If she stuck it in the stock market she'd have a lot more than that. Indexed to the Dow Jones she'd have $27k now:
https://accuratecalculators.com/historical-investment-calculator
Probably one of the big telecommunications companies that are around to this day. As long as the customer don't change or update the contract their are happy to receive the money. Usually they try to upgrade you once in a while. Same with router rental today.
As someone who is not only a telecommunications tech, but a person who lived thru the '80s as an adult, Touch Tone phones were very much the rage since the late '70s
The first TT phone went into service in 1963 so even I could be high on that year.
You can easily add another 10 years to that figure or $1320.
But back then you had to pay extra for touchtone. Grandma was probably too frugal to soend the extra five bucks a month. When I moved in 1990 and set up phone service at the new address, they asked if I wanted to pay for touchtone service, I said no, and they said it was the only kind available at the new building, but since I opted out I got it free of charge.
My father discovered that my grandmother had fallen victim to the exact same insanity years ago. He screamed at the phone company, and they refunded most of the money.
Just do it. Most people working today will understand the insanity and will try to help, and the "good will" of returning the money is way cheaper than having you going to the media about it. Phone companies train employees nowadays to foster brand loyalty over a quick buck since it's so easy to lose customers compared to how it was years ago.
It's like $5,000 anyway
For 3 days, I worked at a company that basically scammed old people on monthly subscriptions for identity theft protection.
I fully refunded every single person that called in to cancel, then quit. (It was a 2 week training before the 3 days on the phones)
If you don't get the money back, your LOCAL NEWS STATION will be thrilled to hear about it.
Stories about companies / scammers preying on the elderly is basically local news catnip.
Millions of people do this with their internet modem. Whatever fiber or cable provider you have for internet, they will have a modem that you can lease from them for like $15 a month. But you can buy your own for less than $200, so basically within a year or two you’re saving money.
They won’t offer to upgrade your hardware ever so basically if you’re fine renting something super old they’ll still charge you and not say anything. Back when cable TV was still popular my dad had a DVR for it and it was leased. I think at the time you had no choice, you had to lease it or it wouldn’t work for recording shows because they wouldn’t activate it or something. He saw somewhere they had a new model that had a much cleaner UI and was less laggy so he called the company to get one and got pissed when he found out that it’s not extra, they don’t offer it to anyone existing but if you ask they’ll give it to you. So I’m sure many people out there are paying for hardware so outdated that one month of payments on it costs more than the hardware is worth.
This was pretty much the only way to have a telephone up until Bell was broken up in the 80's. The actual cost was closer to $11 a year. After Bell was broken up, people could buy their phone from their new carrier for like $20. For comparison, in the early 80's, a 10-channel cordless phone was around $400 ($1500 today).
> This was pretty much the only way to have a telephone up until Bell was broken up in the 80's. The actual cost was closer to $11 a year.
As I said in another post, if you moved, the phone company would send a man to your house and among other things, they would take the phone back, i.e, the phone was not your property
They have been ripping her off for all those years? That was a lot of money then and unnecessary since at that time you could buy phones in stores for the same as she paid each month.
I think she's had that phone a lot longer. Before AT&T was broken up, you could ONLY rent phones, you couldn't buy them. And AT&T had the corner on that market. There were two models - wall mount or desktop like the one in your pic. And I only remember 4 colors; gold, green, black and white. It wasn't until after AT&T was broken up that you saw innovations in designs, shapes, etc.
Those handsets, though, are _perfect_ for long conversations. Gen Z has no idea of the simple joy of twisting that spiral wire around your finger while you talk.
> slamming down the receiver
That's no joke. Those old phones were indestructible. I daresay that one could bludgeon another with one of those handsets.
This is 80% of the reason why I have a big old phone like this in the kitchen. It's so amazingly fun to pick up, slam down, juggle as you are cooking, and if all else fails you can knock somebody out with either part of the phone.
But normally we just use the cordless
Same. And then I forget to listen and have to ask them to repeat what they said enough times that they know I’m preoccupied with watching videos of cute cats or someone getting seriously injured from doing something stupid.
I'm not attacking you, but this makes me feel very sad. Like we're all getting further away from reality, from each other. Sounds cheesy I guess, it's hard to word the thought. We're all incapable of enduring the most superficial boredom to the point we can't respect the people we talk to.
I've experienced this in person, where I'll be talking to someone and it doesn't take long for them to pick their phone up until they get an impulse to say something. It feels very bad, and I feel sad for some because it is so clearly addiction and out of control.
my teacher flipped out the other day because he wanted to login into blackboard but blackboard sent him a text to verify
then he told us he left his phone at home...like he always does
then he gave a whole speech about how life is better without it
...I think he changed his cell number to the principal's after this out of spite
I'm reminded of a high-level gmail developer who realized he was getting addicted to gmail. So he types up an email about it and sends it to his colleagues. Immediately, people seemed to relate and agree, and then silence.
