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@Brian_Earl_Spilner thats so sad! They showed her no mercy. She grew up with that number! Screw AT&T after 30 years of loyalty.
@Anonymous wrote:@Brian_Earl_Spilner thats so sad! They showed her no mercy. She grew up with that number! Screw AT&T after 30 years of loyalty.
Yeah, at first I thought she was kidding, but she was on the verge of tears. Then I was like wtfico, you were only late once, was an at&t executive eyeballing that number for the last 30 years? How the hell did they give it away that fast? Just another reason for me to not like at&t. She was so depressed about it for months because people she knew were always able to reach her that way if they lost her cell or she changed her cell number.
Did anyone do this back in the day? (1970's & 1980's)
1. Take your phone off the hook by dialing your number and then setting it down. (Dad did this at dinner time to prevent friends interrupting)
2. Dial 0 and request an "emergency break through" when a friends' number was busy.
3. Call collect and ask for XXXX just to let family know you made the trip back home safely. (they'd say that person was not there and hang up)
@GApeachy wrote:Did anyone do this back in the day? (1970's & 1980's)
1. Take your phone off the hook by dialing your number and then setting it down. (Dad did this at dinner time to prevent friends interrupting)
2. Dial 0 and request an "emergency break through" when a friends' number was busy.
3. Call collect and ask for XXXX just to let family know you made the trip back home safely. (they'd say that person was not there and hang up)
@Brian_Earl_Spilner wrote:
Sure do. It has come in handy a few times!
@GApeachy wrote:Did anyone do this back in the day? (1970's & 1980's)
2. Dial 0 and request an "emergency break through" when a friends' number was busy.
Yes, the ol' "busy verification and break". That was great fun, and wide open for abuse. If you didn't want to break in the operator could still listen in and tell you if there was actual conversation going on, or if it was just off-hook. The victim doesn't get notified.
Other fun tricks: Dial 559 + the last 4 digits of your number, tap the switchook a few times, then hang up. Your phone will start ringing a few seconds later (worked on pay phones too). Then there were tones you could play over the line if someone called your house from a pay phone. These tones would cause the coin return to trigger, so your friend would get his quarter back. I won't even get into red boxing. Changing your long distance provider every day for a $50 signup bonus. Those were fun times.
Now I live out in the country and you'd think we'd be backwards out here, still on party lines and stuff. Quite the contrary. They ran fiber to the whole county and the phone company abandoned all their copper lines! So I couldn't even get a "real" home phone if I wanted one. And a VOIP setup from your ISP or television company doesn't count in my book. That isn't any more reliable than your internet connection. Back in the day, phones worked no matter what was going on (power outage, civil unrest, etc). No longer.
I couldn't remember that last time that I had a real phone. Went totally mobile in 2006ish after coming back from Iraq and haven't looked back
I gave up my landline over 20 years ago (when I hung up on dial-up internet) and I never miss it.