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My Family's $1750 Rotary Dial Phones
My elderly parents have a home phone line with two rotary dial phones that they have been using for over 30 years. They have been paying about $10 a month in rental charges on these phones the entire time. By my calculations, that means that they have likely spent about $1750 dollars in rental fees on each of these phones by now, or $3500 total. For decades I've been trying to encourage them to cancel their phone rental and just buy some $20 phones, but they always refused saying that other phones just weren't as good. The old rotary dial phones have become a great conversation piece around the house, and first time visitors are always amazed to see these antiques still in use.
Well anyway, I decided a few days ago that enough was enough and fired off an email to Bell telling them about the thousands of dollars my parents have spent on their phones and asking nicely if they would stop charging them rental fees. To my surprise a few days later Bell actually responded and agreed to finally stop charging the fees! Now my parents can continue to enjoy their chique rotary dial phones, but without paying a premium for them. My parents have also have never owned a cell phone, but perhaps they'll come around if I get them one of these.
9 comments
Anyway, does that mean you are now working on a pulse dial-up? Must be hell on their phone bill!
That is completely outrageous. And factor in inflation and that figure would be even larger. Maybe next phone call see if they'll refund some of that money, but that might be a tall order.
Mind you those are US dollars, so they're not worth what they used to be.
(AP) 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A widow rented a rotary dial telephone for 42 years, paying what her family calculates as more than $14,000 for a now outdated phone.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. ...
Until two months ago, Strogen was still paying AT&T to use the phones — $29.10 a month.
own your phone when you rented, but the
flipside was that since the phone
company owned them, THEY were
responsible for keeping them in good
repair.
THAT is the reason why phones made prior
to the Bell breakup were virtually
indestructible and rarely wore out. The
phone companies didn't want to be
spending huge sums of cash on repairing
people's phones, so they made them to
NEVER break. That all changed when
Uncle Sam broke up Ma Bell and people
were now allowed to own their own
phones.
Since now the customers were owning the
phones, the phone companies no longer
saw a need to make phones
indestructible which is why all
telephones today are absolute pieces of
crap when it comes to durability.
I'll have to say that I'm 24 years old
and am new age rotary phone fanatic.
I've got six rotary phones in my house,
all of them pre-1984 Ma Bell-made ones.
One was made in 1969, another one in
1956, one from 1973, another one from
1978, and the oldest one from 1941!
ALL of them still work very, very well.
Feel free to email me if anybody wants
to see pics of all my rotary phones.
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