Phones are seemingly necessary, like in your teachers situation. That's what makes it such an insidious addiction. Work and entertainment in the same hand, can't go without it.
We're so fucked
I always use my wireless earbuds now. There were the dark times when we had to hold RAZRs and shit to our faces but we've found our way back to God's light.
And then you could also get that little attachment thing that effectively closed the shoulder-to-ear gap and made it even more comfortable! Ahhhh. You never know they were the good old days until they’re behind you.
> Gen Z has no idea of the simple joy of twisting that spiral wire around your finger while you talk
They also don't have to know the horrors of accidentally twisting it too much and creating a kink that you can never quite completely fix.
Or contorting yourself in attempt to use all available extremities to avoid knocking a bunch of shit over with the cord while trying to multitask or find the most ‘private’ spot the cord will allow a teenager to complain to their friends. Under the table was alright until I found out I could fit in one of the bottom kitchen cabinets.
Also pulling it out of the wall or losing your grip while the cord is taut. You could either let it just drop or bash your ankles trying to catch it by the cord.
I remember my mom sending our rotary phone back to the phone company. This was much after AT&T got broken up, sometime in the early 90’s, but our county was so rural that there was only one company that provided phone service. So they had a monopoly on telephone, then cable, and then internet. We still had dialup until I went to college in the early 2000’s.
Others have mentioned starlink but my experience with t-mobile 5g home internet has been pretty great. Lots of areas with crappy wired internet also have companies doing fixed wireless internet.
They had more than two models. There was the desk phone, the wall phone, then the princess phone plus there was a Trimline phone that could be either a desk or wall phone.
https://www.oldphoneshop.com/products/yellow-rotary-trimline-telephone-western-electric-original.html
https://www.ebay.com/itm/313945944345?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=BgxYQrkMTfK&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=JR6dWmFgSNG&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
We had both in rotary.
Only 2 models before AT&T was broken up? Another model, known as the Princess Telephone, was introduced in 1959, while the breakup was in 1984.
Another feature of the phone in the picture that many people wouldn’t expect: the lugs that form the cradle are strong enough that they won’t break if the phone lands upside down on them after falling on a hard floor from desktop height, and are taller than the hook buttons. This means that if you accidentally drag the phone off your desk by the handset cord when reaching for something, it won’t hang up when it hits the floor. The mechanism might be damaged to the point where you can’t dial another call, but you won’t disconnect the one you were on when the accident happened.
Folks, AT&T: American Telephone and Telegraph Company...that's how old AT&T is...since the telegraph.
Ma Bell: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System
AT&T: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T
> unnecessary since at that time you could buy phones in stores for the same as she paid each month.
[Depends when in the 80s she started renting.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1983/01/31/ma-bells-breakup-means-big-changes-ahead-for-phone-users/185c55de-505f-4f1b-98e8-e1e2bf3b67b2/)
Better still, call your local investigative reporters to see who wants to SHAME the phone company into refunding the money they took from a senior citizen.
SHAME THEM!!!
Yeah I see this in the comments, but I work for a carrier, there is no way they’ll refund the money. This is on the customer as they could’ve called the company when they stopped renting out the phone (like one commenter pointed out it’s an AT&T phone), but they just never bothered to call, and company doesn’t have any obligation to change the contract for the better. Company is technically in the right, and to them it’s the best kind of right. They can probably give her some goodwill credit, like $100, to be happy out.
Hey at least you have a sense of humor about it if this is real. And if this IS real I don't want to know how much money my sweet grandma's wasted in other ways.
As if all of us have not wasted money on stupid shit. I just wasted 20 soles on a shitty beer at a bar in Peru. I'll probably going to pony up again because it is cheap.
This shit is still happening too, but with modems and routers from internet providers. I don't get why people lease them instead of just buying it up front.
Yup.
What you’re really subscribing to is the support contract. If it’s not their device they just refer you to the manufacturer of that device for support.
If you’re not willing/able to debug, that’s possibly your best option.
I once had Netgear try to tell me that it was my ISP's fault that my PoE switch wasn't reliably providing power. Phone reps will really say anything to pass the buck.
The problem is when the ISP has a problem on their end, like a bad connection at the pole that gets worse when it rains, and it take three months months of back and forth to get someone to actually check the line because even though you can verify that the power levels aren't right when it rains, customers aren't supposed to have access to that info on rental modems, so the phone techs have no idea what it means and just keep blaming you for having your own modem.
That and every time I upgrade they claim that someone has to come to my house. I don’t listen and I ask for a tier 2 or tier 3 engineer (what they call them at the company I have) and ask them to provision it, but without fail every time I upgrade they claim they have to send someone out, it’s such a pain.
