It’s a NewTel Payphone in Union City, New Jersey. No, It Didn’t Work.

After writing about the dead payphone I randomly spotted in Fort Lee, New Jersey I found another stash of pictures I got of payphones from Union City and West New York, NJ. I found about 15 in all. Not a single one of them worked despite stickers proudly announcing that “YES THIS PAYPHONE WORKS“. I’d seen those stickers before and at first I thought their placement was meant as a joke. In truth I think it reflects the payphone business’s current state of survival mode, where no shame exists in attempting to lure passers-by into using these phones. The stickers could more accurately say “THIS PAYPHONE SHOULD WORK“. The word “YES” has faded on some of these stickers but remains very faintly visible on this one, located outside the S.W. Lock & Doorcheck company on Kennedy Boulevard at 37th Street in Union City. The sticker also serves to blot out the logo for Bell Atlantic, the company now known as Verizon that owned this phone in years past.

 

These stickers appear to exist mostly on phones owned by NewTel, a Bronx-based concern that operates payphones in several cities along the Northeast corridor. NewTel’s phones also distinguish themselves from other brands for the loud stickers on the handsets imploring one and all to “CALL ANY 800, 866, 877, 888 NUMBER NO COIN DEPOSIT NEEDED!” Payphone owners love toll-free numbers because of an FCC rule requiring the owner of a toll-free number to pay about 50¢ to the owner of a payphone from which calls to their number originated. This 50¢ charge, known as the dialaround compensation fee, is either on the brink of extinction or already gone. Outfits like the Payphone Clearinghouse and the American Public Communications Council have historically performed audits of toll-free calls made from payphones and coördinated payment of those dialaround compensation fees. With so little money at stake on account of so few of these calls made from payphones anymore it remains unclear if those audits have will continue. The dialaround fees ranked among the payphone industry’s last options for making any money.

Of course they want you to “Talk as long as you like!!!” The longer you stay connected the more money the payphone owner makes.

NewTel’s payphones usually include another sticker listing dozens of toll-free numbers one could call for free from their phones. The lists include government agencies, suicide and counseling hotlines, banks, employment agencies, etc. No such sticker existed on this particular phone but within the enclosure’s innards lurked a couple of pieces of telephonic detritus from days of yore. Among them I spotted this weathered sticker advertising 1-800-FAIRCALL, a lettered phone number with one letter too many properly reached at 1-800-324-7225.

I called 1-800-FAIRCALL and found that the number still works, so keep that number in your go bag should disaster strike and you have reason to make a collect call. The cheesy on-hold music at 1-800-FAIRCALL’s made it hard to resist staying connected. Listen if you dare:

At the end of this call the operator says “1-800-COLLECT”, indicating that two former competitors in the collect calling business merged. Both companies were acquired by Viiz Communications, among the few if not the only company in North America that still provides collect calling services.

Every public pay telephone, whether it works or not, is required to bear some kind of informational placard telling you who owns the phone and where to call to report problems. This is what NewTel’s placard looks like:

Calling 917-406-1614, the number shown as a point of contact for this payphone, returned a spritely error message when I called it today. First in English, then in Spanish, I learned that NewTel was not taking calls at this time. This is “Message number 24. NY-01-MO“:

Another number shown, 1-800-373-3411, connects to an advertising-funded version of 411 directory assistance that is free to use, unlike dialing 411 locally. Local access to 411 costs 50¢. I didn’t try the free 411 number from this payphone because it didn’t freakin’ work, but here’s how it sounded when I called in just now. I did not deliver the spoken words as requested, because I hate talking to machines:

 

One of NewTel’s phones in Philadelphia was singled out for shame by Philly Voice, which confirmed a tip from a reader that the phone did not work despite the “YES THIS PAYPHONE WORKS” claim to the contrary. I have used NewTel’s phones and would characterize t hem as unreliable, but when they work they work. If you read that Philly Voice piece you’ll see that the reader who sent in the tip picked up the phone and heard no dial tone, but deposited coins anyway. Bzzzt. Never put coins into a payphone that has no dialtone.

Hope you enjoyed this tour of a random NewTel payphone outside the S.W. Lock & Doorcheck Company in Union City, New Jersey. No, it didn’t work when I was there but maybe it does now.