Quote:
Originally Posted by WillowTheWhisp
In the days before telephone and internet banking we had this stupid device which customers had to pay £10 for which they held over the telephone mouthpiece and punched buttons on to do their banking over the phone.
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It was well worth paying £10 for the tine dialer because you could use it to get free phone calls from BT phone boxes. Did you ever wonder why the new phone boxes were still on pulse dial when everyone had a tone dial phone at home?
The scam worked like this:
You dialled 99 on the payphone buttons. The phone then expected you to dial another 9 for the emergency services and that the call was a free call. The phone stupidly waited until you dialed the last 9 before it sent the tones for 999 to the exchange. Here is where the tone box comes in, after dialing the 99 on the phones buttons it switched to free and you then dialed your number on the tone box. This told the exchange the number you want and it connected you, the phone box did not charge because it was still waiting for the last 9 and it to be a free call.
Students were doing it all the time ringing home, friends etc. As a quick fix around it they set all the pay phones to pulse only and told the exchange to ignore tones from the pay phone.
Phone boxes pulsed out for years after that. It must have been quicker than modifying the phone box itself. I am not sure if they still pulse dial or tone dial as I have not used one for a long time. Someone must have used one and can tell us.