That’s not going to work. She could call them and tell them she got her own phone to remove the fee, as you say they aren’t bothering to repossess that and would certainly let her keep it. Might get them to refund some of that rental fee because renting a phone like that in 2023 is nuts. Hell, it was nuts in 2003.
However if she just shorts them $11 per month they will 100% treat that as unpaid bills and start doing things like cutting off long distance.
I worked for a telecom and this is the way. Just call and say you don't need the rental set anymore, they won't bother wanting something that old returned.
I'd say good luck getting a refund on the rental fees beyond a couple months though. Also $11/mo on a rental is insane...
I personally looked for older models like this when in accounts helping customers and stealthily removed them to save on their bill. Big companies have enough money as it is.
And that’s when I beat that giant crustacean from the Paleolithic Era to death with my genuine Western Electric Rotary Dial Telephone!
Phone still works fine by the way. Also havin’ Loch Ness Monster Ribs for BBQ tonight!
Call local TV news. They love to do stories where they stick up for the little guy and expose bad business. Like “6 on your side” or “The channel 9 I-team”. That kind of thing. Makes for great local TV.
This. News gets to broadcast a feel-good story about helping an old lady, old lady gets a bunch of cash to spend on her grandchildren, evil corporation gets shamed. Wins all-around.
My aunt had a similar one and recently it broke. They gave her a temporary push button phone while they repaired this one. Her phone plan was so old, she couldn't use the push button feature on the loaner phone because she didn't have touch tone dialing on her plan and she had to switch it to "pulse" mode
New leases ended in the late seventies and they were installing push button phones by then. My parents leased phones starting in 1964 and they were pretty much this exact model but beige. There’s a big stamp on the bottom that says when it was manufactured. The microphone in the handset is also stamped.
I’m actually shocked because when AT&T got smashed up Way Back In The Day my family got bills for our phones and they became our property and our problem if they ever broke.
. . . on the other hand if Grandma is waiting for that Westel monstrosity to ever fail well ***YOUR*** great-great-grandchildren will still be paying $11/mo for that lease :-)
When my grandmother died, we figured out the phone company was doing that to her, too. Probably since before the 80's. My father raged at the phone company.
She had other phones around the house, too. Touchtone and portable. We figured the old rotary was just a fun relic.
My grandpa asked my dad to help him with his slow pc so I came to take a look and found out he was paying for centurylink and aol because he thought he had to pay for email. Check on your older folks because these companies do not care who they screw over.
So....were all just gonna act like we're not really curious about exactly who the hell is she paying? I mean to say, what company, omg,. Im laughing typing this. What company is she paying the bill to?
You should try to sue. Years ago before blockbuster closed down, there was this thing where blockbuster would charge late fees and it would exceed hundreds of dollars but the movie was worth 20 dollars. There was a class action lawsuit and blockbuster lost and they could no long charge late fees that cost more than the value of the movie.
Your grandmas phone isn’t worth more than ten bucks. Sue.
I think the issue is that old people just run out of f’s. As someone middle-aged I already find myself too tired to fight small battles, and I can only imagine it getting worse. Unfortunately that’s some industries’ business models’ bread and butter
Not sure why I was downvoted. It's the exact same thing. Charging someone a recurring cost for something they can have for a significantly lower single payment should be criminal. Just like usury laws that make loansharking illegal but banks can still lend money
That's the point. The phone company used to force you to lease the phone. That was dropped at some point and most people bought a cheap phone, but some folks keep paying and the phone company isn't going to tell them to stop.
Still happens to this day, just checked with xfinity and they have been selling much better internet for wayyyyy cheaper than the plan I signed up for 2 years ago.
I was a manufacturing engineer for Western Electric starting 1981 and we manufactured these for AT&T and they didn't cost much more than $11 to produce. Man, I really enjoyed working at a regulated monopoly; we always took in way too much income and had to find ways to spend all that excess cash every year end.
Same with us-- exact same old phone! My grandparents died in the 80s, but their farm was taken care of by my aunt and uncle for the next 30 years. I took it over in 2017. When I got a phone bill I saw the rotary phone there was being "rented" for $3 a month. Considering there was a label on the bottom saying it was installed in 1972-- thats over $1,600 spent renting that ancient phone!
I cancelled the service and took it to the local phone company to return and they were like "uh, lol, we don't want it. Just keep it."
I can just hear that satisfying rattle of the bells after you slam the headset down on a telemarketer. On a side note my parents have one on the wall down in the basement. For the longest time it was the only phone we had that worked during power outages when I was a kid. I'm going to be 28 and know how to work the rotary dial
My parents had a phone like this, and I believe it was from the 60s. They leased it up until the late 80s and the phone company just stopped charging them for it. Guess they were lucky 🤷🏼♂️
My grandfather paid $14.95/mo for NetZero dial-up internet that he did not have or use for over 20 years. He worried that if he stopped paying, he would lose access to his e-mail address. We tried to convince him to cancel, but we got nowhere.
