Interesting Day on the Payphones

I had an interesting day on the payphones a couple of weeks ago. While checking out the carnage from dozens of brick-smashed LinkNYC kiosks along 6^th Avenue, from about 12^th Street up to 28^th Street, I called in with some Payphone Radio updates using a few phones along the way. Or at least I tried to. I found yet more evidence – not that I needed a reminder – that people other than I still use payphones.

I had crossed paths with a rough-around-the-edges looking dude. We almost bumped into each other. He seemed gruff, possibly the sort who walks around intentionally running in to people for whatever gain such an encounter might bring him. I avoided him, moved on, and forgot about it.

A few minutes later I spotted a payphone on 13^th Street off of 6^th Avenue. I approached that phone, intending to make a call. The above-mentioned individual and I crossed paths again, as he crossed the street up ahead of me. He hadn’t cut me off or intercepted my path to the payphone, at least not intentionally. It was typical amorphous pedestrian coexistence.

But he slowed as he neared the payphone. I slowed too, not wanting to get inappropriately close. I don’t know if he was homeless, because I don’t know what homeless looks like. But he carried himself as one who had nowhere to go. He dropped his oversized backpack onto the sidewalk, picked up the payphone handset, and dialed a phone number. I thought “Damn, dude copped my payphone.”

I found another phone nearby. I picked up the handset and dialed my number. An automated voice said “Please deposit 25¢.” That is what I did. Nothing happened. I attempted to turn the coin return knob. It barely moved. I thought hanging up the phone might result in the quarter’s return. Sometimes that works. No such luck. The quarter was no longer mine. I had just given a cool 25¢ to CityBridge, the consortium of companies granted a monopoly franchise on New York City’s outdoor payphones while they replace them with LinkNYC kiosks.

Over the years I may have lost hundreds of coins to calls that failed to connect from this city’s payphones. I just wrote it off as the cost of doing business. But on this day I did, for the first time, what I could have done countless times by now. I called 311 to report a lost coin. I have contacted 311, either by phone or through their website, to report non-working payphones. But that good-citizen gesture almost always turned out to be a waste of time. With even a little bit of money on the line I thought this call might be worth the effort.

As the call progressed I almost ran out of patience on account of how long it took to make this complaint. I might have been on this call for 15 minutes. Despite my increasing impatience I will say that the 311 dispatcher truly was as helpful as could be, even sounding sympathetic to my plight. I noticed she was using old information about New York’s payphones. She asked which company owned this payphone, was it TCC Teleplex, Telebeam, Coastal Communications…? Those companies all got kicked out of the payphone business in New York City a few years ago when CityBridge received its monopoly franchise. I told her it was a CityBridge payphone, which I knew with confidence even though no information placard containing the payphone’s owner was present on the device.

I don’t know if I will get a refund, or who would send it. CityBridge? Or will DoITT (the city agency that oversees payphones) send a carefully concealed quarter to the post office box I gave the 311 operator as my mailing address? The cost of materials, postage, and a city employee’s time spent processing this refund would amount to well over 100% of the value of the refund. If the process is automated, such that a check is printed and automatically dumped into an outgoing mail bin, then I guess you can subtract the cost of a city worker’s time. But the postage and envelope alone easily amount to over 100% more than the 25¢ refund. If I get anything it will probably be a bearers check for 25¢. For me it remains to be seen how 311 handles a “Lost Coin” complaint. Do they issue me a refund or penalize the payphone owner?

 

PAYPHONES BY THE NUMBERS

Between January, 2000, and May, 2018, New York’s 311 received 5546 calls filed under “Public Payphone Complaint”. 1563 of those calls (27%) came from individuals like me calling to report a lost coin. At 25¢ a pop that means over the last 17½ years a whopping $390.75 in restitution, averaging $22.33 per year, might have been doled out by DoITT, or whichever payphone service provider of yore owned the phones.

2468 calls to report a “Damaged Telephone” represent about 45% of calls to 311 to report a payphone problem.

“Graffiti/Litter on Phone” account for surprisingly few 311 complaints, at only 583, or about 11%.

“Illegal Activity by Phone” accounts for about 5%, with 274 calls.

423 calls, representing about 8%, were to report “No Dial tone”. I would think that category would get more 311 complaints if the phone in question had, you know, a dial tone.

“Phone Blocking Sidewalk”, with 234 calls, accounts for 4% of calls made to New York’s 311 Public Payphone Complaint.

 

311 SERVICE COMPLAINT #C1-1-1711062310

So I finally got my Lost Coin complaint filed, feeling like I had passed some kind of functional literacy test. I am the proud instigator of 311 service complaint #C1-1-1711062310. You can follow, from a discrete distance, its exciting path through the municipal bureaucracy here.  After submitting the request it felt as if I had let loose a minnow into the ocean of New York City’s administrative services.

I also imagined that someone at DoITT might see my name and recognize it, and maybe even get a laugh out of it.

But then I went to another payphone and it happened again. A second payphone in a row swallowed my quarter and would not give it back. I considered calling 311 again but the first call took long enough, and my time was running short. Making another complaint might prompt someone at DoITT or 311 to interpret it as the beginning of a systematic effort to scam them out of 25¢, one payphone at a time. But another 15 minute call seemed like a long way to go for a quarter I could have more satisfyingly tossed into a water fountain.

Later I found another phone and made a call. This time, as I spoke into the phone, an impatient individual paced around the immediate area. He did not bother me or get too close for comfort, but I felt his presence. The moment I ended the call it became clear: He was waiting to use the payphone. As I moved on he picked up the handset and made a phone call.

Or did he? I later discovered that the call I thought I made from that phone had not worked. It connected to my voicemail but nothing I said was recorded. If I ever see that guy again, the one who patiently waited for me to finish my call so he could make his, I should ask him if whoever he called could hear him. But I will never see this guy again. We were just two payphone users, passing like ships in the night.

What I found interesting about these encounters was how they occurred amid a relative abundance of LinkNYC kiosks in the area, which allow for free phone calls to (almost) any US phone number. If I had the guts I might have asked either of these individuals I encountered why they chose to pay money instead of using the free phone calls offered by the kiosks. They might have revealed their agreement with me: You get what you pay for with that craptastic product.