Anyone remember people putting Phonecards in the freezer

[radamfi]

When BT Phonecards came in units back in the 80s, does anyone remember people putting them in the freezer to try and get the credit back? I'm sure I remember friends at school talking about doing that. I mentioned it to people at work but everyone was either too young or didn't remember that.

 

[[.n]]

Don't remember the freezer idea, the one I recall was that you should put nail varnish on it to stop the credit being burnt through.

 

[fowler9]

When BT Phonecards came in units back in the 80s, does anyone remember people putting them in the freezer to try and get the credit back? I'm sure I remember friends at school talking about doing that. I mentioned it to people at work but everyone was either too young or didn't remember that.

I remember the freezer storey. Ha ha.

 

[Cowley]

This thread reminds me of trying to smoke banana skins...

 

[najaB]

This thread reminds me of trying to smoke banana skins...

What? You mean you never did?!

 

[GusB]

The only thing I really remember about the old (Green?) BT Phonecards was inserting one in the payphone on a then-new class 158, phoning home ("I'm phonin' ye fae the train, maw") and watching with horror as the units ticked down in a matter of seconds!

 

[Cowley]

What? You mean you never did?!

They were hard to light.
Maybe freeze drying like the phone cards would’ve worked?

 

[edwin_m]

I remember seeing these on Tomorrows World. I think there was a hologram strip on the card which was burned away by a laser in the phone - in fact you could see roughly how much had been used by by a deformed area on the card. So I can't see putting in the freezer would get anything back, any more than it would restore your banana skins after you finished smoking them.

 

[thejuggler]

Back in the day we worked out the strip went across the full width of the card.

With two spent cards (there were always loads in phone boxes), a very sharp heavy duty scalpel, a steel rule and some patience you could cut out the 'spent' portion of one card and the untouched end of the other card, use the untouched end to replace the spent section, secure with magic tape and get a few extra credits.

 

[Cowley]

Back in the day we worked out the strip went across the full width of the card.

With two spent cards (there were always loads in phone boxes), a very sharp heavy duty scalpel, a steel rule and some patience you could cut out the 'spent' portion of one card and the untouched end of the other card, use the untouched end to replace the spent section, secure with magic tape and get a few extra credits.

Genius!

 

[61653 HTAFC]

This sounds like the 1980s equivalent of "put your iPhone in the microwave for 10 seconds, and..."

 

[[.n]]

I remember seeing these on Tomorrows World. I think there was a hologram strip on the card which was burned away by a laser in the phone - in fact you could see roughly how much had been used by by a deformed area on the card. So I can't see putting in the freezer would get anything back, any more than it would restore your banana skins after you finished smoking them.

the nail varnish was supposed to stop the laser being able to burn the strip

 

[ComUtoR]

n00bs.

Phone cards were a nightmare to scam and always involved some kind of 'trick' The 'easiest' way to scam phone boxes was... [redacted due to forum rules] or the less than legal way was to [redacted also]

There aren't many phone boxes about nowadays. The ones I see are full of 'postcards' from London.

 

[jon0844]

n00bs.

Phone cards were a nightmare to scam and always involved some kind of 'trick' The 'easiest' way to scam phone boxes was... [redacted due to forum rules] or the less than legal way was to [redacted also]

There aren't many phone boxes about nowadays. The ones I see are full of 'postcards' from London.

Tone dialler + Call to emergency services....?

 

[ComUtoR]

Tone dialler + Call to emergency services....?

If the admins give permission to post the easiest scam we used then I will post it. I went to a school which had a phone box in so it was used quite regularly and pretty much always worked. There is a small loophole in how the Operators used to work.

The 'less than legal way' was a hell of a lot easier than messing about with phone cards and was about 95-100% successful to get really cheap phone calls. My Brother used to phone America for a £1

 

[najaB]

There aren't many phone boxes about nowadays.

Because usage is through the floor. There are more than a few that get used for under 20 calls per year.