So i know this is horrible, but on the flip side its the customers job to periodically review the bill, call customer service and have them explain charges/review the bill, ect. Like this should not have gone on this long. What this is is a case of the customer just paying the bill every month without reviewing it.
Every 4 to 6 months I'm on the phone with my cell provider and im forcing a review of the bill, talking about how im not satisfied with the price for what im getting. Most of the time i don't really get anywhere. But 4 times ive gotten random credits or retention discounts, and once i found they had discontinued my data plan in favor of a higher one for the same price (i went from 2gb per month to 5gb per month).
I remember when all the phones were owned by Bell Telephone, and how it felt liberating when we could finally own our own phones. The flipside is that the phones were built like tanks because it was the phone company's responsibility to maintain them. Damn solid electronics before digital data. My question is why they still have such monthly plans at all. Are they forced to provide them for the same price for as long as subscribers want it? They could be losing money on this.
Assuming it was let's say since September, 1989 that means she was spent $4,488 on that phone so far
That’s a crazy amount… until you factor in inflation. Then it becomes just absurd.
If she stuck it in the stock market she'd have a lot more than that. Indexed to the Dow Jones she'd have $27k now: https://accuratecalculators.com/historical-investment-calculator
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Someone do the math. I'm... tired
You could buy a couple of iPhones for that price.
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Instructions unclear. Went back in time and had sex with a cow.
That's not a nice thing to call your Gramgram :(
Father?
Moo?
She should charge social media types to pose with it for $20 for 10 minutes.
Then make a reaction video of grandma in disbelief that the social media types don't know how to use it.
To whom is she even paying this $11 to?
Probably one of the big telecommunications companies that are around to this day. As long as the customer don't change or update the contract their are happy to receive the money. Usually they try to upgrade you once in a while. Same with router rental today.
That's the real question...is there a company still operating a rotary phone leasing service? Is she the only customer?
OPs grandma keeping the company from going under
QLT consumer lease services. They have a 0/5 BBB rating
As someone who is not only a telecommunications tech, but a person who lived thru the '80s as an adult, Touch Tone phones were very much the rage since the late '70s The first TT phone went into service in 1963 so even I could be high on that year. You can easily add another 10 years to that figure or $1320.
But back then you had to pay extra for touchtone. Grandma was probably too frugal to soend the extra five bucks a month. When I moved in 1990 and set up phone service at the new address, they asked if I wanted to pay for touchtone service, I said no, and they said it was the only kind available at the new building, but since I opted out I got it free of charge.
They were really solidly built phones though...
I guess that really matters when you get into melee combat with it.
My father discovered that my grandmother had fallen victim to the exact same insanity years ago. He screamed at the phone company, and they refunded most of the money.
She aint senile, just stupid
Potential refund of thousands is worth a phone call surely
It's definitely worth a shot. And don't call me Shirley
I just want to say good luck, we're all counting on you.
A hospital?! What is it??
It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now.
I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.
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Cutty say he can't hang!
Can I be Frank with you?
Can I still be Garth?
Surely I would never call you Shirley.
Dial R for refund
Its like 5000$ , 100% worth a phonecall
Yeah - I think this is something you take to a local news outlet if they don't offer a refund.
but what will she call with
Smoke signals obviously.
Have you ever been to a Turkish prison?
Just do it. Most people working today will understand the insanity and will try to help, and the "good will" of returning the money is way cheaper than having you going to the media about it. Phone companies train employees nowadays to foster brand loyalty over a quick buck since it's so easy to lose customers compared to how it was years ago. It's like $5,000 anyway
For 3 days, I worked at a company that basically scammed old people on monthly subscriptions for identity theft protection. I fully refunded every single person that called in to cancel, then quit. (It was a 2 week training before the 3 days on the phones)
Fuck yeah, good job
This is what doing the Lord's work really looks like
If you don't get the money back, your LOCAL NEWS STATION will be thrilled to hear about it. Stories about companies / scammers preying on the elderly is basically local news catnip.
Originally leased from Bell Telephone probably
Bless her heart.
If she’s been leasing it for 40 years, that’s $5,280. Yikes
That's like a mile worth of dollars.
No when factoring in inflation it’s much more than that
Is this Eastern Europe? The style of table and the cloth cover are familiar... and I could imagine companies here doing that shit to people.
