Visible.com’s Payphone Math Does Not Add Up

Visible.com is a newish cell phone service provider. I have no comment about the service itself (I don’t use it) but I take issue with one of their advertisements, which appears to reach out to the unlikely demographic of payphone users. I get the joke: “Hey, payphone user. Why shovel quarters into a payphone for 2 hours when you can get so much more from Visible.com at the same price, minus the coin-fed inconvenience?” The issue I have with this advertisement I spotted on a midtown payphone yesterday is its math. The claim that $40 will get you two hours of call time on this payphone does not add up.

As the rate card on the phone shows, local calls cost 25¢ for every three minute span. At this rate a two hour call would run you ten bucks, not forty. Long distance rates vary and thus are not printed on this card but every domestic long distance call I’ve made from these curbside payphones cost 50¢ for every two minutes. At that rate a two hour call would cost $30. Visible’s claim that “$40 gets you 2 hours on this pay phone” simply does not compute.

International rates also vary but a call to the U.K. costs a dollar a minute, a rate probably typical for calls to most countries from public pay telephones. It is hard to imagine what circumstance would have someone on a phone call for two hours and every single minute having to shove four quarters, or ten dimes, or twenty nickels into a payphone to keep a call alive.

These rates apply only to outdoor payphones in New York. Different rates apply to the indoor phones in the city, found in places like subway stations, hospitals, Broadway theaters, etc. But Visible does not advertise on those phones, nor does anyone else.

It’s all good that Visible’s ad on this payphone used the payphone itself as part of the lure, and that they used the pay-as-you-go conceit to get to their flat rate of $40 a month. It got my attention. But for accuracy’s sake Visible should know that with $40 on hand you could make an epic 8 hour local call from this phone. But then pointing this out might cause people who don’t use their cell phones all that much to look at payphones as a pretty good deal.

By the way I take issue with the rate card itself, owned by CityBridge, the Hudson Yard-based consortium replacing payphones like this with those stupid LinkNYC kiosks. For one thing the “Outside this calling area” instructions don’t need to be there, since 10-digit dialing has been the norm for a long time. But more importantly for locals calls the instructions say to deposit money first, then dial the number. Bzzzt. One always listens for a dial tone first. If present you then dial the number before dropping coins into the phone, in case the connection is faulty even with a dial tone present. Only after a robovoice demands 25¢ for the next three minutes do you send your hard-earned coinage down the chute, which to me makes a sound that mimics that of a human throat swallowing something.

For all that you can still never fully expect a payphone call to go through, for the person you call to be able to hear you, or for you to hear them. But in my usage these old payphones are far more reliable than LinkNYC’s free phone calls.