Payphones Past

Payphone Sounds: Recorded Messages

These sounds capture recorded messages which are generally only heard on payphones. Most people probably would never hear these sounds.

The first sound sample is the rejection message heard when a payphone user tries to call a certain toll-free number.
I mentioned in an earlier story that payphone users are blocked from using TellME, the advertising-supported news and information service from Microsoft. TellME is not unusual in this respect. It’s become common for owners of toll-free numbers to block calls from payphones. This is presumably on account of the FCC-mandated dial-around compensation which entitles payphone owners to about 50¢ for every toll-free call made from their phones. That 50¢ compensation is paid by the owner of the toll-free number. For most businesses this expense is simply needless. More significantly it represents a financial vulnerability to shady payphone owners, as illustrated recently in the case of Nicolaos Kantartzis, a former payphone owner now in jail for skimming millions of dollars from government agencies and private companies by programming his payphones to robo-dial their toll-free numbers.

Not all toll-free numbers block payphone calls, but it seems that most do. Still, I was a little surprised to find that Microsoft blocked payphone users from TellME, an advertising-supported product which I would think is of especial interest to payphone users. TellME must have done the math and concluded that payphone users were not worth a 50¢ acquisition fee.

Payphone users attempting to access TellME instead get this recorded message:

“The toll-free number you have dialed is not accessible from a payphone. To reach this toll-free number you must dial it from a non-payphone. 2 1 2 7 L.”

Attempting to access other toll-free numbers gets a different recording of the same message:

“We’re sorry. Your call cannot be completed from a payphone at this time. Message M 7. 2 O P.”

There are probably other versions of this message to be heard, and I will add them to my collection if/when I find them.

Another sound heard only on payphones is “please deposit 25&#162 for the next three minutes.”

“Please deposit 25&#162 for the next three minutes. Thank you.”

A few other payphone sounds I picked up recently include:

These sounds and more, including some messages not necessarily unique to payphones but which I recorded from payphones, can be found at my new Payphone Sounds collection. I plan to sort through and share other payphone sounds I made a few months ago, including the exotic sounds of coins being deposited, coins being returned, and the guttural sound of a spinning rotary dial. Stay tuned.

the payphone project