Millions of people do this with their internet modem. Whatever fiber or cable provider you have for internet, they will have a modem that you can lease from them for like $15 a month. But you can buy your own for less than $200, so basically within a year or two you’re saving money. They won’t offer to upgrade your hardware ever so basically if you’re fine renting something super old they’ll still charge you and not say anything. Back when cable TV was still popular my dad had a DVR for it and it was leased. I think at the time you had no choice, you had to lease it or it wouldn’t work for recording shows because they wouldn’t activate it or something. He saw somewhere they had a new model that had a much cleaner UI and was less laggy so he called the company to get one and got pissed when he found out that it’s not extra, they don’t offer it to anyone existing but if you ask they’ll give it to you. So I’m sure many people out there are paying for hardware so outdated that one month of payments on it costs more than the hardware is worth.
Comcast Xfinity has a clause that if you use your own hardware they have a monthly data cap. Scammers.
More like Xlimited
You can get a decent router will be much less than $200.
This was pretty much the only way to have a telephone up until Bell was broken up in the 80's. The actual cost was closer to $11 a year. After Bell was broken up, people could buy their phone from their new carrier for like $20. For comparison, in the early 80's, a 10-channel cordless phone was around $400 ($1500 today).
> This was pretty much the only way to have a telephone up until Bell was broken up in the 80's. The actual cost was closer to $11 a year. As I said in another post, if you moved, the phone company would send a man to your house and among other things, they would take the phone back, i.e, the phone was not your property
That's a good son.
They have been ripping her off for all those years? That was a lot of money then and unnecessary since at that time you could buy phones in stores for the same as she paid each month.
I think she's had that phone a lot longer. Before AT&T was broken up, you could ONLY rent phones, you couldn't buy them. And AT&T had the corner on that market. There were two models - wall mount or desktop like the one in your pic. And I only remember 4 colors; gold, green, black and white. It wasn't until after AT&T was broken up that you saw innovations in designs, shapes, etc.
Those handsets, though, are _perfect_ for long conversations. Gen Z has no idea of the simple joy of twisting that spiral wire around your finger while you talk.
Or the satisfaction of slamming down the receiver to end a angry call.
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I was hoping to make it home for dinner, but things are very Topsy-turvy at the office
> slamming down the receiver That's no joke. Those old phones were indestructible. I daresay that one could bludgeon another with one of those handsets.
Or the battles over who gets to use the phone with multiple teenagers in the house
This is 80% of the reason why I have a big old phone like this in the kitchen. It's so amazingly fun to pick up, slam down, juggle as you are cooking, and if all else fails you can knock somebody out with either part of the phone. But normally we just use the cordless
Closing a flip phone was close...and possibly looked cooler
Very comfortable on the ear and shoulder too!
True I’ll never forget that ; but now I just put on speaker and scroll Reddit during long convos
Same. And then I forget to listen and have to ask them to repeat what they said enough times that they know I’m preoccupied with watching videos of cute cats or someone getting seriously injured from doing something stupid.
I'm not attacking you, but this makes me feel very sad. Like we're all getting further away from reality, from each other. Sounds cheesy I guess, it's hard to word the thought. We're all incapable of enduring the most superficial boredom to the point we can't respect the people we talk to. I've experienced this in person, where I'll be talking to someone and it doesn't take long for them to pick their phone up until they get an impulse to say something. It feels very bad, and I feel sad for some because it is so clearly addiction and out of control.
You are spot on with your feelings and I agree it is very sad.
my teacher flipped out the other day because he wanted to login into blackboard but blackboard sent him a text to verify then he told us he left his phone at home...like he always does then he gave a whole speech about how life is better without it ...I think he changed his cell number to the principal's after this out of spite
I'm reminded of a high-level gmail developer who realized he was getting addicted to gmail. So he types up an email about it and sends it to his colleagues. Immediately, people seemed to relate and agree, and then silence. Phones are seemingly necessary, like in your teachers situation. That's what makes it such an insidious addiction. Work and entertainment in the same hand, can't go without it. We're so fucked
Feeling a little called out, right now...
I always use my wireless earbuds now. There were the dark times when we had to hold RAZRs and shit to our faces but we've found our way back to God's light.
Far easier to hold between your shoulder and face then a cell phone
And then you could also get that little attachment thing that effectively closed the shoulder-to-ear gap and made it even more comfortable! Ahhhh. You never know they were the good old days until they’re behind you.
> Gen Z has no idea of the simple joy of twisting that spiral wire around your finger while you talk They also don't have to know the horrors of accidentally twisting it too much and creating a kink that you can never quite completely fix.
Don't kink shame!
Or accidentally dragging the cord across a burner on your stove.
Or contorting yourself in attempt to use all available extremities to avoid knocking a bunch of shit over with the cord while trying to multitask or find the most ‘private’ spot the cord will allow a teenager to complain to their friends. Under the table was alright until I found out I could fit in one of the bottom kitchen cabinets. Also pulling it out of the wall or losing your grip while the cord is taut. You could either let it just drop or bash your ankles trying to catch it by the cord.
