There’s a reason they have trouble shifting merchandise… (Backstory, I’m a phone hoard… Ummm. . Collector) About 18 years ago, I tried to purchase an NOS Western Electric 5302 housing set from these guys. The 5302 is just a 1930’s/40s 302 dressed up to look like a 1950’s 500 set, it let the telcos use up surplus equipment and gave people the “new” designed telephone.
It took a half dozen e-mails with the guy and I had to send him a certified postal money order to pay. About a week later I got a long rambling, paranoid email accusing me of trying to scam him in some non-specific way, and he wasn’t going to send me my parts, This despite him having acknowledged receipt my money order. To this day I don’t have my parts. I still have the e-mail exchange saved… On my AOL account.
There is a good reason to have a dial-up phone, other than pure pigheaded ludditism. In 2004 we had 4 hurricanes pass through my locality within two months. We were without power for over two weeks. The only method of communication that worked, until they could get the cell towers back up, was my 1937 Western electric 302 and my Moss green (avocado to you heathens) Western Electric 500.
I’m also probably the last person in my neighborhood with an Honest-to-God landline. I don’t know what it is after it hits AT&T’s box, but up until that point it’s still good-old twisted pair. I really hope it pisses them off and costs them money. Letting the PSTN rot in the ground because you don’t want to keep it running is the worst sort of corporate BS.
