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Protecting Elderly Landline Customers: Many Are Still Renting Phones More Than 25 Years Old

Phillip Dampier May 27, 2010 Consumer News, Video No Comments

A classic phone hundreds of thousands of Americans are still paying a monthly equipment fee to lease

Do you or someone you love still have an old looking rotary dial or traditional bell ringer phone mounted to the wall or installed in the bedroom?  Are you sure they still aren’t paying a rental or leasing charge for that phone?  Many customers, particularly the elderly, have no idea they need not continue to pay fees up to $90 a year for a phone manufactured at a time when color television was a novel concept.

A legacy of the old Ma Bell phone monopoly, telephone companies used to own every piece of equipment attached to their lines.  Individual customers would pay a monthly fee to lease telephone equipment that was approved by the phone company to work with their service.  By the early 1980s, nearly every American home had a kitchen wall phone and one or more extensions, usually installed in the living room or bedroom.  Manufactured by companies like ITT, Stromberg-Carlson, AT&T or Comdial, these phones were built to last… and pay for themselves many times over by unaware consumers who don’t realize the days of renting phones are long gone.

After the breakup of AT&T, most phone companies began telemarketing campaigns trying to convince consumers to buy their formerly leased phones.  Those who did now own these classics outright.  Many who didn’t returned them and bought their own new phones.  But more than a million consumers did neither, and continue to pay phone equipment rental fees to this day.  Even as phone companies abandoned the phone rental business, not everyone got the message.

Most phone companies sold off their remaining leased customers to third party companies long ago, including QLT Consumer Lease Services in Miami and Ft. Worth.  QLT has several hundred thousand customers paying quarterly lease fees for telephones often years old.  The company itself admits the majority of its customers are retired, elderly consumers.

QLT markets refurbished bell ringer phones at some surprisingly high prices:

  • A traditional desk or wall retro-rotary dial telephone, which many under 30 have never seen before, costs $4.45 per month to rent.
  • The glitzy-for-its-day lighted dial Princess phone costs $6.95 a month.
  • Big button touchtone phones run $8.85 a month.

Those quarterly fees add up

QLT informs customers they cannot buy the phones at any price — they must lease them.

QLT claims its customers appreciate the familiar phones from an earlier era, and the bell ringers are louder, too.  Customers can exchange a broken phone within a day after the company is notified, if they can figure out how to install the replacement.

But it’s an extraordinarily high price to pay for classic phones, especially when replacements can be purchased outright for less than $20.  But many QLT customers don’t realize they have that option.  While the company also pitches decidedly non-phone-related services like roadside assistance plans and health care discount cards, it doesn’t spend any time or effort informing customers they can buy their own phones.

So next time you visit your older relatives and see a classic phone, perhaps it would not a bad idea to ask if they’re still paying for it.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WBAL Baltimore MD Many Older Residents Still Renting Phones 5-25-10.flv[/flv]

WBAL-TV in Baltimore found one woman still paying $90 a year for a phone that had been attached to her kitchen wall around the time Ronald Reagan was inaugurated president of the United States.  (4 minutes)

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