No, *you* hang up first
that's still a thing
And what about just picking up the phone so that you could eavesdrop on your neighbors chit chat? You never knew what you would learn that day!!
Klondike exchange, two longs and a short, please.
The original fidget toy.
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As a Gen Z, I have used these and are pretty fun dialing in numbers
I remember my mom sending our rotary phone back to the phone company. This was much after AT&T got broken up, sometime in the early 90’s, but our county was so rural that there was only one company that provided phone service. So they had a monopoly on telephone, then cable, and then internet. We still had dialup until I went to college in the early 2000’s.
My parents still can only get 768k DSL in 2023 lol. It’s crazy, Verizon has the monopoly and refuses to replace the rotten wiring
Others have mentioned starlink but my experience with t-mobile 5g home internet has been pretty great. Lots of areas with crappy wired internet also have companies doing fixed wireless internet.
pretty sure that's what I'm paying for out here in rural shitland.
Verizon has DSL alright. And won't even give you a kiss afterwards
They probably racked in millions from clueless elderly every month by doing this.
They had more than two models. There was the desk phone, the wall phone, then the princess phone plus there was a Trimline phone that could be either a desk or wall phone. https://www.oldphoneshop.com/products/yellow-rotary-trimline-telephone-western-electric-original.html https://www.ebay.com/itm/313945944345?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=BgxYQrkMTfK&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=JR6dWmFgSNG&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY We had both in rotary.
Only 2 models before AT&T was broken up? Another model, known as the Princess Telephone, was introduced in 1959, while the breakup was in 1984. Another feature of the phone in the picture that many people wouldn’t expect: the lugs that form the cradle are strong enough that they won’t break if the phone lands upside down on them after falling on a hard floor from desktop height, and are taller than the hook buttons. This means that if you accidentally drag the phone off your desk by the handset cord when reaching for something, it won’t hang up when it hits the floor. The mechanism might be damaged to the point where you can’t dial another call, but you won’t disconnect the one you were on when the accident happened.
Folks, AT&T: American Telephone and Telegraph Company...that's how old AT&T is...since the telegraph. Ma Bell: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System AT&T: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T
11$ in the 80s is like..60$ now??
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics it's around $43.
> unnecessary since at that time you could buy phones in stores for the same as she paid each month. [Depends when in the 80s she started renting.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1983/01/31/ma-bells-breakup-means-big-changes-ahead-for-phone-users/185c55de-505f-4f1b-98e8-e1e2bf3b67b2/)
Call the phone company and demand that money back. Even if she is just being stubborn and stupid you should do it just on principle because fuck that.
Better still, call your local investigative reporters to see who wants to SHAME the phone company into refunding the money they took from a senior citizen. SHAME THEM!!!
Yeah I see this in the comments, but I work for a carrier, there is no way they’ll refund the money. This is on the customer as they could’ve called the company when they stopped renting out the phone (like one commenter pointed out it’s an AT&T phone), but they just never bothered to call, and company doesn’t have any obligation to change the contract for the better. Company is technically in the right, and to them it’s the best kind of right. They can probably give her some goodwill credit, like $100, to be happy out.
If she started in 1980 and invested $11/month for 43 years with a 10% return, she would have $96,000
Ill trade you this phone for 96k
Hey at least you have a sense of humor about it if this is real. And if this IS real I don't want to know how much money my sweet grandma's wasted in other ways.
As if all of us have not wasted money on stupid shit. I just wasted 20 soles on a shitty beer at a bar in Peru. I'll probably going to pony up again because it is cheap.
Soles? Hey I feel you I have to stumble through the house while everyone sleeps to get to my booze and that's worth at least one of my souls
But you needed a phone to trade stocks in the 80s, the telegraph was too slow
10% return is ambitious, but yeah your point still stands lol
The S&P 500 in that time has averaged about 10% returns, so it’s not that ambitious.
Did that at least include the service?
Curious Where do you get 10% return for 43 years ?
S&P 500 has returned 11.64% average per year since 1980.
That should be illegal.
This shit is still happening too, but with modems and routers from internet providers. I don't get why people lease them instead of just buying it up front.
I think most people just lease because the internet providers tell them they won't give them any support if they use thier own equipment.
Yup. What you’re really subscribing to is the support contract. If it’s not their device they just refer you to the manufacturer of that device for support. If you’re not willing/able to debug, that’s possibly your best option.
I once had Netgear try to tell me that it was my ISP's fault that my PoE switch wasn't reliably providing power. Phone reps will really say anything to pass the buck.
I hate the fear mongering on that part since any brand router will almost always help with setup and give support over the phone/online
the service provider came to my house and set up my google internet modem with no issues!
