Posted on 09/14/2006 7:42:49 PM PDT by annie laurie
CANTON, Ohio - A widow rented a rotary dial telephone for 42 years, paying what her family calculates as more than $14,000 for a now outdated phone.
Ester Strogen, 82, of Canton, first leased two black rotary phones the kind whose round dial is moved manually with your finger in the 1960s. Back then, the technology was new and owning telephones was unaffordable for most people.
Until two months ago, Strogen was still paying AT&T to use the phones $29.10 a month. Strogen's granddaughters, Melissa Howell and Barb Gordon, ended the arrangement when they discovered the bills.
"I'm outraged," Gordon said. "It made me so mad. It's ridiculous. If my own grandmother was doing it, how many other people are?"
New Jersey-based Lucent Technologies, a spinoff of AT&T that manages the residential leasing service, said customers were given the choice option to opt out of renting in 1985. The number of customers leasing phones dropped from 40 million nationwide to about 750,000 today, he said.
"We will continue to lease sets as long as there is a demand for them," Skalko said.
Benefits of leasing include free replacements and the option of switching to newer models, he said.
Gordon said she believes the majority of people leasing are elderly and may not realize they are paying thousands of dollars for a telephone.
Skalko said bills are clearly marked, and customers can quit their lease any time by returning their phones.
Strogen says she's not a big fan of her new push-button phone.
"I'd like to have my rotary back," she said. "I like that better."
By 1985, she'd already been renting the phone for 20-odd years ... why not at that point (or even sometime during the 20 years since) just GIVE her the darn thing? She'd already paid MANY times its worth, even in 1985.
Sheesh.
Bless her heart.
Es strogen?
yes, I remember that for most of my childhood my parents rented the harvest gold rotary wall phone that we had:)
Heck I still remember our family party line number. Two longs and a short.
Sounds to me like she knew exactly what she was doing.
Sharp eyes you've got there ;-)
"I'm outraged," Gordon said. "It made me so mad. It's ridiculous. If my own grandmother was doing it, how many other people are?"
She's outraged. Well, sorry, but if grandma didn't have more savvy than that, she should have been in a home where she would be taken care of. It's not AT&Ts responsibility to make her change. I happen to have worked for AT&T back then, a little before then, and I had to call people to make them aware of the change. All my people switched over from renting though. I can be very persuasive.
A coworker of mine lives in a rural area and is being booted from Verizon mobile because Verizon has decided it is too costly to provide them service. Verizon then tried to charge him a $150 early contract termination fee.
They come in gold?
I believe this is legitimate revenue for the phone company. If people want to rent phones, let them.
Once you give up the lease you become responsible for all the wiring after it enters your house.
Wonder if she had to pay extra for the little penlike thing with the ball on the end that you use for dialing the rotary.......
oh yeah! I actually saw the exact same one on the set of "that 70's show" in their kitchen:)
oh geeeez! patton's mom had the aqua blue wall mounted rental
on the kitchen wall until we bought this house in 2001...it was
among the first things to leave after they moved. :D
where is this rural area?
Ester Strogen - Estrogen?
She's all woman.
Can not believe that AT&T did not give her that damn Rotary phone...sheeesh.
I've been through at least 5 'modern' phones in the last ten years.
L
That wouldn't be a big deal though, since most phone companies offer inside wiring options. Most I've seen are a buck or two a month. Heck, it's just phone wire, not rocket science. I've never understood why people need to even buy the wiring protection.
Just amazing though that anyone would still lease a phone.
Granny may not have quite understood what was going on. So why didn't the kids taken care of this earlier? When ATT first made the change, we bought my parents new phones for Christmas and ran phone lines for the extension. Mom and Dad thought one phone in the kitchen was plenty. They soon discovered how nice it was to have a phone in the bedroom and the basement too.
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