This Story is Archived
Widow Rented Rotary Phone for 42 Years »
Posted by: jeremytoday 1 year, 11 months agoA widow rented a rotary dial telephone for 42 years, paying what her family calculates as more than $14,000 for a now outdated phone.
Read Full Story at abcnews.go.com »
This Story is Archived and Commenting is Closed
Comments: 47
-
-
happyscrappy
Sept. 14, 2006, 5:14 p.m.ROFLMAO!!!!! what a moron! and she wants the rotary phone back! there's still 750,000 people "leasing" these relics??? that's marvelous scam!
-
mykidsmum
Sept. 14, 2006, 5:44 p.m.They should let her have them for free, and pay her for using them...... and a refund like jeremytoday states.....
I don't think they treated her fairly especially as she's an elderly person and a lot do not read those bills, just pay the bill, especially the small print.....
Give her a credit!!!!
-
TimALoftis
Sept. 14, 2006, 6:40 p.m.simular thing happened with my own Mom. I think she paid out over $1200.00 in rental charges for one of those ugly yellow rotary 'trimline' models before she returned it.
-
-
capn_caveman
Sept. 14, 2006, 11:18 p.m.I guess this is one case where a rent-to-own store would have been a good option.
-
doodlebug
Sept. 14, 2006, 11:29 p.m.I still have a rotary phone in our guest bedroom. Paid Bell Canada $6.20 a month. Talking to a nice lady at Bell about something else one night she told me to phone in the morning and simply tell Bell that I've paid for the phone many times over, I own it. They took the rental charge off my bill.
I've never stopped to calculate how much I've paid for it over the years. It's got to be close to 40 years. OMG!!!
Of course, back then one rented their phones - you couldn't buy one. Except for a piece of crap from K-Tel.
-
pokiesez
Sept. 15, 2006, 12:38 a.m.When I signed up for DSL I had the options to rent a DSL modem or buy it. I bought it, I didn't want to be paying for every month. Somethings don't change.
I think a refund should be offered to the phone renters. Taking advantage of the elderly is not decent way to make a profit. Shame, shame.
-
Elwood3255
Sept. 15, 2006, 12:52 a.m.I used to work for a phone company - they are a bunch of lazy greedy pigs. The management of most of these companies are a bunch of cut throat types that do not give a dam about anyone except themselves. It will be a cold day in hades when this lady gets a refund of the magnitude that most people are advocating. If this gets to be too much of a publicity item for that phone company - they will likely offer to give her a free phone. The lady should at least get her old rotary phone back since she says that she liked that one better.
-
JimEspo
Sept. 15, 2006, 1:29 a.m.Help! Does any one know where I can return this old K-Tel phone I've been using since my great grandfather handed it down to me? I can't find anywhere to hook it in since I moved into my new apartment. I call the phone company from the Seven Eleven a few blocks away and they keep telling me I need to get a phone that works with a "modular phone jack". What's that?
-
oreooreo
Sept. 15, 2006, 9:26 a.m.Couple of points for those of you who can't understand the concept of personal responsibility.
1. She is 82 now, but they started to offer the conversion in 1985 when she would have been 61.
2. Where was her family, that is now griping? When my parents became older my sister and I started to check to make sure things were right with there taxes, p/w etc.
The daughter is probably paying attention now cause this is probably cutting into her anticipated inheritance.
Many of the posts here show once again nobody should be accountable for what they do. She has had 21 years to take action, and if she wasn't able than someone on her behalf had 21 years.
-
-
B1BLancer
Sept. 15, 2006, 10:55 a.m.I'm actually surprised the telephone company equipment would still support pulse dialing.
-
mamasan
Sept. 15, 2006, 11:03 a.m.yep oreo, those people got no right to complain.
Could they not even see the phone was an antique!
Come on if my dad had a phone like that I woulda bought him a new one for Christmas years ago.
Set it up for him too!
-
whislindixi
Sept. 15, 2006, 11:57 a.m.I can see that some of you people have never had the pleasure of dealing with parents and grandparents who refuse to believe that their grown children may know more about something than they do. You can't force them to let you check into bills ,tax payments ect.. You can't force them to use new phones either.
-
CodeNameHawk
Sept. 15, 2006, 12:12 p.m.I remember when MCI had my LD service and they charged 50 cent a minute for each call I made... I never realized different phone companies had lower rates for a good while, and MCI never went down on my phone cost, till I was asking someone else how much they were paying for LD calls... IT was much much cheaper than what I was paying.. I called them -- dont remember what excuse they gave me.. but I changed companies and got it for 25 cents a minute. Then they had the audacity to call me back and offer me 25 cents for LDs. So apparently this is what that phone company did to her. As long as she is a fool (like I was) they will continue to let her be one.
-
saluki
Sept. 15, 2006, 12:26 p.m.I recently found out the my ex-wife was still renting a phone we were using when we got divorced, over 20 years ago. I don't think she was paying as much as the woman in this article, but she should have been checking her bill more carefully.
-
kingofthecounty
Sept. 15, 2006, 1:34 p.m.I know people who still use the same black rotary phone they had installed back in the early 60s!
-
ratoncitosativa420
Sept. 15, 2006, 1:51 p.m.you can still buy vintage rotary phones at the right antique shop for about $40... doubt the plugs are the same though.... and they make new phones that look like rotary phones but they are still push button how lame is that
-
jaxmanjoe
Sept. 15, 2006, 2:01 p.m.Am I wrong, or didn't the traditional 'lease' agreements include service and phone upgrades? It wasn't just a lease but an ongoing support plan.
Not that it justifies anything. Just asking!
Still. This is pretty funny. Everyone - go visit your parents and demand to see their phone bills! Your inheritance might be at stake!
-
-
oreooreo
Sept. 15, 2006, 3:09 p.m.jaxmanjoe:
Don't be silly, its just about looking out for stuff that doen't make sence.
-
joxtol
Sept. 15, 2006, 3:17 p.m.Yet, another reason many people like me will not do business with Southwestern Bell Company/AT&T.
-
Ptolomy
Sept. 15, 2006, 3:33 p.m.This is phenominally stupid. And not what AT&T did. First of all, is the figure of $14,000 based on the $29.10 per month figure? If so, it's WAY out of line as the rental fee has steadily climbed from the VERY low figure that was first charged when phone companies deregulated and started charging or selling phones to their customers, and THAT didn't happen until the 80's, not the 60's. Did the "outraged Gordon" actually sit down, look at every single bill since supposedly the 60's and add up every single bill to get the $14,000? Well, I suppose it's possible but I doubt it. Of course the phone companies still support pulse dialing -they HAVE to. People still have pulse dial phones! And having retired from Pacific Bell, I know something obviously many of you don't. You assume as so many do that the phone companies are making a fortune off these poor elderly people from their little bills. (cont'd.)
-
Ptolomy
Sept. 15, 2006, 3:36 p.m.That's because you take their small monthly bill, add them all up, multiply them by all the years and come up with this (to you) huge figure. What you fail to even look at is what it costs the phone company to SERVICE these accounts. Each and every one of these individuals leasing a phone has to be serviced. Every time the person has any trouble with their phone at all their call has to be service by a trained technician. If their question can't be answered over the phone, a highly paid technician (yes, the same technician who is also trained to repair telephone lines) has to roll a truck out to their home and work on their telephone, even if it was nothing more than a modular phone cord because the leasee didn't know it was the phone cord and refused to be shipped one. After all they were paying for repair visit so send the tech out. PacBell stopped renting phones 'cuz it was costing us THREE times what we were making. So much for the "greedy pigs."
The first 25 comments are shown. Show all 47 comments »