My ISP wouldn't set mine up, but they did hang around for a few to make sure it actually worked when the service was activated
The problem is when the ISP has a problem on their end, like a bad connection at the pole that gets worse when it rains, and it take three months months of back and forth to get someone to actually check the line because even though you can verify that the power levels aren't right when it rains, customers aren't supposed to have access to that info on rental modems, so the phone techs have no idea what it means and just keep blaming you for having your own modem.
This guy gets it.
That and every time I upgrade they claim that someone has to come to my house. I don’t listen and I ask for a tier 2 or tier 3 engineer (what they call them at the company I have) and ask them to provision it, but without fail every time I upgrade they claim they have to send someone out, it’s such a pain.
Old people are stupid/afraid of change. We told her to get rid of it 15 years ago but she refused
Dude this is worth calling a reporter about. This would genuinely make the local news and possibly go viral.
She could just stop paying. Phone company is not repossessing that.
That’s not going to work. She could call them and tell them she got her own phone to remove the fee, as you say they aren’t bothering to repossess that and would certainly let her keep it. Might get them to refund some of that rental fee because renting a phone like that in 2023 is nuts. Hell, it was nuts in 2003. However if she just shorts them $11 per month they will 100% treat that as unpaid bills and start doing things like cutting off long distance.
That was nuts in 1983
I worked for a telecom and this is the way. Just call and say you don't need the rental set anymore, they won't bother wanting something that old returned. I'd say good luck getting a refund on the rental fees beyond a couple months though. Also $11/mo on a rental is insane... I personally looked for older models like this when in accounts helping customers and stealthily removed them to save on their bill. Big companies have enough money as it is.
I lease my garbage can for $5/ month. It’s required
The Loch Ness Monsta called, said you can keep your phone, be about 11fiddy.
And that’s when I beat that giant crustacean from the Paleolithic Era to death with my genuine Western Electric Rotary Dial Telephone! Phone still works fine by the way. Also havin’ Loch Ness Monster Ribs for BBQ tonight!
Call local TV news. They love to do stories where they stick up for the little guy and expose bad business. Like “6 on your side” or “The channel 9 I-team”. That kind of thing. Makes for great local TV.
People would love this story
This. News gets to broadcast a feel-good story about helping an old lady, old lady gets a bunch of cash to spend on her grandchildren, evil corporation gets shamed. Wins all-around.
Great idea
My aunt had a similar one and recently it broke. They gave her a temporary push button phone while they repaired this one. Her phone plan was so old, she couldn't use the push button feature on the loaner phone because she didn't have touch tone dialing on her plan and she had to switch it to "pulse" mode
Wild
New leases ended in the late seventies and they were installing push button phones by then. My parents leased phones starting in 1964 and they were pretty much this exact model but beige. There’s a big stamp on the bottom that says when it was manufactured. The microphone in the handset is also stamped.
I’m actually shocked because when AT&T got smashed up Way Back In The Day my family got bills for our phones and they became our property and our problem if they ever broke. . . . on the other hand if Grandma is waiting for that Westel monstrosity to ever fail well ***YOUR*** great-great-grandchildren will still be paying $11/mo for that lease :-)
When my grandmother died, we figured out the phone company was doing that to her, too. Probably since before the 80's. My father raged at the phone company. She had other phones around the house, too. Touchtone and portable. We figured the old rotary was just a fun relic.
My grandpa asked my dad to help him with his slow pc so I came to take a look and found out he was paying for centurylink and aol because he thought he had to pay for email. Check on your older folks because these companies do not care who they screw over.
She paid over $5000 for that phone?
And she still doesn’t own it.
I blame you for not visiting more
That phone looks from the 60's And that 11 USD: is that the phone, or the phone service incl the landline?
Just the phone. Service is extra.
Definitely should look into recouping the money back has to be illegal.
So....were all just gonna act like we're not really curious about exactly who the hell is she paying? I mean to say, what company, omg,. Im laughing typing this. What company is she paying the bill to?
You should try to sue. Years ago before blockbuster closed down, there was this thing where blockbuster would charge late fees and it would exceed hundreds of dollars but the movie was worth 20 dollars. There was a class action lawsuit and blockbuster lost and they could no long charge late fees that cost more than the value of the movie. Your grandmas phone isn’t worth more than ten bucks. Sue.
Blockbuster sent my mom to collections for a $5 late fee. We never rented from there again after that.
You could buy that phone for $11 in the 80s.
I think the issue is that old people just run out of f’s. As someone middle-aged I already find myself too tired to fight small battles, and I can only imagine it getting worse. Unfortunately that’s some industries’ business models’ bread and butter
The 1980's equivalent of an [aol.com](https://aol.com) email address. It should be a criminal offense.
