[pct-l] Payphones and Collect Calls

[Diane Soini of Santa Barbara Hikes]

That's partly why I hung up on the call the first time. I could not  
hear the person say their name, and it was MCI which is a shady no- 
good company I do not wish to have any access to my credit card info.

Hey, in the spirit of Bipolar's post about not listening to the hype,  
let me reassure you that even though I reported that TrailHacker says  
Spanish Needle creek was like September after a hot dry summer, I  
hiked there in mid-October once and there still was water then. Not  
trying to post any hype.


On Apr 25, 2013, at 10:00 AM, pct-l-request at backcountry.net wrote:

> Subject: [pct-l] Payphones and Collect Calls
> To: <pct-l at backcountry.net>
> Message-ID: <BLU177-DS79BBFAC0B9F668F139DC5AEB60 at phx.gbl>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> Ref: [pct-l] Anybody seen TrailHacker?
>
> I can't help with Trailhacker's location, but as an aside on this  
> message
> thread, I would caution folks to be very circumspect about using  
> pay phones
> for collect calls. I did that at White Pass outside the Kracker  
> Barrel store
> and ended up with an $84 bill for a five minute phone call.  
> Complaining to
> AT&T didn't help as they said they were just passing on the bill  
> from the
> third party that owned the payphone. I called the third party and  
> spoke to
> somebody overseas - Africa I think - and they were quite willing to  
> haggle a
> little but even after that I still felt it shouldn't have been so  
> expensive.
> As a matter of principle I wrote them a long letter accusing them of
> predatory pricing and anything else I could think of (I'm an  
> engineer, not a
> lawyer) and threatened to report them to the FCC if they didn't  
> reduce it to
> less than $10. The threat worked as they wrote it off eventually,  
> but it was
> way more hassle than it was worth. With cell phone coverage and  
> wifi access
> getting so much better every year, this is probably not such an  
> issue. But
> as a last resort, a phone card is lot cheaper way to go and a lot  
> lighter
> than a roll of quarters.
>
> Peanut Eater