what kind of buffoons these kids are. Look, you’re in college. You’re not a child anymore. If you’re gonna call home, the very least you can do is pay for the call. Yes, I understand college kids have no money. Find some! Now, if you’re the college student who has scrimped and saved to send yourself to school, who is living on your own, who is working while attending classes, then making a collect calls makes sense to me. But I bet there are a lot of kids who don’t fall into this narrow category. I bet there are a lot of kids whose parents pay their tuition - if not all, perhaps a good part. For these kids, I say phooey! Cough up the 35 cents!
Or, as was suggested earlier, make a small investment in a calling card. Shoot, you can buy them at dirt-cheap rates in convenience stores. Besides, if you pay for the call (and YMMV, depending on how far from home you live), you control the conversation with mom and dad! You can say, “Sorry, gotta go, card’s running low!” See, to me it’s just a question of responsibility, and these stupid collect-call plans ignore the fact that the caller should be paying for the damn call himself anyway.
[aside to pulykamell: like that Geico commercial - “It’s a collect call from Wehaddababyitsaboy!”]
Hey guys… it’s no mystery. Collect calls are the cash cow of the phone company. While they are willing to charge you only 7 cents a minute these yo-yo’s are paying what, 40-50 cents a minute for collect calls? Remember it only cost the phone company 1/2 cent a minute to provide their service so there’s plenty of money for expensive TV ads… and judging by their ads, their target audience is 12-25 yo’s that are either too lazy, too poor or too stupid to figure out a cheaper way to make a call…
BTW, in the 46 years of my life I have never made a collect call… but I always accept collect calls from people I know… how dumb am I?
No, you call home collect for the dog, and Mom knows it’s you, refuses the call, then calls you back. That’s what I did!
“Collect call for Daisy, will you accept the charges?”
“No, she’s out right now.”
The operator didn’t need to know she was “out” pooping in the yard.
I work downtown. Since I started I now NEVER carry change. It is a hassle.
If I make one call a year so what. It is worth NOT having to carry 35 cents around the other 364 days a year I WON’T make.
We have some very aggressive beggers down by the Chicago Ave subway.
Just the other day I got 80 cents change and I was down in the el and I decided to put the money on my Fare Card (see again NO MONEY).
Guy comes up “can I have some change.” I said I had none. He said “If you hit cancel on the machine you’re money would come back and you could give that to me.”
They hear a jingle in your pocket on Mich ave and boom for three blocks they’re followig you to the el begging.
To further put in in perspective. Why pay more for collect?
Why go to Saks for a suit when you can get it cheaper elsewhere?
Why buy a dog when you can get one from the pound?
Why buy a candy bar from a machine when they are 10 cents cheaper at Walgreens?
I used to work in a hospital. Our metro area has very small calling areas, such that darn near every call is a toll call. Since you couldn’t bill calls to the phones in the rooms, patients had to use calling cards or call collect.
I was FREAKING AMAZED at how much trouble these people had figuring out how to use something as simple as a calling card.
This message board, by definition, includes only people who can, at least marginally, operate a computer. The rest of the world includes some really dumb folks. For some of them, you might as well ask them to pilot the space shuttle as use a calling card.
When I was a kid, Dad sold real estate. I was with him one day when we had to drive about half an hour to give a message to one of his clients. I asked why the guy didn’t have a phone. Dad told me that the guy was a long haul trucker who was denied a phone because he had used that trick too often while on the road.
Things are so automated now, that it is probably hard to get caught, but calls are cheap, too. Is it really worth the trouble to save a few dimes.
I think some of youse misunderstood me. What I meant is, when I was a poor college kid, I picked up the phone, dialled my number, got my mom or dad, and told them to call me back. OK, it cost me like 5 cents or something, but it was no trick. This was in response to the person whose kids call him collect from what I assume is their own phone line. Why bother? Why have your parents pay more via collect charges rather than paying the fricken nickel and telling them to call you back?
Though, yes, I confess I’ve done it the “Will you accept a collect call from itsmecallme?” method once or twice.
I have a hard time believing that the “I ran out of gas/lost my wallet/am locked out of my house” occasional calls are the target market for these supposedly-cheaper collect call services. If I have to place one or two such calls a year, why would I worry whether I spent 80 cents or a dollar? If this is an occasional nuisance, the cost is the last thing on your mind, and those commercials touting the great deals aren’t going to have any influence on you at all.
I can only surmise that there is a great big market of people who a) are young adults, b) make frequent or expensive collect calls, and c) find Alyssa Milano attractive (ok, who can blame them).
Back when I started college, I lived in a dorm where we were not permitted our own phones. The only phone was a payphone in the hallway. Since the parents lived in another state, the “2 minute” phone call to ask them to call me back cost, if I recall, 1.95 just to make a connection - back when local pay calls in Chicago were .25 (also predating the cell phone by a decade) Mom and dad gave me a calling card, but I did have to call them collect the day I moved to my own aparement because the card died, I had no cash on me, my new phone wasn’t hooked up yet, and some drunken fool had crashed his way down Granville the night before, destroying about 20 vehicles including the one I was supposed to use to move my stuff out of the dorm.
I’ve made maybe a 1/2 dozen collect calls in my life, always some combination of circumstances that left me stranded without sufficient change to make the call I needed to make. It’s not an option I use often, but it’s sure nice to have it when you need it, even if it is expensive.
I agree with Broomstick. I think for most people, making a collect call is a rare thing, done only when some unusual set of circumstances makes it necessary.
Maybe one reason for all the ads is that the phone companies are trying to create the impression that “everyone’s doing it” (making frequent collect calls). They make a big profit on collect calls, so they’re trying to persuade people to choose this option rather then something more cost-effective.
