Widow rented rotary phone for 42 years

Yahoo ^ | 9/14/2006 | AP

[PistolPaknMama]

my parents rented the harvest gold rotary wall phone

Impressive! We just had the standard black desk phone.

[NautiNurse]

F&F covered this story a little while ago. They also mentioned Lucent made it a tad difficult to return the phone, eventually Lucent agreed to pay for return shipping.

[OregonRancher]

Good old highway 50, I know it well....

[KosmicKitty]

How many other people?

My father.

Finally got him to believe me that we could buy our own phones back in 1992. He's so stubborn, it took me 2 years to get him to even call the phone company to find out we didn't have to use their phones.

[Mr. Jeeves]

Es Strogen gave those bad men a pause.

~groan~ ...but LOL! ;)

[riverdawg]

"... pre-plastic material"

Probably Bakelite, which was commonly used for telephone housings before 1950 or so. I think it is considered an early type of plastic, although it is harder than modern plastics. I have a restored Art-Deco style Bakelite phone from the 1930's with no rotary dial; so the phone will ring and receive incoming calls but you can't use it to dial out. (I'm thinking about putting it in our daughter's room!)

[HamiltonJay]

$30 a month though? Come on... clearly taking advantage of elderly who fear change.

[old-ager]

> Bakelite

Right; I could not recall the word. Brittle, flaky brown or black stuff. Phenolic was another word that came to mind.

[old-ager]

> can't use it to dial out

You actually can, if you click out the digits on the earpiece hanger. It's not very hard. 1 is one click (brief hang-up). 2=2, and so on. The system is pretty tolerant of inexact timing. Try it!

[Shimmer128]

Yeah, but i pay $4.50 to cover that each month. Not $29!!! :O

[Shimmer128]

Oh my, I didn't catch that. What a hoot! Estrogen. (face down on the desk, laughing)
I thought estrogen helped you to think, or keep a clear mind or something.
Maybe not! :D

[Shimmer128]

Not true, they hired people to call and explain, they mailed notices. That's just your dislike of businesses showing, it's not accurate in this case I understand, i dislike big business too, but that's not what happened here.

*as i posted somewhere, I was one of those hired and that was my duty for a time. I have a way with talking to people, even strangers, they put me over that and i enjoyed the variety of it.

[dighton]

I encountered much the same while helping a friend tidy up her mess of bills^*. What she assumed was a fee for inside wiring or some such thing, was in fact the lease on some ancient phone, long since removed (though not returned) and forgotten.

^*See Augean stables.

[stands2reason]

You can't buy a corded phone at Walmart anymore?

I always have one plugged into a room I don't use much.

[bert]

...Sounds to me like she knew exactly what she was doing.....

She suffered from Future Shock. She was unable to accept the change in telephone service that was thrust upon her.

[HairOfTheDog]

Oh - I'm sure you can. Was just thinking I could pick one up for a couple bucks as a spare.

[stands2reason]

Not necessarily....

http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=:633375&id=I123

[stands2reason]

They have em at the Dollar Store too... $3

[HairOfTheDog]

Can't beat that!

[rwfromkansas]

You can buy a new phone for the price of one monthly rental.....idiotic.

But, old people don’t know better.

I also didn’t know phones were new in the late 1960s...news to me.