JHZR2
Staff member
That’s how I used to call home to get a ride after practice.
Blast from the past: Any Bitogers ever "dial the phone collect to home"?
- Thread starter GON
- Start date
Have I got one for you.
Mr. S, a friend's father, worked for the phone company.
They wanted him on the phone as much as practical so he could hear the quality of the connections so he didn't get a bill.
In 1976 I accompanied two of my sister's chemistry schoolmates to Salt Lake City.
Mr. S invited me to use their number for 3rd party billing. I even verified it the day I left.
I checked in regularly. I still recall their number though it's been disconnected for years.
I called my 'phone hosts' too and sent them postcards as well. They were particularly entertained by their son's adventurous friend.
That "telephone franking privilege" was beyond convenient and saved me so much money.
NOTE on the LONG TRIP:
If you go west from NYC, around the Great Lakes, out to Winnipeg and down through the Dakotas and Wyoming to get to Salt Lake, the trip will be 3,600 miles.
And that was the beginning of a 2.5 month long tour. Car, train, hitch-hiking and an unplanned, darn expensive plane ride to Atlanta.
Having to fly to ATL was the clinker of the trip.
Mr. S, a friend's father, worked for the phone company.
They wanted him on the phone as much as practical so he could hear the quality of the connections so he didn't get a bill.
In 1976 I accompanied two of my sister's chemistry schoolmates to Salt Lake City.
Mr. S invited me to use their number for 3rd party billing. I even verified it the day I left.
I checked in regularly. I still recall their number though it's been disconnected for years.
I called my 'phone hosts' too and sent them postcards as well. They were particularly entertained by their son's adventurous friend.
That "telephone franking privilege" was beyond convenient and saved me so much money.
NOTE on the LONG TRIP:
If you go west from NYC, around the Great Lakes, out to Winnipeg and down through the Dakotas and Wyoming to get to Salt Lake, the trip will be 3,600 miles.
And that was the beginning of a 2.5 month long tour. Car, train, hitch-hiking and an unplanned, darn expensive plane ride to Atlanta.
Having to fly to ATL was the clinker of the trip.
Used to call collect in the early 90s from the state park pay phone after a day of mountain biking and there was a super steep road out of there and we didn’t want to ride the few miles home uphill.
Phone service: “Please state your name”
Me: “Weareattheparkcomepickusup!” Then hang up when they rejected the call.
We’d wait around for 20 minutes and odds are our parents wouldn’t show up to give us a lift.
My college student ID had a 1-800-COLLECT ad on the back side of it in the year 2000! It also had our social security number right in the front! We’d leave it at the front desk in the gym, there’d be 100 IDs with SSNs just sitting there. Crazy.
Phone service: “Please state your name”
Me: “Weareattheparkcomepickusup!” Then hang up when they rejected the call.
We’d wait around for 20 minutes and odds are our parents wouldn’t show up to give us a lift.
My college student ID had a 1-800-COLLECT ad on the back side of it in the year 2000! It also had our social security number right in the front! We’d leave it at the front desk in the gym, there’d be 100 IDs with SSNs just sitting there. Crazy.
AutoMechanic
Site Donor 2025
I love that song. It’s been one I’ve listened too since I was a kid. As for calling like that don’t think so. I’ve used a pay phone for fun but not any other reason.
Zee09
$200 Site Donor 2023
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I'm going to be calling you collect soon...
Once when i was a kid. Father answered to be picked up at the streetcar terminal. From then on call the house let it ring three time hang up. They would pick me up.
I did a different version. The payphones at the school would return your quarter if the call ended in something like 10 seconds or less so I'd call home, Mom would answer and I'd say "ready" and hang up, and the quarter would be returned. I hope the statute of limitations is up by now...
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You guys were so spoiled with all that modern technology 
In my country back then, it was by neighborhood.
Older neighborhoods had phones, newer were scheduled for a decade or so in the future. Because the local phone infrastructure wouldn't be built yet. Entire neighborhoods with no phones, and analog public phones here and there, so most households would be within half a mile of one.
Once you'd get lucky enough to get a line, you could be assigned (no choice - it was whatever you got assigned) - a Full line (unheard of luxury), or a Duplex line (most times).
A Duplex line was a line where you were sharing the pipe with some other household. Not sharing in the sense you pick up and hear them talking, but in the sense - they have their number, you have yours, but when they are using their phone - your line is dead. Not even a busy signal. Anyone calling you at that time would get a busy signal on their end.
Get a Chatty Kathy as a neighbor, and it was like you had no line whatsoever. Leave the phone off the hook for the weekend, and you made some happy neighbors.
This went all the way through Internet times. People then would get on the internet on a Duplex line, and the other party sharing it would be dead as a dodo.
The neighbour upstairs stopped talking to us because after several serious talks (she was running a business and was on the web constantly, leaving us with no service 99% of the time) which didn't help, we simply complained to the phone company.
