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Talk of the Bay
What would you pay for a rotary phone? $14,000?
By DAVE GUSSOW
Published September 25, 2006
In the good old days of phone service, customers rented rotary dial phones because they were too expensive to buy. That practice faded as prices fell, but not everyone switched, as a recent case in Canton, Ohio, showed. An 82-year-old woman rented two phones from AT&T, paying $29.10 a month for more than 40 years. That comes to more than $14,000, the woman's grand-daughters calculated, and they were outraged when they discovered the bills. They ended the arrangement. Could that happen here? No, according to Bob Elek, Verizon spokesman in Tampa. "We got out of the rental phone business about five years ago," Elek said. "There shouldn't be anybody out there still doing it."
[Last modified September 25, 2006, 06:19:41]
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