Submission + - 85-year-old man learns he needn't lease his phone
An anonymous reader writes: According to Bangor Daily News, a man from Hermon was still leasing his phone from AT&T. "Lloyd Overlock never had much reason to think about his telephone. The 85-year-old Hermon resident just paid his bills and knew the service was there if he needed it. But Overlock, who for five decades has been paying a monthly fee to lease his phone, found out recently that the arrangement is a pricey, outmoded throwback to the days of telephone industry monopoly." What's amazing is even when his niece, Roberta York, tried to cancel the service via customer services, the friendly operator on the other end attempted to dissuade her, "offering her uncle a 20 percent discount off his monthly rental fee and reminding York of the benefits of leasing. 'She said that if something goes wrong with that phone, they'd have a new one here the next business day,' she recalled. I was thinking to myself, 'If something goes wrong with that phone, I'll go to Wal-Mart and get one the next day.' But I didn't say it."