We were using our appartment for a few weeks every year, and had been very clear with her - you're paying for a Duplex line, you use it as a full line because we're away 11 months every year. We don't care what you do, but when we're home, you get up your act and make it so we have a working phone.
Apparently, the message didn't make it.
By that time getting a line had gotten easier, as the system changed. Duplex lines had become legacy, but were way cheaper, and she was very, very cheap.
Not only that, but those older analog lines were billing Internet access by the first impulse only (modem establishing the call, which counted as one minute), not by the time of actual usage.
The second the phone company got wind that she was using a Duplex line for Internet access (which was explicitly against the rules), she got upgraded to a Full line. Or was it digital. Can't remember. Perfect internet (for the time), but pay by the minute. Ouch
In my country back then, it was by neighborhood.
Older neighborhoods had phones, newer were scheduled for a decade or so in the future. Because the local phone infrastructure wouldn't be built yet. Entire neighborhoods with no phones, and analog public phones here and there, so most households would be within half a mile of one.
Once you'd get lucky enough to get a line, you could be assigned (no choice - it was whatever you got assigned) - a Full line (unheard of luxury), or a Duplex line (most times).
A Duplex line was a line where you were sharing the pipe with some other household. Not sharing in the sense you pick up and hear them talking, but in the sense - they have their number, you have yours, but when they are using their phone - your line is dead. Not even a busy signal. Anyone calling you at that time would get a busy signal on their end.
Get a Chatty Kathy as a neighbor, and it was like you had no line whatsoever. Leave the phone off the hook for the weekend, and you made some happy neighbors.
This went all the way through Internet times. People then would get on the internet on a Duplex line, and the other party sharing it would be dead as a dodo.
The neighbour upstairs stopped talking to us because after several serious talks (she was running a business and was on the web constantly, leaving us with no service 99% of the time) which didn't help, we simply complained to the phone company.
We were using our appartment for a few weeks every year, and had been very clear with her - you're paying for a Duplex line, you use it as a full line because we're away 11 months every year. We don't care what you do, but when we're home, you get up your act and make it so we have a working phone.
Apparently, the message didn't make it.
By that time getting a line had gotten easier, as the system changed. Duplex lines had become legacy, but were way cheaper, and she was very, very cheap.
Not only that, but those older analog lines were billing Internet access by the first impulse only (modem establishing the call, which counted as one minute), not by the time of actual usage.
The second the phone company got wind that she was using a Duplex line for Internet access (which was explicitly against the rules), she got upgraded to a Full line. Or was it digital. Can't remember. Perfect internet (for the time), but pay by the minute. Ouch
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1996 we went on an overnight field trip to Maine Yankee (power plant).
I called home using collect.l just to say hi and "check in". My parents weren't exactly happy when the bill came in, a 2 or 3 min call was fairly expensive.
Seems crazy now, but was first time being "away" and not like there were cell phones everywhere.
When I went to badic training in 2001, we used pay phones and calling cards.
My friend's Dad had a bag phone in his truck in the mid 90s, he'd call home at lunch and when leaving since he worked in the woods usually alone (logging).
My grandparents had a party line until late 90s when the phone company upgraded the systems.
1st cell phone i got was around 2001. A Nokia. It was fairly "high tech", to the point some people laughed at me about it.
Phone in your pocket, that'll never catch on!
I think I left it when I went to basic. Wouldn't have worked in Texass anyhow.
I called home using collect.l just to say hi and "check in". My parents weren't exactly happy when the bill came in, a 2 or 3 min call was fairly expensive.
Seems crazy now, but was first time being "away" and not like there were cell phones everywhere.
When I went to badic training in 2001, we used pay phones and calling cards.
My friend's Dad had a bag phone in his truck in the mid 90s, he'd call home at lunch and when leaving since he worked in the woods usually alone (logging).
My grandparents had a party line until late 90s when the phone company upgraded the systems.
1st cell phone i got was around 2001. A Nokia. It was fairly "high tech", to the point some people laughed at me about it.
Phone in your pocket, that'll never catch on!
I think I left it when I went to basic. Wouldn't have worked in Texass anyhow.
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I did it a few times when I was a teen.
My grandmother used to take a collect call from a guy in prison back east who was the child of one of her cousins, if I remember the facts correctly. She was the only relative he had left, or at least the only one who would take his monthly allowed 15 minute phone call. Usually they would talk about religion.
My grandmother used to take a collect call from a guy in prison back east who was the child of one of her cousins, if I remember the facts correctly. She was the only relative he had left, or at least the only one who would take his monthly allowed 15 minute phone call. Usually they would talk about religion.
Did you know that if you misdialed your phone, you can call the operator and get a credit? A really, really frugal friend told me that. Seems to be a holdover from the very early days of phones.
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