I usually don’t use public phones, but sometimes I have to, like when the battery on my cell phone is low. Anyway, if you dump in more money than the call cost (like 2 quarters for a 35 cent call) you don’t get change. It’s only 15 cents, but what I really wonder is how much extra income that generates for the phone company. Every other vending machine (which is what a public phone kind of is) gives change. Why not them?
Simplest reason in the world. They don’t want to. And they do have a case that a coin changer and a sufficient number of change coins (1)won’t fit in the standardized pay phone and (2) it would make the phones more prone to vandalism.
Pay phones don’t give change because no one is not going to use one because it doesn’t. You most likely will pass up a candy or soda vending machine if won’t give you change. You can get those products elsewhere.
But if you need a phone, at least in the past, there weren’t any options. I doubt that the money made by keeping the extra change covers the costs of maintaining the phones.
I have been told that Japanese pay phones are sometimes equipped to give change, although most people using public phones in Japan use prepaid cards now.
The phone card is so common and popular in other countries that it is just a matter of a couple years before no phone you want to use will take change.
The airports are already far down that road, and I expect that highly vandalized locations will all follow at some point. Then the change phones will be as rare as dial phones now.
Change? I’d settle for a phone that worked in the first place.
Vandalized phones are a huge problem where I live. The odds are only about 85% that a payphone will work. I have a couple of random theories about why there’s no great effort to fix them or make them vandal-proof.
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All the city big-shots whose job it is to oversee the phone utilities all use cell phones and don’t care squat about whether the payphones work.
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The phone co. wants everyone to get cellphones so they won’t have to deal with payphones at all.
Why can’t they make a self-diagnosing payphone that warns the caller not to deposit coins once the phone has been vandalized!
Sorry for the hijack, but this thread hit a nerve!
I think it is because pay phones were around long before candy machines when the technology for making change was not reliable and much larger (payphone is much smaller then a candy mach.)
as time went on, the payphne companies figured 1: we are use to not getting change 2: it makes us more $ 3: the phones are cheaper w/o change - no reason to give it out
Also I think they can get away with it unlike a candy vending mach. because they do give you credit twards overtime, can you imagine a candy mach giving you 7 extra M&Ms because it couldn’t change a dollar?
[2. The phone co. wants everyone to get cellphones so they won’t have to deal with payphones at all. ]
don’t think so, many payphone companies are loosing alot of revinue due to cell phones