Good grief, about being "savvy." I'm not elderly or senile and I paid the stupid rent for 20+ years. Didn't get it taken off my bill until about 10 years ago.
No one ever called me up and pointed it out to me. I thought you had to rent them to have decent service. But, at some point after 1985, I just didn't pay attention to the service portion of my bills.
I worked very hard and I also made a ton of LD calls every month, which I did pay attention to. I didn't have time to mess around with $10-15 extra every month. Yes, it added up, but my time *then* was much more valuable to me and I was always on deadline - talking to the phone company for hours (and it was *always* hours) would cost me a lot of lost business if I didn't finish an interview or story or business plan or script or something on time.
I'm sorry. I should have called you.