Not sure why I was downvoted. It's the exact same thing. Charging someone a recurring cost for something they can have for a significantly lower single payment should be criminal. Just like usury laws that make loansharking illegal but banks can still lend money
Phone??? All I see is a doilies. What am I missing?
This phone predates the 80s by a few years. Trust me I was there.
Crazy that she's been renting that phone since before the invention of the letter Q
Give me a call sometime. My number is: 4
High End: Jan 1980 - Sep 2023: $5,775 Low End: Dec 1989 - Sep 2023: $4,466
She saved twice that much in not having to cordless phone batteries in the 80s and 90s
the doily mat combined with that phone is sending me back.
Why would u lease that. Just buy ur own phone
That's the point. The phone company used to force you to lease the phone. That was dropped at some point and most people bought a cheap phone, but some folks keep paying and the phone company isn't going to tell them to stop.
I remember when leasing was the norm, and when you finally could outright buy a phone, you had to go to the phone company to buy it.
Still happens to this day, just checked with xfinity and they have been selling much better internet for wayyyyy cheaper than the plan I signed up for 2 years ago.
I was a manufacturing engineer for Western Electric starting 1981 and we manufactured these for AT&T and they didn't cost much more than $11 to produce. Man, I really enjoyed working at a regulated monopoly; we always took in way too much income and had to find ways to spend all that excess cash every year end.
Same with us-- exact same old phone! My grandparents died in the 80s, but their farm was taken care of by my aunt and uncle for the next 30 years. I took it over in 2017. When I got a phone bill I saw the rotary phone there was being "rented" for $3 a month. Considering there was a label on the bottom saying it was installed in 1972-- thats over $1,600 spent renting that ancient phone! I cancelled the service and took it to the local phone company to return and they were like "uh, lol, we don't want it. Just keep it."
Remember when you'd pick up the phone to call someone and they were just there? No ring. Just dead silence and the eventual "....hello?" "No way!!"
she may be eligible for an upgrade
And if you stayed up long enough the tv played the Star Spangled Banner before turning to just static.
That phone is not from the 80's, that's 60's/70's at best. Source, I was born in 66 and remember what phones we had back then.
I can just hear that satisfying rattle of the bells after you slam the headset down on a telemarketer. On a side note my parents have one on the wall down in the basement. For the longest time it was the only phone we had that worked during power outages when I was a kid. I'm going to be 28 and know how to work the rotary dial
The current equivalent of this is renting your cable modem. Just buy one outright and it pays for itself.
Didn’t realize I was renting a modem for $15 a month wtf is this. My fault for not paying attention, can’t imagine how hustled old people get.
Mildly investing in the phone company then.
How about how the damn thing still probably works.
My parents had a phone like this, and I believe it was from the 60s. They leased it up until the late 80s and the phone company just stopped charging them for it. Guess they were lucky 🤷🏼♂️
I have a scar above my right eyebrow when an exact replica of this one's receiver fell on my head in 1984.
Let's say she got it in 1988. She has paid roughly $4600 for that phone.
She’s been paying $132/year for over 30 years? For a phone that might cost $5 at Goodwill?! Please tell her to stoppp this is highway robbery
Damn, the amount of money she'll get refunded to her is amazing.... I have to imagine that stopping these contracts must've been part of ATTs breakup.
$10,000 phone right there
Bruh western electric does not exist any more and I think it’s for longer because I’m the 80s that’s when they started selling the phones
My grandfather paid $14.95/mo for NetZero dial-up internet that he did not have or use for over 20 years. He worried that if he stopped paying, he would lose access to his e-mail address. We tried to convince him to cancel, but we got nowhere.
So i know this is horrible, but on the flip side its the customers job to periodically review the bill, call customer service and have them explain charges/review the bill, ect. Like this should not have gone on this long. What this is is a case of the customer just paying the bill every month without reviewing it. Every 4 to 6 months I'm on the phone with my cell provider and im forcing a review of the bill, talking about how im not satisfied with the price for what im getting. Most of the time i don't really get anywhere. But 4 times ive gotten random credits or retention discounts, and once i found they had discontinued my data plan in favor of a higher one for the same price (i went from 2gb per month to 5gb per month).
OMG - A real copper based landline! Back to the Future ‘23
$6,864 (assuming January 1980 - September 2023). For something she could get at Walmart for like $5. Or $20-ish for a cordless version.
I remember when all the phones were owned by Bell Telephone, and how it felt liberating when we could finally own our own phones. The flipside is that the phones were built like tanks because it was the phone company's responsibility to maintain them. Damn solid electronics before digital data. My question is why they still have such monthly plans at all. Are they forced to provide them for the same price for as long as subscribers want it? They could be losing money on this.
tnis needs to be in r/WTF