The Most Expensive Pay Phone Call in History

[Paintedcow]

You'll need a VERY LARGE Wallet to make this call.... (Or a fleet of Semi-Trucks filled with Dimes).

[philo]

Sometime back around 1968 I called a friend... on the East coast... from a pay phone. The operator would have me put in a quarter every three minutes or something like that until I eventually ran out of change.

When I ran out, she told me that I could complete my conversation at which time I was informed that I owed a dollar and when I got the proper change all I had to do was dial "operator" and ask for #23, tell her who I was and then deposit what I owed.

What interesting times those were. My guess is that if I never "paid up" they would have reversed the charge, I don't know.

[DerbyDad03]

Back around that time we used to make "free" collect calls.

If you wanted to let someone back home know that you had arrived at your destination or pass along some other pre-arranged piece of information, you could initiate a collect call through the operator. When the party on the receiving end would be asked if they would accept the charges, they would just say "No."

Since it was all prearranged, the collect call itself passed along the information.

[thekmanrocks]

Too bad there's no way to preview it...

[philo]

Yep, we did stuff like that all the time. Once when we went to Chicago, a friend of mine called home just to let his mother know all was OK.

He also tried to get a message through by talking. but the phone company knew enough to have audio off until paid for

[Don Y]

In the early 80's, I was in a little town in Southern CO (Florence). I called home (east coast) from a pay phone (as calling from the home of the folks I was staying with would have passed the cost onto them!). Of course, parents seem to like to talk for long periods of time, saying little -- oblivious to the fact that I'm standing on the side of the road calling from "nowhere".

Periodically, the operator would come on the line to tell me to deposit another $3 (or so).

The first time I did this (to initiate the call), the solenoid that transfers the monies from the "holding area" (from which they can easily be RETURNED to the caller) to the "cash box" appeared to malfunction; returning the coins to *me* instead!

Even more pleasant was that the next request for $3 resulted in the same behavior. And, the one after that! (did I mention that parents like to talk for a long time??) I just kept taking the coins out of the coin return and redepositing them!

So, the call cost me nothing.

Next day, I drove by that same phone booth and, on a whim, tried again. Same "problem" as the day before!

I did this for the better part of a week.

Until, one day, the activation of the solenoid resulted in the coins being *accepted*. It was a very sad sound! :-(

I don't think they can legally do that -- though that might not stop them from trying!

In school, we would "discover" unrestricted telephone "extensions" in unusual places -- phones from which '9' got you a "regular" phone line that wasn't limited to local calls only. We'd venture out with small groups and take turns making calls.

If you were smart, you'd only call people that you knew were "cool" with the whole concept!

Friend opted to call his grandparents in Germany (!) Eventually, someone trying to sort out who was making all these long distance calls (from this very "off the beaten track" telephone) opted to call some of the numbers. "Oh, hello! Our grandson goes to your school! He's such a NICE boy..."

[DerbyDad03]

The city was different, but yep...that was the most common use of the technique. Lot's of teen-age road trips back then. ;-)

Tru dat!

[Micky]

Heck, around 1965 or 6, one could call long distance from a pay phone and just charge it to another phone. I was in college and I used my mother's phone, in a 3rd state. They might call her to check, but if no one answered, they did it anyhow. But too many people did this with people who weren't their parents and didn't know them, so now none of us have this convenience.

So around 2008, I was coming back from Indiana, running late, and going to miss a meeting in Baltimore that night, and I'd look bad if I just didn't show up. So I stopped at a pay phone in West Virginia, and was going to charge it to my credit card. For some reason I checked the price in advance, $26 for the first 3 minutes!!! I ended up borrowing a cell phone from a museum hostess, who got free long distance. I had to go outside to the curb to get a signal and even that didn't bother her.

[philo]

Way back a million years ago when for my job, they gave me a pager I was in a hospital waiting room...

This was a time when one could just go the the emergency room if one was unable to get an immediate appoint with one's own doctor (turned out there was nothing wrong with me)

Anyway I had to call someone in Mexico so just used the phone they had sitting there and called straight through. I was expecting to be asked for my company's credit card number...but that never happened.

[philo]

Woow!!! a lot of $$$$ I

[Ed Pawlowski]

At some point in the 1990 era many of the pay phones were operated by other long distance companies. They could charge whatever rates they wanted. Some would pork you good.

[Don Y]

You can still do that. Expect to wait a VERY long time (unless triaged as a "priority case") and pay a VERY large sum! :>

In the 70's, the phone company "credit cards" (calling cards) used a simple checksum to verify the integrity of the "calling card number". I.e., when you called the operator and asked to charge a call to a particular calling card, the operator (or, some software she had) would perform this simple checksum to determine what the "check digit" for the number *should* be. If it did NOT match the number you presented, then the charge would be declined.

But, if it *did* match, the charge would be accepted and the call placed!

So, you could fabricate arbitrary calling card numbers -- by knowing the checksum algorithm. Of course, this was to be a TPC secret!

But, conveniently, was published by certain "underground" groups (e.g., TAP, 2600).

The same groups who gave us Black, Red, Blue and Green "boxes"...

[Amusingly, you could "detune" an organ (musical instrument) to create a nice 2600Hz -- from something around E or F 7 (I'd have to do the math)]

[philo]

On 02/12/2016 09:56 AM, Don Y wrote: wn doctor

Though it was not a hospital emergency room, it was one of those immediate care facilities. One weekend I freaked out because I went deaf in one ear so went in.

