Collect Calls

[Oklahomabassin]

Several years ago, I bought $1,600.00 woth of new windows for a new home I was building and all of the windows had cutouts on all four corners similar to this drawing. And after some bickering an more money spent, they replaced all the windows. And I would never recommend Thermal Windows to anyone.View attachment 423548

Did they call collect?

 

[dennishoddy]

I was discussing this a week or so ago with the farrier. Collect, person to person, operator assisted, 3rd number billing. All of that took an operator. My sister worked as an operator for Bell in MS while her husband was in Vietnam.

Does that job even exist anymore?

The last time I talked to an operator in a phone system is when our home phone did an odd ring one evening during the late 70's. Toddler son was playing on the phone unbeknown to anyone and had punched the numbers on the touch tone phone to get the overseas operator.
She was very nice saying she loved talking to the son, but she had work to do and needed the phone to be hung up. Apologized and hung up.

 

[TerryMiller]

Back in the '60's, I went to my first duty station in the Army in northern California, a small base near Petaluma and not far from Napa, CA. I had cousins that lived in Napa, so when I went over to visit, I called the operator to get their number so I could call and get their address. When I told the directory assistance operator for the number of my cousin, she wanted to know why I wanted that number. I explained that my mom had told me to be sure and look up my cousins when I got to California. She then said, "Terry, is that you?"

Come to find out, she was the wife of my cousin, thus a cousin-in-law (if such a thing exists), and she knew that I would be coming to see them at some point. ("Was" is the key word as my cousin has passed on, but last I heard, she still lives out there.)

 

[turkeyrun]

Any and every trip we took, the collect or person-to-person call was made upon arrival. I would call for myself, response would be, "expected home soon, try back in an hour."

My Grandmother's youngest sister started out as an operator, right after Pearl Harbor. She retired after 48 years. Office was down to 10 operators. She is 99 yo and talks about a call I made to my Grandmother. After the response, she said, "quick trip, you need to slow down."

 

[red dirt shootist]

I have a small collection, mostly stuff from my twenties, I haven't even seen it in years, but I did come across the box they were in, turkey, several coyote, duck, goose, crow, just the usual.

 

[John6185]

They sent you to collections?

Ok, I get the point I deleted my post. Now you can delete yours.