"Save a buck or two!"

If you had a TV and were alive in the early 1990s, you probably saw the ubiquitous ads from 1-800-COLLECT in which celebrities like Phil Hartman, Chris Rock, and Arsenio Hall implored payphone users to save cash on collect calls by using the company's eponymous service.

(If you didn't live through the early 1990s, you probably have three questions: What's a payphone? What are collect calls? And why would I want to make one when I have my cell phone?)

The pitch was this: you dialed 1-800-COLLECT before placing a call and, rather than suffer whatever astronomical rate the company owning the phone might charge, you reached a friendly 1-800-COLLECT operator and connected at known, modest rates.

The service became popular enough that less-scrupulous companies bought up similar 1-800 numbers, counting on misdials for business. (The FCC continues to warn people about the danger of misdialing 1-800-COLLECT).

Times have changed, cell phones have arrived, and payphones have become a dying breed. But people do still use them, do still need to make collect calls, and do still dial 1-800-COLLECT. And when they do, they get a surprise. A very expensive surprise.

The $42.55 call

An Ars reader wrote in this week with his tale of woe. After forgetting his cell phone at home, he traveled from Las Vegas to California and had to place a call back to his home landline. So he located a payphone and found that, so strong were the company's early ads, he still associated the 1-800-COLLECT number with reasonable collect call rates.

He dialed and placed a 6 minute call. When his home phone bill arrived in a couple weeks, it showed a third party charge for $42.55—$33.93 for the call itself, with the balance for "cost recovery fees" and the like. (The charge originated with Network Operator Services, which 1-800-COLLECT uses to bill some of its services.)

The reader was outraged. "There are unscrupulous carriers that charge even more than $42.55 from 1-800-COLLECT, whose website claims it is a 'trusted and recognized brand'?" he wondered. Similar complaints aren't hard to find.

While the rates are straight out of Bizarro World, they are also the rates listed at the company's website. Using 1-800-COLLECT's absurdly detailed fee calculator, our reader's call should have cost him $10.63 for the "connection fee" along with $3.99 per minute—which it did. (Plus the assorted extra fees.)

Bottom line: 1-800-COLLECT is still in business—and using it will cost you big. Caveat caller.