It was just wax, which he cleaned out in five minutes then billed my insurance $500

They refused to pay unless he lowered the bill to $400!

I think I had $250 deducatble

pened.

Never knew that one, but had a company calling card so never would have pay from my own pocket.

Though I never knew anyone who built one of those boxes, I was amazed that the whole thing was just controlled by tone. Always figured it was something more complicated.

Supposedly there were people who could whistle correctly to get a free call.

[Don Y]

If you think about it, it is not surprising!

Ages ago, when you placed a call, you had a pair of wires from your handset to the callee's handset -- with TPC sitting in the middle. The wires were intended to carry voice signals so had limited bandwidth -- typically only about 3KHz in the "speech" band.

So, any "information" transferred down those wires had to similarly be constrained to the same band!

TPC couldn't put "notch filters" on subscriber lines because that would muck with the speech signals from those subscribers. And, they weren't paranoid enough to realize folks WOULD take advantage of the "open channel" to mimic their switching equipment's operations!

[This is all too common in western society's; we ASSUME people won't do bad things, and, as such, take no measures to prevent them from happening -- then act surprised when someone exploits these lapses! Cockpit doors on aircraft, electrical substations "protected" by little more than a chain link fence, water treatment facilities protected by a KEEP OUT sign, internet protocols having NO provisions for security/authentication, etc.]

At school, it was rumored that all TPC phone lines requested by students (identifiable by their installation address) were kept on a single exchange that had traps to watch for such abuses -- a few thousand engineers clustered in one spot seemed to be too high a risk for TPC to ignore! :>

[Indeed, a friend was once phoned by The Operator and asked to please "Press 1" as they were doing a "line check". Despite being woken from a sound sleep, my friend realized he should reach for the *dial* phone and DIAL '1' -- instead of PRESSING '1' on the TouchTone phone (for which he was not paying TouchTone service rates! :> ) Hard to imagine The Operator calling everyone in town and asking that same question!]

A classmate vacationing (somewhere) in Europe used to call us and talk for a few minutes -- "until his hand got tired/cramped". Apparently, the pay phones (wherever) were susceptible to static electric charges. He'd flick his pzieoelectric cigarette lighter repeatedly causing a little "spark" to confuse the computer in the pay phone. Doing this repeatedly allowed him to keep the connection open indefinitely -- or, at least until his hand got tired! (it's actually VERY hard to do, for any length of time!)

Yes. And, the little yellow/red whistles given away in boxes of "Cap'n Crunch" cereal coincidentally were tuned to 2600Hz (maybe the Cap'n was a phreaker?)

[philo]

One day I was in an office and saw a lock on a dial phone to prevent unauthorized calls.

Although I had no need to make a call, just to see if I could do it, when I got home I decided to call a friend by not using a dial at all, merely by clicking the button on the phone.

Possibly because I was a Ham radio operator and good with Morse code, I had little trouble with the higher numbers.

[Don Y]

Yes, by lifting the reciever (going "off hook") you complete the circuit to the CO. The (old) dialer works by momentarily interrupting the circuit (essentially, going ON hook for a brief time -- the same as "hanging up") some number of times corresponding to the digit being dialed.

So, dial a '1' and it interrupts the circuit for ONE brief instant. Dial a '2' and it interrupts for TWO brief instants.

The time between "interruptions" is controlled by the rate at which the dial "returns" (when you pull your finger out and let it "do its thing").

If you, instead, deliberately SLOW the rate of its return, you will effectively "misdial" (because the CO doesn't "see" all of the remaining interruptions for that particular digit in the allotted time) and/or DISCONNECT the call (if you manage to stop the dial exactly at the point where it is opening the circuit... "going on hook"/hanging up!)

E.g., you can do a "hook flash" on dial phones just by dialing '1' (instead of tapping the hook momentarily)

Likewise, you can make a "hold button" just by connecting a resistor (600 ohms?) across the line (tip-ring). It simulates the "load" represented by a phone. So, looks (to TPC) like you've just picked up another extension. At that point, you can hang up the *real* phone, walk to another room and pick up another extension to continue the conversation.

If you arrange to use a SPDT switch (like a "three way" light switch), you can put a switch in each location that lets the resistor be switched in/out from either end:

- flip the first switch (to whatever position it is NOT in)

- hang up first phone

- pick up second phone

- flip second switch (to disconnect the resistor switched in by first!)

- hang up second phone when done with call

[DerbyDad03]

Simple to do...I used to do it all the time just for fun.

Here's another phone trick I used to use when I was young, but this was a trick I pulled on my parents.

My parents weren't helicopter parents by any stretch of the imagination, but they were concerned about my well being and life choices, as all parents should be. While they wouldn't actually stop me from going out just to go out, they would rather that I had a destination and reason for going out, especially at night.

"I'm going bowling with Mark." was much better than:

"I'm going out." "Where?" "I don't know, I'll see who's around."

To keep the peace, I'd go down to the basement and use the extension to call that "ring back" number. By the time I'd hung up and walked back up the stairs to the kitchen, the phone would be ringing.

"Hello? Hey Mark, what's up?...Bowling? Sure. What time?...OK, I'll be right over."

(hang up)

"Hey Mom, that was Mark. We're going bowling."

"OK, have fun."

[DerbyDad03]

I'm a hypochondriac. One time I sat on the mute button and thought I went deaf. ;-)

[Muggles]

I remember being told to do that when I was going out of town. Mom said she'd know I was safe and wouldn't accept the charges.

[Muggles]

LOL!