 

[Busaholic]

In Bristol's Broadmead Centre, mid 1980s, were a bank of BT payphones, at least 15 to 20 in two rows. For weeks, if you went down there at night one phone box had dozens of people milling around it at all hours, with none of the other phone boxes being used. Nothing to do with vandalism, this one phone allowed unlimited free calls, and was used by lots of restaurant workers, etc, to phone families in, I guess, Bangladesh, etc.

 

[PeterC]

An arts centre where I worked regularly had payphones stolen. Finally they replaced it with a cardphone and a burglar ripped that one off the wall too. Perhaps he imagined that all those used credits could be emptied from the phone and stuck back on cards.

I never heard about any phonecard scams although before exchanges were digitised I remember on a school trip somebody handing out a string of numbers chaining local calls which would let us call home at the local rate.

 

[Tom B]

I have read about the ways you could exploit TXS exchanges to obtain distance calls at local rates - can't remember how mind. Academic now as not only are there no TXS exchanges on the BY network but local rates don't exist either!

I once worked somewhere which introduced a new phone system, which blocked international calls from being made. This we discovered when urgently trying to get hold of an Irish supplier.
What they had not blocked though was access to the BT Operator who was able to put the call through manually (I looked up the cost of this afterwards and its extortionate!).

 

[edwin_m]

I have read about the ways you could exploit TXS exchanges to obtain distance calls at local rates - can't remember how mind. Academic now as not only are there no TXS exchanges on the BY network but local rates don't exist either!

I once worked somewhere which introduced a new phone system, which blocked international calls from being made. This we discovered when urgently trying to get hold of an Irish supplier.
What they had not blocked though was access to the BT Operator who was able to put the call through manually (I looked up the cost of this afterwards and its extortionate!).

The British Rail phone network, while apparently the second largest in the country, unsurprisingly didn't have facilities to meter or bill calls. So when non-operational phones were privatised the company who bought them (Racal?) could only charge a fixed rate. This was higher for phones enabled for international access but once paid it allowed unlimited calls. My boss argued he needed such a line as we did some international work, but this came with a downside. A colleague had married a French woman who then moved back to France, with him to follow when he managed to get a job offer there. So I had to sit through 40min or so of personal discussions and the occasional row every lunchtime.

 

[talltim]

My mother in law found some phone cards in her parent’s stuff only last week.
My son was reading a school book (one of the Biff, Chip and Kipper series) where the plot was centred on vandalised phone boxes. He asked me what a phone box was...
The book was written in 1985 IIRC and featured a man from BT in a yellow van

 

[najaB]

He asked me what a phone box was...

#DoYouFeelOld?

 

[Cowley]

My mother in law found some phone cards in her parent’s stuff only last week.
My son was reading a school book (one of the Biff, Chip and Kipper series) where the plot was centred on vandalised phone boxes. He asked me what a phone box was...
The book was written in 1985 IIRC and featured a man from BT in a yellow van

A lot of the phone boxes in our local villages have been turned into mini book swap libraries which is a nice thing.
There’s one opposite the Beer Engine in Newton st Cyres which we use to swap books in sometimes.

 

[jon0844]

The British Rail phone network, while apparently the second largest in the country, unsurprisingly didn't have facilities to meter or bill calls. So when non-operational phones were privatised the company who bought them (Racal?) could only charge a fixed rate. This was higher for phones enabled for international access but once paid it allowed unlimited calls. My boss argued he needed such a line as we did some international work, but this came with a downside. A colleague had married a French woman who then moved back to France, with him to follow when he managed to get a job offer there. So I had to sit through 40min or so of personal discussions and the occasional row every lunchtime.

Indeed. This was a long time before prepay mobiles, and even when O2 (well BT Cellnet) launched the first UK prepay offering, it didn't have a proper billing system behind it. It was an unlimited SIM with the credit managed on the phone.

And, guess what, the phone was quickly hacked so you could get unlimited credit and call anywhere. Local, national, international, premium - everything!

This was not too dissimilar to the payphone hack to get free calls (actually, pretty much identical), meaning BT clearly didn't learn! Not that Cellnet ever really let on how much money it had lost, as I'm sure it would have been a major scandal.

 

[najaB]

Not that Cellnet ever really let on how much money it had lost, as I'm sure it would have been a major scandal.

'Private company loses money.' Not quite sure I see the scandal.

 

[lyndhurst25]

Because usage is through the floor. There are more than a few that get used for under 20 calls per year.

Of course nobody uses them. Although the cost of cash calls isn't too expensive, many don't take cash now due to the cost of emptying the boxes and because of them being targeted by robbers in need of lots of small change. Prepaid PhoneCards are no longer available. BT landline subscribers used to be able to make calls from payphones at a reasonable rate using a BT ChargeCard but that got stopped after competitors complained. The cost of using a credit card always has been extortionate, far in excess what you'd expect taking into account the card processing fee. Every box I see these days looks neglected and many don't work, with nobody bothering to report it to BT, who are secretly quite pleased because they want rid of the lot of them.

Up in the Lake District, where the mobile phone signal can still be patchy, I've seen that some of the phoneboxes are supposed to be having their telephones removed and replaced by community defibrillators. A worthy idea but in order to access the defibrillator you need to call the ambulance service who will give you the code to unlock the cabinet. Best hope that you have a mobile with charge and a signal available when dealing with a collapsed casualty, otherwise the fatal flaw in the plan will become apparent.

I'll be sorry to see them go (memories of using them to take phone-in competition calls when I briefly worked in the pirate radio industry!). The last time I used one was a couple of years ago in an emergency. Maybe BT could have made a go of them by offering cheaper credit/debit card calls or by installing public WiFi hotspots in the boxes but their only money-spinning idea was those adhesive adverts covering all the glass, the sticky remnants of which remain today making the boxes look even more grubby then they otherwise would.

 

[najaB]

Maybe BT could have made a go of them by offering cheaper credit/debit card calls or by installing public WiFi hotspots in the boxes

Both of those things happened.

 

[Busaholic]

Of course nobody uses them. Although the cost of cash calls isn't too expensive, many don't take cash now due to the cost of emptying the boxes and because of them being targeted by robbers in need of lots of small change. Prepaid PhoneCards are no longer available. BT landline subscribers used to be able to make calls from payphones at a reasonable rate using a BT ChargeCard but that got stopped after competitors complained. The cost of using a credit card always has been extortionate, far in excess what you'd expect taking into account the card processing fee. Every box I see these days looks neglected and many don't work, with nobody bothering to report it to BT, who are secretly quite pleased because they want rid of the lot of them.

Up in the Lake District, where the mobile phone signal can still be patchy, I've seen that some of the phoneboxes are supposed to be having their telephones removed and replaced by community defibrillators. A worthy idea but in order to access the defibrillator you need to call the ambulance service who will give you the code to unlock the cabinet. Best hope that you have a mobile with charge and a signal available when dealing with a collapsed casualty, otherwise the fatal flaw in the plan will become apparent.

I'll be sorry to see them go (memories of using them to take phone-in competition calls when I briefly worked in the pirate radio industry!). The last time I used one was a couple of years ago in an emergency. Maybe BT could have made a go of them by offering cheaper credit/debit card calls or by installing public WiFi hotspots in the boxes but their only money-spinning idea was those adhesive adverts covering all the glass, the sticky remnants of which remain today making the boxes look even more grubby then they otherwise would.

I have at least ten public phone boxes within a ten minute walk of my house in Penzance, in three different locations, all theoretically still working. Is this unusual now? I can only think of a couple that have been removed in the last fifteen years or so. Still, we are so behind the times down here that the opening of a KFC a few years ago brought traffic chaos!

 

[lyndhurst25]

Both of those things happened.

Did they? None of the boxes around me have ever been fitted with WiFi. Maybe it's a big city thing? As for credit card calls I'm finding figures of a connection charge of £2, then £1.50 per minute for calls to mobiles or 27p per minute for calls to landlines. Not cheap.

 

[Cowley]

I have at least ten public phone boxes within a ten minute walk of my house in Penzance, in three different locations, all theoretically still working. Is this unusual now? I can only think of a couple that have been removed in the last fifteen years or so. Still, we are so behind the times down here that the opening of a KFC a few years ago brought traffic chaos!

Love it.